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Abstract
The anger superiority effect shows that an angry face is detected more efficiently than a happy face. However, it is still controversial whether attentional allocation to angry faces is a bottom-up process or not. We investigated whether the anger superiority effect is influenced by top-down control, especially working memory (WM). Participants remembered a colour and then searched for differently coloured facial expressions. Just holding the colour information in WM did not modulate the anger superiority effect. However, when increasing the probabilities of trials in which the colour of a target face matched the colour held in WM, participants were inclined to direct attention to the target face regardless of the facial expression. Moreover, the knowledge of high probability of valid trials eliminated the anger superiority effect. These results suggest that the anger superiority effect is modulated by top-down effects of WM, the probability of events and expectancy about these probabilities.
We thank Lynn Bruyneel, Inez Greven and Tobias Six for their help with the experiments. We also thank all PANLAB members in Ghent University for helpful comments on our experiments.
Preparation of this paper was supported by Grant [BOF10/GOA/014] for a Concerted Research Action of Ghent University (awarded to Rudi De Raedt and Ernst Koster), and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS): Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (10J06078 to Jun Moriya).
We thank Lynn Bruyneel, Inez Greven and Tobias Six for their help with the experiments. We also thank all PANLAB members in Ghent University for helpful comments on our experiments.
Preparation of this paper was supported by Grant [BOF10/GOA/014] for a Concerted Research Action of Ghent University (awarded to Rudi De Raedt and Ernst Koster), and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS): Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (10J06078 to Jun Moriya).