“Blindsight” and subjective awareness of fearful faces: Inversion reverses the deficits in fear perception associated with core psychopathic traits

Abstract

Though emotional faces preferentially reach awareness, the present study utilised both objective and subjective indices of awareness to determine whether they enhance subjective awareness and “blindsight”. Under continuous flash suppression, participants localised a disgusted, fearful or neutral face (objective index), and rated their confidence (subjective index). Psychopathic traits were also measured to investigate their influence on emotion perception. As predicted, fear increased localisation accuracy, subjective awareness and “blindsight” of upright faces. Coldhearted traits were inversely related to subjective awareness, but not “blindsight”, of upright fearful faces. In a follow-up experiment using inverted faces, increased localisation accuracy and awareness, but not “blindsight”, were observed for fear. Surprisingly, awareness of inverted fearful faces was positively correlated with coldheartedness. These results suggest that emotion enhances both pre-conscious processing and the qualitative experience of awareness, but that pre-conscious and conscious processing of emotional faces rely on at least partially dissociable cognitive mechanisms.

Keywords:

• Visual awareness
• Affective blindsight
• Fearful faces
• Continuous flash suppression
• Psychopathic traits

Special thanks to Bryan Wong for assistance with the compilation of data.

This research was supported by funding to D. M. from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Special thanks to Bryan Wong for assistance with the compilation of data.

This research was supported by funding to D. M. from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Notes

¹ Because the analyses were carried out using proportions, repeated-measures ANOVAs were also performed following arcsine transformation of the data. These analyses revealed an identical pattern of results.

² Because the analyses were carried out using proportions, repeated-measures ANOVAs were also performed following arcsine transformation of the data. These analyses revealed an identical pattern of results.