Distinction between fear and surprise: an interpretation-independent test of the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis

ABSTRACT

The perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis posits that the confusion between emotional facial expressions of fear and surprise may be due to their visual similarity, with shared muscle movements. In Experiment 1 full face images of fear and surprise varying as a function of distinctiveness (mouth index, brow index, or both indices) were displayed in a gender oddball task. Experiment 2, in a similar task, directed attention toward the eye or mouth region with a blurring technique. The current two studies used response time and event-related potentials (ERP) to test the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis. While ERP results for Experiment 1 suggested that individuals may not have perceived a difference between the emotional expressions in any of the conditions, response time results suggested that individuals processed a difference between fear and surprise when a distinctive cue was in the mouth. With directed attention in Experiment 2, ERP results indicated that individuals were capable of detecting a difference in all the conditions. In effect, the current two experiments suggest that participants display difficulty in distinguishing the prototypes of fear and surprise with the eye region, which may be due to a lack of attention to that region, providing support for the attentional limitation hypothesis.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• event-related potentials (ERP)
• Fear and surprise
• blur
• attention
• perception

Acknowledgments

This study was partially funded by Laurentian University Research Funding (LURF) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The authors are also thankful to the Cognitive Health and Research Laboratory for their contribution to data collection. The authors would like to thank Sean Thomas for his valuable assistance in the Cognitive Health and Research Laboratory.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Out of concern for the effects of order on the response times, a Pearson r correlation was administered between Trial Number and Response Time. A small positive interaction was found to be significant, r(4846) = .15, p < .05. While it is only a small interaction, significance could be the result of an order effect, or it may also be the result of our manipulation. The Roy-Charland et al. (2014) study suggested that individuals would be able to perceive a difference between fear and surprise in the Mouth Only and Both conditions. Therefore, increased response latencies would be expected in the current task for the Mouth Only and Both conditions, when compared to the Brow Only condition.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation.