ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办：中国心理学会
　　　中国科学院心理研究所
出版：科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2015, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (12): 1433-1444.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2015.01433

• 论文 • 上一篇    下一篇

场景的不同空间频率信息对面部表情加工的影响：来自ERP的证据

杨亚平1;徐强1;张林1;邓培状2;梁宁建2   

  1. (1宁波大学心理学系暨研究所, 宁波 315211) (2华东师范大学心理与认知科学学院, 上海 200062)
  • 收稿日期:2015-04-08 发布日期:2015-12-25 出版日期:2015-12-25
  • 通讯作者: 梁宁建, E-mail: njliang@126.com
  • 基金资助:

    浙江省哲学社会科学规划课题(15NDJC067YB)和宁波大学学科项目(XKW14D2013)资助。

Scenes Differing in Spatial Frequencies Affect Facial Expression Processing: Evidence from ERP

YANG Yaping1; XU Qiang1; ZHANG Lin1; DENG Peizhuang2; LIANG Ningjian2   

  1. (1 Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China)
    (2 School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China)
  • Received:2015-04-08 Online:2015-12-25 Published:2015-12-25
  • Contact: LIANG Ningjian, E-mail: njliang@126.com

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摘要：

使用事件相关电位(event-related potentials, ERPs)技术考察场景(scene)的不同空间频率信息对面部表情加工的影响。结果发现：对于完整频谱的正常场景来说, 中性场景中的恐惧面孔所诱发的N170波幅显著大于消极场景中的恐惧面孔, 但该场景效应并未出现在高、低空间频率场景中; 另外, 中性场景中的中性面孔所诱发的N170波幅显著大于消极场景中的中性面孔, 该效应发生于三类不同空间频率的场景中。该研究结果表明, 场景对恐惧面孔早期知觉编码加工的影响依赖于场景完整频谱信息。相对于恐惧面孔, 中性情绪面孔的结构化编码加工更容易受到消极情绪场景的干扰, 而且这种干扰能够发生在场景仅有粗略轮廓信息以及细节线条信息的情况下。

关键词: 面部表情加工, 场景, 空间频率, 事件相关电位, N170

Abstract:

Facial expressions are fundamental emotional stimuli as they convey important information in social interaction. Most empirical research on facial expression processing has focused on isolated faces. But in everyday life, faces are embedded in surrounding context. For example, fearful faces always accompany with tight bodies, and happy faces appear in birthday parties more often than in sickrooms. Scenes which faces are embedded in provide typical visual context. Recently some studies attempted to investigate the influence of emotional scenes on facial expression processing. Although a few previous studies in this field demonstrated the scene effects of facial expression processing existed, the studies did not further explore the specific processing mechanism of the scene effects. Because of its excellent temporal resolution, the present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the effects of scenes that contain different spatial frequencies on facial expression processing. Our hypothesis was that the different spatial frequencies of scenes affected facial expression processing in different ways.
Eighteen right-handed college students (11 females; age range 17~24 years; mean age_20.67±1.91 years) were paid to participate in the experiment. Thirty-two face pictures (16 females and 16 males) with fearful and neutral expressions and thirty-two scene pictures (16 negative scenes and 16 neutral scenes) were presented. Spatial frequency content in the original scene stimuli (broad-band, BSF) was filtered using a high-pass cut-off that was > 16cpi for the higher spatial frequencycpi for the lower spatial frequency (LSF) scene stimuli. In the present study, we used a paradigm in which the scene and the facial expression were presented together, i.e., simultaneous processing of the scene and the facial expression. In simultaneous processing of the scene and the facial expression, the early mental representation of the scene has to be constructed in parallel to the construction of the facial expression. In the paradigm, after 500 ms into the presentation of the fixation, the face-scene compound stimuli appeared centrally on the scene for 800 ms. The scene and face emotions were either congruent or incongruent. Participants were instructed to perform a gender categorization task (task-irrelevant). (HSF) scene stimuli, and a low-pass cut-off of < 8
Because the task-irrelevant task was used, our behavioral data was only used to evaluate the degree of attention. Accuracy of target stimuli did not show significant differences between conditions (above 90% for all conditions, ps > 0.1). Our ERP results showed that for scenes with broad-band spatial frequency, fearful faces which appeared in neutral scenes elicited larger N170 amplitudes than these faces which appeared in negative scenes in both right and left hemispheres. But the effects were not found for scenes with high and low spatial frequencies. In addition, neutral faces which appeared in neutral scenes elicited larger N170 amplitudes than the faces which appeared in negative scenes. The effects that were found for scenes with different spatial frequencies were distributed in different hemispheres. For scenes with broad-band and low spatial frequencies, the effects were distributed in the right hemisphere. But for scenes with high spatial frequency, the effects were distributed in the left hemisphere.

In conclusion, our findings demonstrated that the visual processing characteristic of the scene effects was different for different facial expressions. The scenes had an influence on fearful face processing. The scene effects which happened in early structural perceptual encoding of faces depended on broad-band spatial frequency information of scenes. And the scene effects could happen in the task-irrelevant condition. However, the scenes had a different influence on neutral facial expression. Neutral facial expressions are less salient than fearful facial expressions. So it was easy for negative scenes to disturb the early perceptual encoding of neutral facial expressions. Additionally, this disturbance could happen in the condition in which scenes only retained coarse global information or detailed edge information.

Key words: facial expression processing, scenes, spatial frequency, event-related potentials (ERPs), N170