Neural evidence for the threat detection advantage: Differential attention allocation to angry and happy faces

Feldmann-Wustefeld, Tobias, Schmidt-Daffy, Martin and Schubö, Anna (2011) Neural evidence for the threat detection advantage: Differential attention allocation to angry and happy faces. Psychophysiology, 48 (5), 697-707. (doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2010.01130.x).

Record type: Article

Abstract

With the face-in-the-crowd task, a visual search paradigm, it was shown that searching for an angry face often yields better performance in comparison to searching for a happy face.Methods: Using event-related potentials of the Electroencephalography (EEG), the present study was designed to test the hypothesis that differential shifts of attention towards angry and happy faces cause the threat detection advantage. Main conclusion: Behavioral data revealed a higher sensitivity (d-prime) for angry faces than for happy faces. Furthermore, EEG data showed an earlier N2pc onset and larger N2pc amplitude, indicating that the threat detection advantage is due to differential shifts of attention. Additionally, emotion-specific differences (early posterior negativity, EPN) emerged already at 160 ms after stimulus presentation and may contribute to the differential shift of attention.

This record has no associated files available for download.