A key mechanism behind preferential processing of self-related information might be an early and automatic capture of attention. Therefore, the present study tested a hypothesis that one’s own face will attract bottom-up attention even without conscious identification. To test this, we used a dot-probe paradigm with electrophysiological recordings, in which participants (N = 18) viewed masked and unmasked pairs of faces (other, self) presented laterally. Analysis of the sensitivity measure d ′ indicated that faces were not consciously identified in the masked condition. A clear N2 posterior-contralateral (N2pc) component (a neural marker of attention shifts) was found in both the masked and unmasked conditions, revealing that one’s own face automatically captures attention when processed unconsciously. Therefore, our study (a) demonstrates that self-related information is boosted at an early (preconscious) stage of processing, (b) identifies further features (beyond simple physical ones) that cause automatic attention capture, and (c) provides further evidence for the dissociative nature of attention and consciousness.
AlexopoulosT.MullerD.RicF.MarendazC. (2012). I, me, mine: Automatic attentional capture by self-related stimuli. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 770–779. doi:10.1002/ejsp.1882
2.
AwhE.BelopolskyA. V.TheeuwesJ. (2012). Top-down versus bottom-up attentional control: A failed theoretical dichotomy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16, 437–443. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2012.06.010
3.
AxelrodV.BarM.ReesG. (2015). Exploring the unconscious using faces. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19, 35–45. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.003
4.
AxelrodV.ReesG. (2014). Conscious awareness is required for holistic face processing. Consciousness and Cognition, 27, 233–245. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2014.05.004
5.
BidermanN.MudrikL. (2017). Evidence for implicit—but not unconscious—processing of object-scene relations. Psychological Science, 29, 266–277. doi:10.1177/0956797617735745
6.
CerfM.HarelJ.EinhäuserW.KochC. (2008). Predicting human gaze using low-level saliency combined with face detection. In PlattJ. C.KollerD.SingerY.RoweisS. (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems (Vol. 20, pp. 241–248). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7.
DevueC.Van der StigchelS.BrédartS.TheeuwesJ. (2009). You do not find your own face faster; you just look at it longer. Cognition, 111, 114–122. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.01.003
8.
EimerM.KissM. (2008). Involuntary attentional capture is determined by task set: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 1423–1433. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20099
9.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.LangA.-G.BuchnerA. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191. doi:10.3758/BF03193146
10.
FinkbeinerM.PalermoR. (2009). The role of spatial attention in nonconscious processing: A comparison of face and nonface stimuli. Psychological Science, 20, 42–51. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02256.x
11.
GoelevenE.De RaedtR.LeymanL.VerschuereB. (2008). The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces: A validation study. Cognition & Emotion, 22, 1094–1118. doi:10.1080/02699930701626582
12.
HensonR. N.MouchlianitisE.MatthewsW. J.KouiderS. (2008). Electrophysiological correlates of masked face priming. NeuroImage, 40, 884–895. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.12.003
13.
HolmesA.BradleyB. P.Kragh NielsenM.MoggK. (2009). Attentional selectivity for emotional faces: Evidence from human electrophysiology. Psychophysiology, 46, 62–68. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00750.x
14.
HsiehP.-J.ColasJ. T.KanwisherN. (2011). Unconscious pop-out: Attentional capture by unseen feature singletons only when top-down attention is available. Psychological Science, 22, 1220–1226. doi:10.1177/0956797611419302
15.
HumphreysG. W.SuiJ. (2016). Attentional control and the self: The self-attention network (SAN). Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 5–17. doi:10.1080/17588928.2015.1044427
JiangY.CostelloP.FangF.HuangM.HeS. (2006). A gender- and sexual orientation-dependent spatial attentional effect of invisible images. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 103, 17048–17052. doi:10.1073/pnas.0605678103
18.
JohnsonM. H. (2005). Subcortical face processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 766–777. doi:10.1038/nrn1766
19.
JohnstonJ. C.McCannR. S.RemingtonR. W. (1995). Chronometric evidence for two types of attention. Psychological Science, 6, 365–369. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1995.tb00527.x
20.
KochC.TsuchiyaN. (2007). Attention and consciousness: Two distinct brain processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 16–22. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.10.012
21.
KouiderS.EgerE.DolanR.HensonR. N. (2009). Activity in face-responsive brain regions is modulated by invisible, attended faces: Evidence from masked priming. Cerebral Cortex, 19, 13–23. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn048
22.
LachterJ.ForsterK. I.RuthruffE. (2004). Forty-five years after Broadbent: Still no identification without attention. Psychological Review, 111, 880–913. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.111.4.880
23.
LamyD.AlonL.CarmelT.ShalevN. (2015). The role of conscious perception in attentional capture and object-file updating. Psychological Science, 6, 48–57. doi:10.1177/0956797614556777
24.
LamyD.CarmelT.PeremenZ. (2017). Prior conscious experience enhances conscious perception but does not affect response priming. Cognition, 160, 62–81. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.12.009
25.
LeeM. D.WagenmakersE.-J. (2013). Bayesian cognitive modeling: A practical course. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
26.
LuckS. J.KappenmanE. S. (2012). ERP components and selective attention. In LuckS. J.KappenmanE. S. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of event-related potential components (pp. 329–360). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
27.
LundqvistD.FlyktA.ÖhmanA. (1998). The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) [CD-ROM]. Stockholm, Sweden: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychology Section, Karolinska Institutet.
28.
MarisE.OostenveldR. (2007). Nonparametric statistical testing of EEG- and MEG-data. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 64, 177–190. doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2007.03.024
29.
Méndez-BértoloC.MorattiS.ToledanoR.Lopez-SosaF.Martínez-AlvarezR.MahY. H.. . . StrangeB. A. (2016). A fast pathway for fear in human amygdala. Nature Neuroscience, 19, 1041–1049. doi:10.1038/nn.4324
30.
MeybergS.SommerW.DimigenO. (2017). How microsaccades relate to lateralized ERP components of spatial attention: A co-registration study. Neuropsychologia, 99, 64–80. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.02.023
31.
MudrikL.FaivreN.KochC. (2014). Information integration without awareness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 488–496. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.04.009
OldfieldR. C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97–113. doi:10.1016/0028-3932(71)90067-4
34.
PegnaA. J.KhatebA.LazeyrasF.SeghierM. L. (2005). Discriminating emotional faces without primary visual cortices involves the right amygdala. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 24–25. doi:10.1038/nn1364
35.
RamonM.VizioliL.Liu-ShuangJ.RossionB. (2015). Neural microgenesis of personally familiar face recognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 112, E4835–E4844. doi:10.1073/pnas.1414929112
36.
StanislawH.TodorovN. (1999). Calculation of signal detection theory measures. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 31, 137–149.
37.
TacikowskiP.EhrssonH. H. (2016). Preferential processing of self-relevant stimuli occurs mainly at the perceptual and conscious stages of information processing. Consciousness and Cognition, 41, 139–149. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2016.02.013
38.
TheeuwesJ. (2010). Top-down and bottom-up control of visual selection. Acta Psychologica, 135, 77–99. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.02.006
39.
VuilleumierP.ArmonyJ. L.DriverJ.DolanR. J. (2003). Distinct spatial frequency sensitivities for processing faces and emotional expressions. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 624–631. doi:10.1038/nn1057
40.
WagenmakersE.-J.LoveJ.MarsmanM.JamilT.LyA.VerhagenJ.. . . MoreyR. D. (2018). Bayesian inference for psychology. Part II: Example applications with JASP. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 58–76. doi:10.3758/s13423-017-1323-7
41.
WójcikM. J.NowickaM. M.KotlewskaI.NowickaA. (2018). Self-face captures, holds, and biases attention. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Article 2371. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02371
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
