Emotional face prediction in rejection sensitive individuals: Evidence from event-related potentials

Human beings live in an uncertain world, but they continuously generate top-down predictions about emotional face information of other people around them. Although the prediction processing has repeatedly been investigated in the literature of prediction, little is known about the impact of rejection sensitive (RS) on individuals’ emotional face prediction. To this end, high and low RS participants were asked to perform an identification task of emotional faces in which target faces were shown in either an angry or happy expression while their brain responses were recorded using an event-related potential (ERP) technique. The behavioral results suggested an effect of emotional face prediction. For the P100 component, low RS participants showed longer P100 peak latencies in the left than right hemisphere when they viewed predictable emotional faces. In addition, low RS participants showed larger N170 mean amplitudes for angry compared to happy faces when they perceived unpredictable faces, but not when these faces were predictable. This presumably reflected a sensibility to angry faces in the unpredictable trails. Interestingly, high RS participants did not demonstrate such a N170 difference, suggesting that high RS participants showed a reduced sensitivity to unpredictable angry faces. Furthermore, angry faces triggered increased LPP mean amplitudes compared to happy faces, which was consistent with the results of other ERP studies examining the processing of emotional faces. Finally, we observed significant negative correlations between behavioral and ERP prediction effect, indicating one consistency between the behavioral and electrophysiological data.     

Enhanced ERPs to visual stimuli in unaffected male siblings of ASD children

Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by deficits in social and communication abilities. While unaffected relatives lack severe deficits, milder impairments have been reported in some first-degree relatives. The present study sought to verify whether mild deficits in face perception are evident among the unaffected younger siblings of children with ASD. Children between 6–9 years of age completed a face-recognition task and a passive viewing ERP task with face and house stimuli. Sixteen children were typically developing with no family history of ASD, and 17 were unaffected children with an older sibling with ASD. Findings indicate that, while unaffected siblings are comparable to controls in their face-recognition abilities, unaffected male siblings in particular show relatively enhanced P100 and P100-N170 peak-to-peak amplitude responses to faces and houses. Enhanced ERPs among unaffected male siblings is discussed in relation to potential differences in neural network recruitment during visual and face processing.     

Examining the relation between borderline personality features and social support: The mediating role of rejection sensitivity

Potential mechanisms underlying the pathway between borderline personality features and indices of social support have yet to be elaborated, despite that social difficulties are a hallmark feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). We hypothesized that rejection sensitivity, or the tendency to anxiously anticipate and readily perceive social rejection, might be one mechanism leading to the negative social impact associated with BPD symptoms. To test this hypothesis, a sample of college students (N = 165) completed self-report measures in the laboratory. With rejection sensitivity in the model, borderline features did not directly predict number of social supports. However, borderline features indirectly predicted decreased number of social supports via increased rejection sensitivity. Conversely, borderline features directly predicted social support satisfaction but did not evidence an indirect effect through rejection sensitivity. The results of this research suggest that rejection sensitivity is an important individual difference by which borderline features leads to the lower levels of social support demonstrated in past research. Future directions, such as examining potential mediators of social support perception, are discussed.     

Two routes to face perception: evidence from psychophysics and computational modeling

The aim of this study was to separately analyze the role of featural and configural face representations. Stimuli containing only featural information were created by cutting the faces into their parts and scrambling them. Stimuli only containing configural information were created by blurring the faces. Employing an old-new recognition task, the aim of Experiments 1 and 2 was to investigate whether unfamiliar faces (Exp. 1) or familiar faces (Exp. 2) can be recognized if only featural or configural information is provided. Both scrambled and blurred faces could be recognized above chance level. A further aim of Experiments 1 and 2 was to investigate whether our method of creating configural and featural stimuli is valid. Pre-activation of one form of representation did not facilitate recognition of the other, neither for unfamiliar faces (Exp. 1) nor for familiar faces (Exp. 2). This indicates a high internal validity of our method for creating configural and featural face stimuli. Experiment 3 examined whether features placed in their correct categorical relational position but with distorted metrical distances facilitated recognition of unfamiliar faces. These faces were recognized no better than the scrambled faces in Experiment 1, providing further evidence that facial features are stored independently of configural information. From these results we conclude that both featural and configural information are important to recognize a face and argue for a dual-mode hypothesis of face processing. Using the psychophysical results as motivation, we propose a computational framework that implements featural and configural processing routes using an appearance-based representation based on local features and their spatial relations. In three computational experiments (Experiments 4–6) using the same sets of stimuli, we show how this framework is able to model the psychophysical data.     

Predicting interest in cosmetic surgery: Interactive effects of appearance-based rejection sensitivity and negative appearance comments

This study investigated effects of appearance-based rejection sensitivity (Appearance-RS) – the dispositional tendency to anxiously expect rejection based on one's appearance – in a sample of 133 American college students. Participants were randomly assigned to write an essay about either a negative or positive appearance comment they had received in the past. Compared to participants with lower Appearance-RS, those with higher Appearance-RS felt more rejected and expressed greater interest in cosmetic surgery after recalling a negative versus positive appearance comment. Content analysis of the essays revealed that negative appearance comments were most often made in reference to one's body weight/shape/size; positive appearance comments were most often made in reference to one's overall appearance. Peers/friends/romantic partners were the most frequently cited source of both positive and negative appearance comments. Overall, this research suggests that the interaction between the person and the situation is important to consider when predicting cosmetic surgery interest.     

Individual differences in the rejection-aggression link in the hot sauce paradigm: The case of rejection sensitivity

Prior research shows that social rejection elicits aggression. In this study, we investigated whether this effect is moderated by individual differences in Rejection sensitivity (RS)—a processing disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive and overreact to rejection. Participants (N = 129) took part in a purported web-based social interaction in which they were either rejected or not by a potential partner. Subsequently, they were given the opportunity to allocate hot sauce to the perpetrator, knowing that he/she disliked spicy food. Amount of hot sauce was used as a behavioral index of aggression. Participants in the rejection condition allocated more hot sauce to the perpetrator than those in the control condition. However, RS moderated this effect such that rejection elicited aggression in high but not in low RS people. These results held after controlling for trait neuroticism. Implications of these findings for understanding how and why rejection elicits aggression are discussed.     

Human content in affect-inducing stimuli: A secondary analysis of the international affective picture system

We report a secondary analysis of the international affective picture system (IAPS), the broadest available standardized sample of emotional stimuli, which confirmed our prediction that the distribution of slides across the valence and arousal dimensions would be related to human versus inanimate slide content. Pictures depicting humans are over-represented in the high arousal/positive and high arousal/negative areas of affective space as compared to inanimate pictures, which are especially frequent in the low arousal/neutral valence area. Results pertaining to dominance ratings and gender differences in valence and arousal ratings further suggest that there are qualitative differences between emotional reactions to animal or human slide content and responses to nonsocial still photos. Researchers need to be mindful of this distinction when selecting affect-inducing stimuli.

The time course of access to semantic information in high-performing older adults: Behavioral evidence for the hemispheric asymmetry reduction in OLDer individuals

ABSTRACT

The possibility that the HAROLD phenomenon (i.e., Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in OLDer adults) is manifested in the course of access to semantic information, in particular the meaning of emotional words, was investigated using the visual half-field priming paradigm. The time course of priming was tracked in the cerebral hemispheres across three SOAs: 150, 300, and 750 ms. The results showed older and young adults had the same level of accuracy. While priming occurred unilaterally in young participants, the pattern of priming in older participants appeared to be bilateral whenever it was present, that is, at the 300- and 750-ms SOAs. The delay in the appearance of priming in older adults may be due to an increase in sensory thresholds that causes older adults to need more time to encode stimuli and fully activate their semantic network. It is concluded that the bilateral pattern of priming in the presence of an equivalent level of performance in older adults provides behavioral evidence supporting the compensatory role of the HAROLD phenomenon for this particular task.     

The high costs of low agreeableness: Low agreeableness exacerbates interpersonal consequences of rejection sensitivity in U.S. and Chinese adolescents

Although personality is a powerful predictor of adjustment, its potential moderating effects have been less studied in youth. This investigation examined why some youth are more susceptible to the negative consequences of rejection sensitivity than others. Two separate studies tested the hypothesis that agreeableness moderates the links between rejection sensitivity and interpersonal outcomes. Study 1 included 198 boys and 264 girls from the U.S.A. (M = 14.24 years old). Study 2 included 86 boys and 115 girls from China (M = 14.21 years old). Across studies, low agreeableness and high rejection sensitivity were uniquely associated with withdrawal, friendship dissatisfaction, and adverse conflict consequences. Cross-cultural replication underscores the universality of the risk confronting low agreeable youth with elevated rejection sensitivity.     

Personal and appearance-based rejection sensitivity in body dysmorphic disorder

Although rejection sensitivity may be an important feature of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), no studies have examined rejection sensitivity in a clinical sample and compared types of rejection sensitivity in individuals with BDD. Personal and appearance-based rejection sensitivity scores in forty-six patients diagnosed with BDD were compared with published norms. Associations between rejection sensitivity, BDD severity, and other clinical variables were examined. Personal and appearance-based rejection sensitivity scores were 0.6 and 1.1 standard deviation units above published norms, respectively. Greater personal rejection sensitivity was associated with more severe BDD and depressive symptoms, poorer mental health, general health, and physical and social functioning. Greater appearance-based rejection sensitivity was associated with more severe BDD and depressive symptoms, and poorer general health. Appearance-based rejection sensitivity contributed more unique variance to BDD severity than personal rejection sensitivity did; however, personal rejection sensitivity contributed more unique variance to general health than appearance-based rejection sensitivity did.     

Self-esteem modulates attentional responses to rejection: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Individuals with low self-esteem have been shown to exhibit an attentional bias for social rejection cues. The present study investigated whether individuals with low self-esteem would demonstrate greater reactivity to rejection-related stimuli during an attention shifting task than was exhibited by those with high self-esteem. Individuals with low self-esteem showed higher amplitude event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to rejection cues than was observed for those with high self-esteem. These results suggest that individuals with low self-esteem allocate more attentional resources to rejection cues than those with high self-esteem. Discussion will focus on the implications of these findings for understanding the connection between low self-esteem and social rejection.     

When intuition fails to align with data: A reply to Rossion (2013)

Holistic processing, a hallmark of face perception, is often measured in the so-called composite paradigm, in which participants are asked to match part of a stimulus while ignoring another part. In prior work, we recommended against the use of one version of the composite task we call the partial design, on the basis of confounds with response biases. Rossion wrote a lengthy piece that reviews the work that he has published using this design, raising a large number of criticisms, both about an alternative measure of holistic processing that we have used and advocated (which we call the complete design) and about our work in general. In this reply, we have limited our discussion to those issues that would be relevant to a researcher looking to decide which version of this composite paradigm to use, as we doubt a comprehensive reply would be of significant interest outside a very small circle.     

Why 8-year-olds cannot tell the difference between Steve Martin and Paul Newman: factors contributing to the slow development of sensitivity to the spacing of facial features

Children are nearly as sensitive as adults to some cues to facial identity (e.g., differences in the shape of internal features and the external contour), but children are much less sensitive to small differences in the spacing of facial features. To identify factors that contribute to this pattern, we compared 8-year-olds' sensitivity to spacing cues with that of adults under a variety of conditions. In the first two experiments, participants made same/different judgments about faces differing only in the spacing of facial features, with the variations being kept within natural limits. To measure the effect of attention, we reduced the salience of featural information by blurring faces and occluding features (Experiment 1). To measure the role of encoding speed and memory limitations, we presented pairs of faces simultaneously and for an unlimited time (Experiment 2). To determine whether participants' sensitivity would increase when spacing distortions were so extreme as to make the faces grotesque, we manipulated the spacing of features beyond normal limits and asked participants to rate each face on a "bizarreness" scale (Experiment 3). The results from the three experiments indicate that low salience, poor encoding efficiency, and limited memory can partially account for 8-year-olds' poor performance on face processing tasks that require sensitivity to the spacing of features, a kind of configural processing that underlies adults' expertise. However, even when the task is modified to compensate for these problems, children remain less sensitive than adults to the spacing of features.     

Negative interpretation bias as a mechanism of the relationship between rejection sensitivity and depressive symptoms

Rejection sensitivity and negative cognitive biases have been identified as important risk factors for depression. Rejection sensitivity is defined as the tendency to anxiously anticipate, easily perceive, and overreact to rejection. Although prior studies have found an association between one component of rejection sensitivity, the tendency to anxiously anticipate rejection, and depression, little is known about the mechanisms through which anxious anticipation of rejection might confer depression risk. One possibility is that rejection anticipation leads to negatively biased interpretations, a cognitive risk factor for depression. Results from two studies (one cross-sectional, one longitudinal) indicate that negative interpretation biases mediate the association between the anxious anticipation of rejection and depressive symptoms. These findings indicate that interpretation biases represent a mechanism through which anxious anticipation of rejection confers risk for depression, and suggest that interventions designed to challenge negative interpretations may help to decrease depression risk among individuals who anticipate rejection.     

Affective primes suppress attention bias to threat in socially anxious individuals

Anxious individuals show an attention bias towards threatening information. However, under conditions of sustained environmental threat this otherwise-present attention bias disappears. It remains unclear whether this suppression of attention bias can be caused by a transient activation of the fear system. In the present experiment, high socially anxious and low socially anxious individuals (HSA group, n=12; LSA group, n=12) performed a modified dot-probe task in which they were shown either a neutral or socially threatening prime word prior to each trial. EEG was collected and ERP components to the prime and faces displays were computed. HSA individuals showed an attention bias to threat after a neutral prime, but no attention bias after a threatening prime, demonstrating that suppression of attention bias can occur after a transient activation of the fear system. LSA individuals showed an opposite pattern: no evidence of a bias to threat with neutral primes but induction of an attention bias to threat following threatening primes. ERP results suggested differential processing of the prime and faces displays by HSA and LSA individuals. However, no group by prime interaction was found for any of ERP components.     

Rejection sensitivity as a mediator of the relationship between experienced rejection and borderline characteristics

Experiences of rejection in childhood play an important role in the etiology of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Additionally, individuals who report borderline symptoms report high levels of rejection sensitivity. The current study aimed to disentangle the relationship between experiences of rejection, rejection sensitivity and borderline characteristics. Therefore, we retrospectively assessed experiences of parental and peer rejection, collected data of self-reported rejection sensitivity and social support and prospectively investigated borderline characteristics in a sample of 193 students. Results indicated that rejection sensitivity fully mediated the previously significant relationship between experiences of parental rejection and borderline characteristics, whereas peer rejection maintained a significant effect on borderline traits. Social support was identified as a protective factor. Results indicated a crucial role of rejection sensitivity in borderline symptomatology.     

Face threat sensitivity in negotiation: Roadblock to agreement and joint gain

Negotiation scholars and practitioners have long noted the impact of face, or social image, concerns on negotiation outcomes. When face is threatened, negotiators are less likely to reach agreement and to create joint gain. In this paper, we explore individual differences in face threat sensitivity (FTS), and how a negotiator's role moderates the relationship of his or her FTS to negotiation outcomes. Study 1 describes a measure of FTS. Study 2 finds that buyers and sellers are less likely to reach an agreement that is in both parties' interests when the seller has high FTS. Study 3 finds that job candidates and recruiters negotiate an employment contract with less joint gain when the candidate has high FTS, and that this relationship is mediated by increased competitiveness on the part of the high FTS candidates. The results support Deutsch's (1961) application of face theory ( Goffman, 1967) to negotiation.     

汉语句子加工中句法信息与语义信息的交互作用：来自ERP的证据

采用ERP技术考察句子加工过程中句法信息和语义信息交互作用的时间进程。以汉语“把字句”为实验材料,分别比较句法违例句与双重违例句的LAN和P600效应、语义违例句与双重违例句的N400效应。与句法违例句相比,双重违例句的LAN效应的波幅更负,潜伏期更长,皮层分布更广泛;双重违例句的P600效应出现减弱趋势;双重违例句的N400效应的潜伏期显著长于语义违例句。结果表明,在句子加工的各个阶段,句法信息和语义信息呈持续交互作用,支持句子的平行加工模型。     

Knowing what to look for: Voice affects face race judgements

The study examined the effect that auditory information (speaker language/accent: Japanese or French) had on the processing of visual information (the speaker's race: Asian or Caucasian) in two forced-choice tasks: Classification and perceptual judgement on animated talking characters. Two (male and female) sets of facial morphs were constructed such that a 3-D head of Caucasian appearance was gradually morphed (in 11 steps) into one of Asian appearance. Each facial morph was animated in association with spoken French/Japanese or English with a French/Japanese accent. To examine the auditory effect, each animation was played with or without sound. Experiment 1 used an Asian or Caucasian classification task. Results showed that faces heard in conjunction with Japanese or a Japanese accent were more likely to be classified as Asian compared to those presented without sound. Experiment 2 used a same or different judgement task. Results showed that accuracy was improved by hearing a Japanese accent compared to without sound. These results were discussed in terms of the voice information acting as a cue to assist in organizing and attending to face features.     

基于ERP的二语句子加工过程的认知神经机制研究进展及其启示

二语句子加工认知神经机制的研究尚处于验证和探索阶段,基本上还集中于对一语和二语的语义违例与句法违例反应的比较,更缺乏动态的二语句子加工认知神经机制的研究。仅就二语语义加工而言,所得结果充满矛盾,这可能与二语习得年龄有关。就二语句法加工研究而言,二语学习者显示出依赖于二语学习年龄的不同模式。同时,二语的句法加工过程依赖于二语和一语的相似性与相异性。其深层原因可能意味着存在一语和二语之间的句法通达问题。为此,应当系统考察语义通达程度和句法通达程度的系统变化对二语加工加工可能会造成怎样的影响,同时应开展以某种语言（如汉语）的母语者其二语（如英语）句子加工认知神经机制和以前者的二语（如英语）母语者为被试开展以前者的母语（如汉语）为二语的句子加工认知神经机制的比较研究。