Attending to the fear in your eyes: Facilitated orienting and delayed disengagement

Fearful facial expressions convey threat-related information and automatically elicit modulations in spatial attention. The eye-region appears to be a particularly important feature for recognising and responding to fearful faces. However, it is unknown as to whether or not fearful eyes initiate modulations in spatial attention. In the current study, three dot-probe experiments with fearful and neutral eye stimuli were performed. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that fearful eyes capture spatial attention through facilitated attentional orienting to threat and delayed attentional disengagement from threat. In Experiments 2 and 3, these attentional effects were replicated, while ruling out the influence of overall size/shape and brightness differences between fearful and neutral eyes, respectively. Thus, fearful eye-whites appear to be a salient feature of fearful facial expressions that elicit modulations in spatial attention.     

内隐面孔记忆的编码机制*

为了探究内隐面孔再认在记忆形成过程中的认知加工状态,该实验以陌生面孔为刺激,采用事件相关电位(ERP)技术,并结合相继记忆(Dm)范式和迫选再认测验,把学习阶段的面孔分为相继记住、相继启动及相继忘记三类,以相继记住与相继启动的 ERP 差异为外显记忆 Dm 效应,以相继启动与相继忘记的差异为内隐记忆的 Dm效应。结果表明,内隐记忆表现为400~500 ms额中央区负走向的 Dm效应,可能反映了额叶皮层对信息的精加工过程,而外显记忆表现为400 ms开始顶区正走向的Dm效应,可能反映了记忆系统对加工后信息的自动登记过程。由此推测,只有经过额叶加工并被内侧颞叶自动登记的信息,随后才能被有意识地提取出来,而未进入内侧颞叶的信息在随后测验中不可能产生有意识地记忆提取现象,但储存的知觉表征可能触发微弱的记忆痕迹,从而产生内隐面孔记忆。     

人类面孔识别工作记忆的脑电位特征

采用事件相关电位(ERPs)技术探索延迟匹配任务范式下面孔识别工作记忆的脑电位特征。实验以面孔图片为刺激,在校大学生被试完成靶匹配工作记忆任务。结果发现,被试识别靶面孔及分心物面孔时均在枕颞区两侧诱发N170,且靶与分心物的N170振幅在相同电极上都没有显著差异,在颞区两侧的P7和P8上差异显著;无论靶面孔还是分心物面孔,工作记忆的 ERPs均产生了 P300成分。在分别追踪新靶和熟悉靶的工作记忆任务条件下,靶与分心物的ERPs波形在250 ms后出现分离,且靶刺激波幅均比分心物更正,新靶比熟悉靶更正。熟悉分心物与新分心物之间显示出250~650 ms的前额区旧/新效应,在晚期的450~650 ms时段,新工作记忆比旧工作记忆波幅更正。这些结果表明,面孔识别的N170效应可能反映的是面孔知觉的整体加工,且 N170的右半球优势具体为颞区的右侧优势;先前的面孔学习会影响工作记忆期间大脑对面孔的识别反应。     

Sensitivity to First‐Order Relations of Facial Elements in Infant Rhesus Macaques

Faces are visually attractive to both human and nonhuman primates. Human neonates are thought to have a broad template for faces at birth and prefer face‐like to non‐face‐like stimuli. To better compare developmental trajectories of face processing phylogenetically, here, we investigated preferences for face‐like stimuli in infant rhesus macaques using photographs of real faces. We presented infant macaques aged 15–25 days with human, macaque and abstract faces with both normal and linear arrangements of facial features and measured infants' gaze durations, number of fixations and latency to look to each face using eye‐tracking technology. There was an overall preference for normal over linear facial arrangements for abstract and monkey faces but not human faces. Moreover, infant macaques looked less at monkey faces than at abstract or human faces. These results suggest that species and facial configurations affect face processing in infant macaques, and we discuss potential explanations for these findings. Further, carefully controlled studies are required to ascertain whether infant macaques' face template can be considered as broad as human infants' face template. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

测谎中反馈加工的认知神经机制：一项ERP研究

在一个模拟“杀人——侦探”游戏情境中,被试先完成模拟杀人任务,在随后的测谎阶段使用有反馈的ERP测谎范式,以反馈的形式告知被试测谎结果（“+0.5”或“-2”,分别代表“撒谎逃过检测”或“撒谎被发现”）时的脑内时程动态变化。结果发现,在反馈出现后的200～300ms时间段,表示“撒谎被抓住”比“撒谎逃过检测”的反馈信息诱发了一个更正性的ERP成分（P200-300）,在300～400ms时间段,两种反馈诱发的ERP成分（P300）没有差异,而在450～500ms时间段, “撒谎逃过检测”比“撒谎被抓住”的反馈信息诱发了一个更负性的ERP成分（N500）,负性反馈没有诱发FRN。这些结果表明：P200-300、P300和N500都是与加工测谎结果信息有关的ERP成分。P200-300可能对测谎结果的效价（正性或负性）敏感;P300可能反映被试对测谎结果主观意义大小的评价;而N500可能反映测谎结果所导致的大脑皮层兴奋程度。     

Perception of Genuine and Masking Smiles in Children and Adults: Sensitivity to Traces of Anger

The authors examined children's and adults' sensitivity to traces of anger in masking smiles by presenting participants with short video excerpts of smiles that differed by the intensity of an anger component. Fifty-two children, aged 6 to 12 years, and 26 adults were asked to judge whether a stimulus person was really happy or pretending to be happy. Six- and 7-year-old children were found to be sensitive to traces of anger, but less so than older children and adults. Researchers found evidence of explicit knowledge of the emotion hidden in masking smiles only in adult participants.     

A novel method for assessing rival models of recognition memory

A general comparison is made between the multinomial processing tree (MPT) approach and a strength-based approach for modeling recognition memory measurement. Strength models include the signal-detection model and the dual-process model. Existing MPT models for recognition memory and a new generic MPT model, called the Multistate (MS) model, are contrasted with the strength models. Although the ROC curves for the MS model and strength model are similar, there is a critical difference between existing strength models and MPT models that goes beyond the assessment of the ROC. This difference concerns the question of stochastic mixtures for foil test trials. The hazard function and the reverse hazard function are powerful methods for detecting the presence of a probabilistic mixture. Several new theorems establish a novel method for obtaining information about the hazard function and reverse hazard function for the latent continuous distributions that are assumed in the strength approach to recognition memory. Evidence is provided that foil test trials involve a stochastic mixture. This finding occurred for both short-term memory procedures, such as the Brown–Peterson task, and long-term list-learning procedures, such as the paired-associate task. The effect of mixtures on foil trials is problematic for existing strength models but can be readily handled by MPT models such as the MS model. Other phenomena, such as the mirror effect and the effect of target-foil similarity, are also predicted accurately by the MPT modeling framework.     

Signal detection models for the same–different task

Signal detection models for the same–different task are presented. In contrast to the standard approach that only considers the proportion correct, the models apply to the full four by two same–different table. The approach allows one to consider models that recognize bias and other effects. Two basic signal detection models, associated with different decision rules, are presented. A version of the covert decisions rule is introduced that directly allows for same–different bias, in contrast to earlier versions. It is shown how to fit the models with standard software for nonlinear mixed models. The models are applied to data from a recent same–different study.     

Reinstating effortful encoding operations at test enhances episodic remembering

Two experiments investigated the effects of reinstating encoding operations on remember and know responses in recognition memory. Experiment 1 showed that reinstating an effortful encoding task (generating words from fragments) increased remember responses at test but reinstating an automatic encoding task (reading intact words) did not. This pattern was confirmed in Experiment 2 in which words were either read intact or generated from anagrams. These findings show that repeating effortful (but not automatic) encoding operations at test cues not only the recognition of the information that was acquired via those operations but also the conscious recollection of the encoding episode.