ABSTRACT

Visual search studies have shown that threatening facial expressions are more efficiently detected among a crowd of distractor faces than nonthreatening expressions, known as the anger superiority effect (ASE). However, the opposite finding has also been documented. The present study investigated the ASE in the visual periphery with a visual crowding task. In the study, the target face either appeared alone (uncrowded condition) or was crowded by four neutral or emotional faces (crowded condition). Participants were instructed to determine whether the target face was happy or angry. Experiment 1 showed an ASE when crowded by neutral faces. Intriguingly, this superiority vanished when the target face was crowded by emotional faces that had a different expression from the target as well as when the target face was presented alone. Experiment 2 replicated this result in an independent sample of East Asians (vs. Caucasians in Experiment 1) and thus demonstrated the robustness and cross-cultural consistency of our findings. Together, these results suggest that the ASE in the visual periphery is contingent on task demands induced by visual crowding.

摘要

视觉搜索研究表明，与非威胁性的表情相比，在一大群分散注意力的面孔中更有效地检测到威胁性的面部表情，这被称为愤怒优势效应 (ASE)。然而，相反的发现也被记录在案。本研究通过视觉拥挤任务调查了视觉周边的 ASE。在研究中，目标面孔要么单独出现（不拥挤的情况），要么被四个中性或情绪化的面孔挤在一起（拥挤的情况）。参与者被要求确定目标脸是高兴还是生气。实验 1 显示了当被中性面孔拥挤时的 ASE。有趣的是，当目标人脸被表情不同的情绪面孔挤满时，以及当目标人脸单独出现时，这种优势就会消失。实验 2 在东亚人（与实验 1 中的高加索人）的独立样本中复制了这一结果，从而证明了我们的研究结果的稳健性和跨文化一致性。总之，这些结果表明视觉周边的 ASE 取决于视觉拥挤引起的任务需求。