Positive vs. negative intense-facial expressions are difficult to explicitly distinguish; yet, whether they dissociate when subliminally presented remains unclear. Through three experiments using affective priming paradigms, we assessed how intense facial expressions, when presented briefly (17 ms) and masked, influenced following neutral ambiguous words (Experiment 1) or visible facial expressions (Experiments 2&3). We also compared these results with those of using normal facial expressions as primes in each experiment. All experiments indicated masked affective priming effects (biasing valence judgement of neutral words or facilitating reaction time to faces with the same valence as the prime) in normal facial expression, but not those intense ones. Experiment 3 using event related potentials (ERPs) further revealed that two ERP components N250 and LPP were consistent with behavioral changes in the normal condition (larger when valences of primes and targets were different), but inconsistent in the intense condition. Taken together, our results provided behavioral and neural evidence for distinctive processing between normal and intense facial expressions under masked condition.

正面部表情和负面部表情很难明确区分。然而，它们在下层出现时是否解离尚不清楚。通过使用情感启动范例的三个实验，我们评估了短暂呈现（17毫秒）并掩盖，掩盖，影响中性模棱两可的单词（实验1）或可见面部表情（实验2＆3）后面部表情的强烈程度。我们还将这些结果与在每个实验中使用正常面部表情作为素数的结果进行了比较。所有实验都表明在正常的面部表情中具有掩盖的情感启动效果（偏向中性单词的价位判断或促进对与该价位相同价位的面部的反应时间），而不是那些强烈的表情。使用事件相关电位（ERP）进行的实验3进一步表明，两个ERP组件N250和LPP与正常情况下的行为变化一致（当素数和目标的化合价不同时更大），但在强烈情况下则不一致。两者合计，我们的研究结果提供了行为和神经证据，证明在蒙面条件下正常表情和强烈表情之间的独特加工。