High perceptual load is thought to impair already the early stages of visual processing of task-irrelevant visual stimuli. However, recent studies showed no effects of perceptual load on early ERPs in response to task-irrelevant emotional faces. In this preregistered EEG study (N = 40), we investigated the effects of continuous perceptual load on ERPs to fearful and neutral task-irrelevant faces and their phase-scrambled versions. Perceptual load did not modulate face or emotion effects for the P1 or N170. In contrast, larger face-scramble and fearful-neutral differentiation were found during low as compared to high load for the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN). Further, face-independent P1, but face-dependent N170 emotional modulations were observed. Taken together, our findings show that P1 and N170 face and emotional modulations are highly resistant to load manipulations, indicating a high degree of automaticity during this processing stage, whereas the EPN might represent a bottleneck in visual information processing.

高的感知负荷被认为已经削弱了与任务无关的视觉刺激的视觉处理的早期阶段。然而，最近的研究表明，对于与任务无关的情绪面孔，知觉负载对早期ERP没有影响。在这项预先注册的脑电图研究中（N= 40），我们研究了持续感知负载对ERPs的影响，这些影响是与恐惧和中立的，与任务无关的面孔及其相位混乱的版本。感知负荷不会调节P1或N170的面部或情绪效果。相比之下，早期负后方负电荷（EPN）的负荷比高负荷时更大，扰乱的面部表情和中性的恐惧区域。此外，观察到人脸无关的P1，但人脸无关的N170情绪调节。综上所述，我们的发现表明，P1和N170的面部表情和情绪调节对负载操纵具有很高的抵抗力，表明在此处理阶段具有高度的自动化性，而EPN可能表示视觉信息处理的瓶颈。