The present EEG study with 32 healthy participants investigated whether affective knowledge about a person influences the visual awareness of their face, additionally considering the impact of facial appearance. Faces differing in perceived trustworthiness based on appearance were associated with negative or neutral social information and shown as target stimuli in an attentional blink task. As expected, participants showed enhanced awareness of faces associated with negative compared to neutral social information. On the neurophysiological level, this effect was connected to differences in the time range of the early posterior negativity (EPN)—a component associated with enhanced attention and facilitated processing of emotional stimuli. The findings indicate that the social-affective relevance of a face based on emotional knowledge is accessed during a phase of attentional enhancement for conscious perception and can affect prioritization for awareness. In contrast, no clear evidence for influences of facial trustworthiness during the attentional blink was found.

目前的脑电图研究对 32 名健康参与者进行了调查，调查了关于一个人的情感知识是否会影响他们面部的视觉意识，此外还考虑了面部外观的影响。基于外观的感知可信度不同的面孔与负面或中性的社会信息相关，并在注意力瞬脱任务中显示为目标刺激。正如预期的那样，与中性社交信息相比，参与者对与负面社交信息相关的面孔的认识有所增强。在神经生理学层面上，这种效应与早期后消极性（EPN）的时间范围差异有关，这是与增强注意力和促进情绪刺激处理相关的组成部分。研究结果表明，在意识感知的注意力增强阶段，基于情感知识的面部社交情感相关性会被获取，并且可能会影响意识的优先级。相比之下，没有发现明确的证据表明注意力眨眼期间面部可信度的影响。