Faces capture spatial attention only when we want them to: An inattentional blindness EEG study

Zeguo Qiu; Xue Lei; Stefanie I Becker; Alan J Pegna

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108665

Faces capture spatial attention only when we want them to: An inattentional blindness EEG study

Biol Psychol. 2023 Oct:183:108665. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108665. Epub 2023 Aug 23.

Authors

Zeguo Qiu¹, Xue Lei², Stefanie I Becker², Alan J Pegna²

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia. Electronic address: zeguo.qiu@uq.net.au.
² School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia.

PMID: 37619811
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108665

Abstract

Previous research on emotional face processing has shown that emotional faces such as fearful faces may be processed without visual awareness. However, evidence for nonconscious attention capture by fearful faces is limited. In fact, studies using sensory manipulation of awareness (e.g., backward masking paradigms) have shown that fearful faces do not attract attention during subliminal viewings nor when they were task-irrelevant. Here, we used a three-phase inattentional blindness paradigm and electroencephalography to examine whether faces (fearful and neutral) capture attention under different conditions of awareness and task-relevancy. We found that the electrophysiological marker for attention capture, the N2-posterior-contralateral (N2pc), was elicited by face stimuli only when participants were aware of the faces and when they were task-relevant (phase 3). When participants were unaware of the presence of faces (phase 1) or when the faces were irrelevant to the task (phase 2), no N2pc was observed. Together with our previous work, we concluded that fearful faces, or faces in general, do not attract attention unless we want them to.

Keywords: Fearful faces; Inattentional blindness; N2pc; Visual awareness.