Citation

Koizumi A, Mobbs D, Lau H. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2016; 11(11): 1772-1782.

Affiliation

4: Department of Psychology & Brian Research Institute, UCLA, 1285 Franz Hall, Bo 951563, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/scan/nsw084

PMID

27405614

Abstract

Fearful faces are believed to be prioritized in visual perception. However, it is unclear whether the processing of low-level facial features alone can facilitate such prioritization, or whether higher-level mechanisms also contribute. We examined potential biases for fearful face perception at the levels of perceptual decision-making and metacognition. We controlled for lower-level visual processing capacity by titrating luminance contrasts of backward masks, and the emotional intensity of fearful, angry, and happy faces. Under these conditions, participants showed liberal biases in perceiving a fearful face, in both detection and discrimination tasks. This effect was stronger among individuals with reduced density in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region linked to perceptual decision-making. Moreover, participants reported higher confidence when they accurately perceived a fearful face, suggesting that fearful faces may have privileged access to the metacognitive system. Together, the results suggest that mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex contribute to making fearful face perception special.

© The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press.

Language: en