Visual consciousness of faces in the attentional blink: Knowledge-based effects of trustworthiness dominate over appearance-based impressions

Not all visual stimuli processed by the brain reach the level of conscious perception. Previous research has shown that the emotional value of a stimulus is one of the factors that can affect whether it is consciously perceived. Here, we investigated whether social-affective knowledge influences a face’s chance to reach visual consciousness. Furthermore, we took into account the impact of facial appearance. Faces differing in facial trustworthiness (i.e., being perceived as more or less trustworthy based on appearance) were associated with neutral or negative socially relevant information. Subsequently, an attentional blink task was administered to examine whether the manipulated factors affect the faces’ chance to reach visual consciousness under conditions of reduced attentional resources. Participants showed enhanced detection of faces associated with negative as compared to neutral social information. In event-related potentials (ERPs), this was accompanied by effects in the time range of the early posterior negativity (EPN) component. These findings indicate that social-affective person knowledge is processed already before or during attentional selection and can affect which faces are prioritized for access to visual consciousness. In contrast, no clear evidence for an impact of facial trustworthiness during the attentional blink was found. This study was pre-registered using the Open Science Framework (OSF).

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The Importance of High Spatial Frequencies for Exogenous Consciousness. Evidence from the Attentional Blink Paradigm.

10.31234/osf.io/8tyjr ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Mickaël Jean Rémi Perrier ◽

Louise Kauffmann ◽

Carole Peyrin ◽

Nicolas Vermeulen ◽

Frederic Dutheil ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Spatial Frequency ◽

Visual System ◽

Attentional Blink ◽

Crucial Role ◽

Conscious Perception ◽

Frequency Content ◽

Spatial Frequencies ◽

Low Pass ◽

Visual Consciousness ◽

High Pass

We attempted to highlight the respective importance of low spatial frequencies (LSFs) and high spatial frequencies (HSFs) in the emergence of visual consciousness by using an attentional blink paradigm in order to manipulate the conscious report of visual stimuli. Thirty-eight participants were asked to identify and report two targets (happy faces) embedded in a rapid stream of distractors (angry faces). Conscious perception of the second target (T2) usually improved as the lag between the targets increased. The distractors between T1 and T2 were either non-filtered (broad spatial frequencies, BSF), low-pass filtered (LSF), or high-pass filtered (HSF). The spatial frequency content of the distractors resulted in a greater disturbance of T2 reporting in the HSF than in the LSF condition. We argue that this could support the idea of HSF information playing a crucial role in the emergence of exogenous consciousness in the visual system. Other interpretations are also discussed.

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Both high and low spatial frequencies are critical for visual consciousness in autism: Evidence of an emotional attentional blink paradigm.

10.21203/rs.3.rs-16508/v2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Adeline Lacroix ◽

Marie Gomot ◽

Margot Fombonne ◽

Mickaël J. R. Perrier ◽

Carole Peyrin ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Perception ◽

Attentional Blink ◽

Face Processing ◽

Critical Role ◽

Local Information ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Spatial Frequencies ◽

Coarse Information ◽

Visual Consciousness

Abstract High Spatial Frequencies (HSF - conveying local information) may serve a critical role in visual consciousness. Despite an HSF bias during visual perception in autism, autistic individuals demonstrate impairments in face processing. Our aim was to investigate the respective role of HSF and Low Spatial Frequencies (LSF - conveying coarse information) on visual consciousness in autism. Thirty-two autistic adults and 35 typically developing (TD) controls performed an emotional attentional blink paradigm with spatially filtered distractors. TD participants showed reduced T2 accuracy (i.e., accuracy for the second target given the correct report of the first target T1) after unfiltered and HSF distractors compared to LSF distractors. In the autistic group, we observed lower T2 accuracy than controls after HSF and LSF distractors but not after unfiltered distractors. Results suggest the importance of HSF for visual consciousness in TD participants whereas, both LSF and HSF seem important in autism.

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Graded Visual Consciousness During the Attentional Blink

10.1101/2021.01.15.426792 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Anna Eiserbeck ◽

Alexander Enge ◽

Milena Rabovsky ◽

Rasha Abdel Rahman

Keyword(s):

Attentional Blink ◽

Visual Awareness ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Experimental Paradigm ◽

Perceptual Awareness ◽

Accuracy Measure ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Visual Consciousness ◽

Present Event

One of the ongoing debates about visual consciousness is whether it can be considered as an all-or-none or a graded phenomenon. This may depend on the experimental paradigm and the task used to investigate this question. The present event-related potential study (N = 32) focuses on the attentional blink paradigm for which so far only little and mixed evidence is available. Detection of T2 face targets during the attentional blink was assessed via an objective accuracy measure (reporting the faces’ gender), subjective visibility on a perceptual awareness scale (PAS) as well as event-related potentials time-locked to T2 onset (components P1, N1, N2, and P3). The behavioral results indicate a graded rather than an all-or-none pattern of visual awareness. Corresponding graded differences in the N1, N2, and P3 components were observed for the comparison of visibility levels. These findings suggest that conscious perception during the attentional blink can occur in a graded fashion.

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Heightened sensitivity to low-level visual information in autism during an emotional attentional blink task

10.21203/rs.3.rs-16508/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Adeline Lacroix ◽

Marie Gomot ◽

Margot Fombonne ◽

Mickaël J. R. Perrier ◽

Carole Peyrin ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Recognition ◽

Attentional Blink ◽

Critical Role ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion ◽

Autistic Group ◽

Low Level ◽

Spatial Frequencies ◽

Visual Consciousness ◽

T1 And T2

Abstract Background Impairments in facial emotion recognition have been a hallmark of autism, which may contribute to the difficulty in social engagement and interpersonal interaction. Impaired facial emotion recognition in autism could be partly due to the asymmetrical perceptual bias to High Spatial Frequencies (HSF) information observed during visual perception. While Low Spatial Frequencies (LSF) convey coarse information, which would be critical for a fast analysis and categorization of emotional faces, HSF convey local information, which may serve a critical role in visual consciousness. However, to our knowledge, the effect of HSF on visual consciousness in autism has not been specifically studied so far. Methods Thirty-three adult autistic participants and 35 typically developing (TD) control participants performed an emotional attentional blink paradigm. Participants had to identify and report two targets (happy faces, T1 and T2) embedded in a stream of distractors (angry faces). The distractors between T1 and T2 were unfiltered or filtered in HSF or LSF. We used ANOVA to compare the impact of spatial frequency information on visual consciousness in the two groups of participants. Results TD control participants showed significantly reduced T2 accuracy (i.e., accuracy for the second target given the correct report of the first target T1) after unfiltered and HSF distractors compared to LSF distractors. As predicted, reduced T2 accuracy was observed after HSF distractors in the autistic group as compared to the TD group. Although we did not hypothesized, we also found reduced T2 accuracy after LSF distractors in the autistic group. The accuracy between the two groups did not differ regarding unfiltered distractors. Limitations Our sample was adult, high functioning and mainly late diagnosed. Therefore, our findings may not generalize to the whole autistic population. Conclusion Results confirm that HSF plays a critical role in visual consciousness in both TD and autistic participants. More importantly, autistic participants demonstrated impaired target detections after filtered distractors, suggesting that they have enhanced sensitivity for low-level characteristics, such as high and low spatial frequencies filtering. These findings are discussed in the context of the Enhanced Perceptual Functioning theory and predictive coding frameworks.

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Is the Personal Always Political?

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000230 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 38 (3) ◽

pp. 133-143 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Danny Osborne ◽

Yannick Dufresne ◽

Gregory Eady ◽

Jennifer Lees-Marshment ◽

Cliff van der Linden

Keyword(s):

Survey Data ◽

National Survey ◽

Negative Relationship ◽

Openness To Experience ◽

Political Sophistication ◽

Knowledge Based

Abstract. Research demonstrates that the negative relationship between Openness to Experience and conservatism is heightened among the informed. We extend this literature using national survey data (Study 1; N = 13,203) and data from students (Study 2; N = 311). As predicted, education – a correlate of political sophistication – strengthened the negative relationship between Openness and conservatism (Study 1). Study 2 employed a knowledge-based measure of political sophistication to show that the Openness × Political Sophistication interaction was restricted to the Openness aspect of Openness. These studies demonstrate that knowledge helps people align their ideology with their personality, but that the Openness × Political Sophistication interaction is specific to one aspect of Openness – nuances that are overlooked in the literature.

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A Quick Visual Mind Can be a Slow Auditory Mind

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169.56.1.33 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 33-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Sander Martens ◽

Addie Johnson ◽

Martje Bolle ◽

Jelmer Borst

Keyword(s):

Attentional Blink ◽

Task Difficulty ◽

Human Mind ◽

Visual Modality ◽

Present Evidence ◽

Conscious Level ◽

Visual Targets ◽

Concurrent Information

The human mind is severely limited in processing concurrent information at a conscious level of awareness. These temporal restrictions are clearly reflected in the attentional blink (AB), a deficit in reporting the second of two targets when it occurs 200–500 ms after the first. However, we recently reported that some individuals do not show a visual AB, and presented psychophysiological evidence that target processing differs between “blinkers” and “nonblinkers”. Here, we present evidence that visual nonblinkers do show an auditory AB, which suggests that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB is likely to be modality-specific. In Experiment 3, we show that when the difficulty in identifying visual targets is increased, nonblinkers continue to show little or no visual AB, suggesting that the presence of an AB in the auditory but not in the visual modality is not due to a difference in task difficulty.

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