Gender differences in subliminal affective face priming: A high-density ERP study
Abstract Background Subliminal affective priming effects (SAPEs) refer to the phenomenon by which the presentation of an affective prime stimulus influences the subsequent affective evaluation of a target stimulus. Previous studies have shown that behavioural performance is affected more by unconsciously processed stimuli than by consciously processed stimuli. However, the impact of SAPEs on the face-specific N170 component is unclear. In the current study, we investigated how subliminal processing of fearful faces affected the N170 for subsequent supraliminal target faces using event-related potentials (ERPs).Methods We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to study how SAEPs for fearful faces affect the N170 for subsequent supraliminal target faces. Japanese adults (n=51, 24 females) participated in this study. Subliminal prime faces (neutral or fearful) were presented for 17 ms, followed by a backward mask for 283 ms and target faces for 800 ms (neutral, emotionally ambiguous-fearful, or fearful). ERPs (128-ch) were recorded while participants judged the expression of target faces as neutral or fearful.Results Behavioral data revealed that participants judged target faces as more fearful in the fearful face prime condition compared with the neutral prime condition, regardless of emotional expression. Interestingly, we found gender-related differences in N170 amplitude; only female participants exhibited enhanced N170 amplitude for neutral faces primed by fearful faces. Therefore, a noticeable gender difference exists in the neural processing of subliminally perceived facial emotions.Conclusions Our ERP results suggest the existence of a gender difference in target-face processing preceded by subliminally presented face stimuli in the right occipito-temporal regions.