TY - JOUR
T1 - Emotional faces guide the eyes in the absence of awareness
AU - Vetter, Petra
AU - Badde, Stephanie
AU - Phelps, Elizabeth A.
AU - Carrasco, Marisa
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by research fellowships from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to PV (VE 739/1–1) and SB (BA5600/1-1) and by a grant from NIH-RO1-EY016200 to MC. We thank Jasmine Pan and Maura LaBrecque for help with data collection, members of the Carrasco Lab for discussions and comments on the manuscript, and Miriam Spering for comments on the manuscript. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft VE 739/1-1 Petra Vetter National Institutes of Health NIH-RO1-EY016200 Marisa Carrasco Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft BA 5600/1-1 Stephanie Badde The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Funding Information:
This study was supported by research fellowships from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to PV (VE 739/1–1) and SB (BA5600/1-1) and by a grant from NIH-RO1-EY016200 to MC. We thank Jasmine Pan and Maura LaBrecque for help with data collection, members of the Carrasco Lab for discussions and comments on the manuscript, and Miriam Spering for comments on the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© Vetter et al.
PY - 2019/2
Y1 - 2019/2
N2 - The ability to act quickly to a threat is a key skill for survival. Under awareness, threat-related emotional information, such as an angry or fearful face, has not only perceptual advantages but also guides rapid actions such as eye movements. Emotional information that is suppressed from awareness still confers perceptual and attentional benefits. However, it is unknown whether suppressed emotional information can directly guide actions, or whether emotional information has to enter awareness to do so. We suppressed emotional faces from awareness using continuous flash suppression and tracked eye gaze position. Under successful suppression, as indicated by objective and subjective measures, gaze moved towards fearful faces, but away from angry faces. Our findings reveal that: (1) threat-related emotional stimuli can guide eye movements in the absence of visual awareness; (2) threat-related emotional face information guides distinct oculomotor actions depending on the type of threat conveyed by the emotional expression.
AB - The ability to act quickly to a threat is a key skill for survival. Under awareness, threat-related emotional information, such as an angry or fearful face, has not only perceptual advantages but also guides rapid actions such as eye movements. Emotional information that is suppressed from awareness still confers perceptual and attentional benefits. However, it is unknown whether suppressed emotional information can directly guide actions, or whether emotional information has to enter awareness to do so. We suppressed emotional faces from awareness using continuous flash suppression and tracked eye gaze position. Under successful suppression, as indicated by objective and subjective measures, gaze moved towards fearful faces, but away from angry faces. Our findings reveal that: (1) threat-related emotional stimuli can guide eye movements in the absence of visual awareness; (2) threat-related emotional face information guides distinct oculomotor actions depending on the type of threat conveyed by the emotional expression.
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U2 - 10.7554/eLife.43467
DO - 10.7554/eLife.43467
M3 - Article
C2 - 30735123
AN - SCOPUS:85061968696
SN - 2050-084X
VL - 8
JO - eLife
JF - eLife
M1 - e43467
ER -