Non-conscious Perception of Facial Expression with Continuous Flash Suppression: A Signal Detection Analysis
PsyArXiv Preprints August 6, 2018 preprint DOI: osf:6azvd_v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experimental study |
|---|---|
| Duration | Stimuli rendered invisible for 500 ms and 700 ms |
| Keywords | Continuous flash suppression Non-conscious perception Perceptual sensitivity Signal detection theory Visual consciousness Vision Cognitive psychology |
| Key findings | When faces were rendered invisible for 500 ms using continuous flash suppression, participants showed higher sensitivity in a 2AFC emotion task than in a detection task, discriminating fearful from neutral faces. At 700 ms of suppression, the difference in sensitivity between the two tasks disappeared. |
Abstract
The aim of this study was to explore if a conservative response criterion is responsible for non-conscious perception of facial expressions during continuous flash suppression (CFS). We hypothesized that participants’ sensitivity in a detection task would be significantly lower than their sensitivity in a 2-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task while using CFS. After rendering images of faces with different facial expression (fearful vs. neutral) invisible for 500 milliseconds (ms) and 700 ms using CFS, participants judged the presence/absence of the faces with a detection task and the emotion of faces with a 2AFC task. When we rendered the face stimuli invisible for 500 ms, participants discriminated the signal (fearful face) from noise (neutral face) by having a higher sensitivity in the 2AFC task compared to the detection task. When we rendered the face stimuli invisible for 700 ms, the difference between participants’ sensitivities in the two tasks disappeared.