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Reduced early fearful face processing during perceptual distraction in high trait anxious participants
Author(s) -
Steinweg AnnaLena,
Schindler Sebastian,
Bruchmann Maximilian,
Moeck Robert,
Straube Thomas
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.13819
Subject(s) - psychology , distraction , facial expression , trait anxiety , perception , trait , event related potential , anxiety , negativity effect , cognitive psychology , face perception , cognition , developmental psychology , neuroscience , communication , psychiatry , computer science , programming language
Fearful facial expressions are prioritized across different stages of information processing as reflected by early, mid‐latency, and late components of event‐related brain potentials (ERP). Trait anxiety has been proposed to modulate these responses, but it is yet unclear how such modulations depend on feature‐based attention. In this preregistered study ( N = 80), we investigated the effects of trait anxiety on ERP differences between fearful and neutral faces across three different tasks. Participants had to discriminate either the orientation of lines overlaid onto the faces, the gender of the face, or the emotional expression, thus increasing attention to emotionally relevant facial features across the tasks. Fearful versus neutral faces elicited increased P1 and N170 amplitudes across tasks and potentiated amplitudes when attention was directed to faces (early posterior negativity [EPN]) or the expression (EPN and late positive potential). Higher trait anxiety was related to smaller EPN differences between fearful and neutral faces during the perceptual discrimination task. This early relationship suggests reduced instead of amplified processing of fearful faces for high trait anxious participants under perceptual distraction.