Processing emotional facial expressions: The role of anxiety and awareness
Open accessAbstract
In this paper, the role of self-reported anxiety and degree of conscious awareness as determinants of the selective processing of affective facial expressions is investigated. In two experiments, an attentional bias toward fearful facial expressions was observed, although this bias was apparent only for those reporting high levels of trait anxiety and only when the emotional face was presented in the left visual field. This pattern was especially strong when the participants were unaware of the presence of the facial stimuli. In Experiment 3, a patient with right-hemisphere brain damage and visual extinction was presented with photographs of faces and fruits on unilateral and bilateral trials. On bilateral trials, it was found that faces produced less extinction than did fruits. Moreover, faces portraying a fearful or a happy expression tended to produce less extinction than did neutral expressions. This suggests that emotional facial expressions may be less dependent on attention to achieve awareness. The implications of these results for understanding the relations between attention, emotion, and anxiety are discussed.
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Some visual-probe studies, which use masked and briefly presented (e.g., 14e20 ms) stimuli to restrict awareness, indicate an anxiety-related bias in automatic initial orienting towards threat.
“Some visual-probe studies, which use masked and briefly presented (e.g., 14e20 ms) stimuli to restrict awareness, indicate an anxiety-related bias in automatic initial orienting towards threat (Bar-Haim et al., 2007;Fox, 2002;Mogg, Bradley, & Williams, 1995).”
From Anxiety and attention to threat: cognitive mechanisms and treatment with attention bias modification (2016) · cites this paper as Fox, 2002
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Self-citation
- Authors
- FOX, E.
- Affiliations
- University of Essex (GB)
- Corresponding author
- FOX, E.
- ORCID
- FOX, E.
- Venue
- Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience
- Published
- 2002-03-01
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 52-63
- ISSN
- 1530-7026 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-135X
- PMC
- PMC3605771
- OpenAlex
- W1981611947
- Cited by
- 308
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2025: 7 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 25 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 23 · 2012: 14
- FWCI
- 3.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust (064290)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- emotional facial expressions, attentional bias, trait anxiety, conscious awareness, fearful faces, visual extinction, right hemisphere damage, hemispheric lateralization, face perception
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Analysis of Variance, Anxiety, Attention, Awareness, Extinction, Psychological, Facial Expression, Fear, Female, Happiness, Humans, Functional Laterality, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Reaction Time, Expressed Emotion, Stroke
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