Emotional Valence in the Eye Region Modulates the Attentional Blink in a Task-Dependent Manner: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Abstract

Although emotional expressions conveyed by the eye regions are processed efficiently, little is known regarding the relationship between emotional processing of isolated eye regions and temporal attention. In this study, we conducted three rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) experiments with varying task demands (emotion discrimination, eye detection, eyes ignored) related to the first target (T1) to investigate how the perception of emotional valence in the eye region (T1: happy, neutral, fearful) impacts the identification of a second target (T2: neutral houses). Event-related potential (ERP) findings indicated that fearful stimuli reliably increased N170 amplitude regardless of the emotional relevance of task demands. The P3 component exhibited enhanced responses to happy and fearful stimuli in the emotion discrimination task and to happy eye regions in the eye detection task. Analysis of T2-related ERPs within the attentional blink period revealed that T2 houses preceded by fearful and happy stimuli elicited larger N2 and P3 amplitudes than those preceded by neutral stimuli only in the emotion discrimination task. Together, these findings indicate that attention to affective content conveyed by the eyes can not only amplify the perceptual analysis of emotional eye regions but also facilitate the processing of a subsequent target.