Exploring consciousness in emotional face decoding: an event-related potential analysis

The author analyzed the role of consciousness in emotional face comprehension. The author recorded psychophysiological measures of event-related potentials (ERPs), elicited by supraliminal and subliminal stimuli when participants viewed emotional facial expressions of 4 emotions or neutral stimuli. The author analyzed an ERP emotion-specific effect (N200 peak variation; temporal interval was 180-300 ms poststimulus) in terms of peak amplitude and latency variables. The results indicated 4 important findings. First, there was an emotional-specific ERP deflection only for emotional stimuli, not for neutral stimuli. Second, the unaware information processing was quite similar to that of aware in terms of peak morphology, but not in terms of latency. In fact, unconscious stimulation produced a more delayed peak variation than did conscious stimulation. Third, valence of facial stimulus (positive or negative) was supraliminally and subliminally decoded because it was showed by differences of peak deflection between negative high arousing (fear and anger) and low arousing (happiness, sadness, and neutral) stimuli. Finally, the author found a more posterior distribution of ERP as a function of emotional content of the stimulus. Cortical lateralization (right or left) was not correlated to conscious or unconscious stimulation. The author discussed the functional significance of her results in terms of supraliminal and subliminal conditions.