Perceptual process for the early detection of humans remains intact even under a heavy attentional load: An ERP study

It has been proposed that human beings have an enhanced ability to detect other people in visual scenes. We examined the ability of humans to detect other humans under situations when human images were presented as task-irrelevant stimuli. We measured the anterior N2 elicited by the onset of photographs with and without human images as an indicator of early processing for the detection of humans. We also manipulated attentional loads (low and high loads in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively) when viewing the images to examine the effects of attention. The results indicated that the anterior N2 elicited by images that included humans was larger than that elicited by images that did not include humans, even when the attentional load was high. This finding suggests that the cognitive processing for the detection of humans is prioritized even under high attentional loads.