Capacity-Free Automatic Processing of Facial Expressions of Emotion

Are facial expressions of emotion processed automatically? Some authors have not found this to be the case (Tomasik et al., 2009). Here we revisit the question with a novel experimental logic-the backward correspondence effect (BCE). In three dual-task studies. participants first categorized a sound (Task 1) and then indicated the location of a target face (Task 2). In Experiment 1, Task 2 requited participants to search for one facial expression of emotion (angry or happy). We observed positive BCEs, indicating that facial expressions of emotion bypassed the central attentional bottleneck and thus were processed in a capacity-free, automatic manner. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect but found that morphed emotional expressions (which were used by Tomasik) were not processed automatically. In Experiment 3, we observed similar BCEs for another type of face processing previously shown to he capacity-five: identification of familiar faces (Jung et al., 2013). We conclude that facial expressions of emotion are identified automatically when sufficiently unambiguous.

Automated summary

Facial expressions of emotion are identified automatically when sufficiently unambiguous, bypassing the central attentional bottleneck. This was demonstrated through experiments using the backward correspondence effect (BCE) and studying the processing of different types of facial stimuli.