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Attentional Modulation of Early ERP Components in Response to Faces: Evidence From the Attentional Blink Paradigm

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Abstract

The attentional blink (AB) is a transient attentional deficit that occurs when two stimuli that must both be detected are presented within an interval of less than 500 ms. Event-related potential (ERP) investigations have suggested that the AB affects a specific component, the P3, which is suppressed when targets are blinked. In view of the link between the P3 and working memory, it has been suggested that the AB might be due to the inability of the blinked target to access working memory. Interestingly, it seems that faces, due to their saliency, might escape the AB effect when cross-category detection is required (i.e., when the targets are composed of faces versus other categories of stimuli). In the present study we investigated this phenomenon in an event-related potential (ERP) study using upright and inverted faces as targets. In a first task, the participants were asked to identify two successive targets, the first composed of geometric shapes and the second of upright or inverted faces. A second control task, identical to the first was also performed, in which only the second targets had to be identified in order to compare ERPs. ERPs and scalp topographies of physically identical sequences of events, differing only by the attentional involvement, were thus compared. Behavioural results showed that faces indeed escape the AB while inverted faces do not. However, the electrophysiological findings showed that when attention was engaged in a previous stimulus (at the shortest lag times), both upright and inverted faces showed a decreased amplitude in the 150–260 ms time period, in addition to a lower P3. At longer lags, when the AB was no longer observed, no ERP differences were found. Our data demonstrate that, although faces escape the attentional blink, previous attentional involvement occurs much earlier than described for other categories of stimuli. This suggests that faces are subjected to an early selection which might allow rapid re-allocation of attention to the stimulus if it is deemed meaningful.

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Notes

  1. An initial behavioural experiment was carried out with 15 participants who were not involved in the current EEG experiment, using a procedure identical to the one described here, but with SOAs that varied between 0, 85, 170 and 425 ms. On the basis of this pre-test, SOAs of 0 and 425 ms were retained as producing the biggest and the smallest AB effects in our stimuli and the present EEG task was thus carried out with these values.

  2. This result could at first view be attributed to a tendency of the participants to respond “eyes on top” when they were uncertain, i.e., a response bias, however this is unlikely. In our pilot study, 4 stimuli were used: a face, an inverted face, as well as two asymmetrical non-faces in which both eyes were placed in the upper part of the “face” or in the bottom half. At SL, subjects were good at detecting eyes on top in real faces, but not in asymmetric non-faces with the eyes on top. In line with this, the present results seem unlikely to be due to a bias towards the “top” response, but seem most likely linked to the fact that the “real” face escapes the AB.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation grant no. 320030-125196. The Cartool software (http://brainmapping.unige.ch/Cartool.htm) used for analysis in this study was programmed by Denis Brunet from the Functional Brain Mapping Laboratory, Geneva, Switzerland, and is supported by the Center for Biomedical Imaging of Geneva and Lausanne. The authors are indebted to Jane Raymond for constructive comments on a previous version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Experimental Neuropsychology and Neuropsychology Unit, Neurology Clinic, Geneva University Hospitals, 4 Gabrielle-Perret-Gentil, 1211, Geneva 14, Switzerland

    Alexandra Darque, Marzia Del Zotto & Alan J. Pegna

  2. Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science, University of Geneva, Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Alexandra Darque & Alan J. Pegna

  3. Center for Neuroscience, University of Geneva, Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Marzia Del Zotto & Alan J. Pegna

  4. Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Asaid Khateb

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  1. Alexandra Darque
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  2. Marzia Del Zotto
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  4. Alan J. Pegna
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Correspondence to Alan J. Pegna.

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Darque, A., Del Zotto, M., Khateb, A. et al. Attentional Modulation of Early ERP Components in Response to Faces: Evidence From the Attentional Blink Paradigm. Brain Topogr 25, 167–181 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-011-0199-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-011-0199-5

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