ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the influence of high-motivated affect background on the holistic face processing and its neural mechanism.Methods Totally 26 subjects were instructed to perform composite-face process under the priming condition of three emotional pictures (food,neutral and fear).Results (1)Behavioral studies showed a significant interaction between emotion type and face combination(F(2,50) =5.37,P=0.008).Composite-face effect was observed in neutral emotional condition due to the fact that the recognition accuracy of the misaligned face ((90.21 ± 11.20)％) was significantly higher than that of the aligned face((84.83 ± 11.20) ％,t (25) =3.95,P=0.001).However,the composite-face effect disappeared under the condition of high-motivated emotion.That is,there was no significant difference in the recognition accuracy of the misaligned faces ((87.88± 10.28)％) and aligned faces ((85.12± 8.81)％,t(25)=1.93,P=0.065) under the condition of high-motivated negative emotion.Under the condition of high-motivated positive emotion,there was also no significant difference in the recognition accuracy between the misaligned faces ((87.92±11.00)％) and aligned faces((88.33±8.89)％,t(z5)=0.263,P=0.795).(2) According to the results of ERP,P3 components showed significant interaction between emotion type and face combination form(F(2,50) =3.23,P=0.048).Under the neutral emotional condition,the P3 amplitude of aligned faces ((3.46 ± 1.26) μV) was significantly higher than that of misaligned faces ((2.82 ± 1.43)μV,F (1,25)=5.28,P=0.03).In the case of high-motivated negative condition,there was no significant difference in P3amplitude between aligned faces ((3.21 ± 1.16) μV) and misaligned faces ((3.07 ± 1.22) μV,F (1,25) =0.53,P=0.476).The P3 amplitude of aligned faces((3.33±1.20) μV) and misaligned faces((3.42±1.40) μV) were also not significantly different under the condition of high-motivated positive affect (F(1,25)=0.23,P=0.638).Conclusion The study shows a high correlation between face processing and emotional processing.Additionally,the emotional motivation has a stronger influence on face processing.Regardless of the emotional valence,high-motivated intensity affect can cause local attention bias and reduce the holistic processing level of the face,which is mainly manifested in the later cognitive processing stage.