Face proprioception does not modulate access to visual awareness of emotional faces in a continuous flash suppression paradigm

• Published in: Consciousness and cognition 2017-05, Vol.51, p.166-180
• Main Authors: Korb, Sebastian, Osimo, Sofia A., Suran, Tiziano, Goldstein, Ariel, Rumiati, Raffaella Ida
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Awareness - physiology; Bayesian analysis; Cognition & reasoning; Embodied cognition; Emotions; Face; Facial Expression; Facial mimicry; Facial Recognition - physiology; Female; Humans; Imitative Behavior - physiology; Male; Mimicry; Multisensory integration; Nervous system; Proprioception; Proprioception - physiology; Sensory integration; Sensory perception; Statistical analysis; Visual awareness; Visual perception; Visualization; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1053-8100; 1090-2376
• DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2017.03.008

•Hand proprioception influences detection of congruent images.•The role of stimulus-congruent facial feedback for visual awareness remains unknown.•Continuous flash suppression (CFS) was used in three separate experiments.•Frequentist statistical analyses were complemented with Bayesian statistics.•No evidence of multisensory integration was found.•Proprioception does not modulate visual awareness of emotional faces. An important question in neuroscience is which multisensory information, presented outside of awareness, can influence the nature and speed of conscious access to our percepts. Recently, proprioceptive feedback of the hand was reported to lead to faster awareness of congruent hand images in a breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) paradigm. Moreover, a vast literature suggests that spontaneous facial mimicry can improve emotion recognition, even without awareness of the stimulus face. However, integration of visual and proprioceptive information about the face to date has not been tested with CFS. The modulation of visual awareness of emotional faces by facial proprioception was investigated across three separate experiments. Face proprioception was induced with voluntary facial expressions or with spontaneous facial mimicry. Frequentist statistical analyses were complemented with Bayesian statistics. No evidence of multisensory integration was found, suggesting that proprioception does not modulate access to visual awareness of emotional faces in a CFS paradigm.