The self‐face captures attention without consciousness: Evidence from the N2pc ERP component analysis

• Published in: Psychophysiology 2021-04, Vol.58 (4), p.e13759-n/a
• Main Authors: Bola, Michał, Paź, Marta, Doradzińska, Łucja, Nowicka, Anna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; attention; Attention - physiology; Consciousness; Consciousness - physiology; dot‐probe; Electroencephalography; Event-related potentials; Evoked Potentials - physiology; Face; Facial Recognition - physiology; Familiarity; Female; Humans; Male; N2pc; Pattern recognition; Perceptual Masking - physiology; Recognition, Psychology - physiology; Self Concept; self‐face; Unconscious, Psychology; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0048-5772; 1469-8986; 1540-5958
• DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13759

It is well established that stimuli representing or associated with ourselves, like our own name or an image of our own face, benefit from preferential processing. However, two key questions concerning the self‐prioritization mechanism remain to be addressed. First, does it operate in an automatic manner during the early processing, or rather in a more controlled fashion at later processing stages? Second, is it specific to the self‐related stimuli, or can it be activated also by other stimuli that are familiar or salient? We conducted a dot‐probe experiment to investigate the mechanism behind the attentional prioritization of the self‐face image and to tackle both questions. The former, by employing a backwards masking procedure to isolate the early and preconscious processing stages. The latter, by investigating whether a face that becomes visually familiar due to repeated presentations is able to capture attention in a similar manner as the self‐face. Analysis of the N2pc ERP component revealed that the self‐face image automatically captures attention, both when processed consciously and unconsciously. In contrast, the visually familiar face did not attract attention, neither in the conscious, nor in the unconscious condition. We conclude that the self‐prioritization mechanism is early and automatic, and is not triggered by mere visual familiarity. More generally, our results provide further evidence for efficient unconscious processing of faces, and for dissociation between attention and consciousness. Stimuli representing or associated with “self” are processed preferentially by our perceptual system. In the present study, we show that an image of the participant's own face captures the attention even when processed outside of awareness. This indicates that the mechanism of self‐prioritization is very rapid, automatic, and occurs at the early stages of visual processing. More generally, our study provides evidence that attention can operate and select salient stimuli even in the absence of awareness.