Is fear perception special? Evidence at the level of decision-making and subjective confidence.

ABSTRACT: Fearful faces are believed to be prioritized in visual perception. However, it is unclear whether the processing of low-level facial features alone can facilitate such prioritization or whether higher-level mechanisms also contribute. We examined potential biases for fearful face perception at the levels of perceptual decision-making and perceptual confidence. We controlled for lower-level visual processing capacity by titrating luminance contrasts of backward masks, and the emotional intensity of fearful, angry and happy faces. Under these conditions, participants showed liberal biases in perceiving a fearful face, in both detection and discrimination tasks. This effect was stronger among individuals with reduced density in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region linked to perceptual dec

SUBMITTER: Koizumi A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5091676 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature