Authors: Ping Wei Guanlan Kang
Publish Date: 2014/02/20
Volume: 232, Issue: 6, Pages: 1783-1791
Abstract
In the present study we investigated the impact of reward expectation on the processing of emotional facial expression using a cuetarget paradigm A cue indicating the reward condition of each trial incentive vs nonincentive was followed by the presentation of a picture of an emotional face the target Participants were asked to discriminate the emotional expression of the target face in Experiment 1 to discriminate the gender of the target face in Experiment 2 and to judge a number superimposed on the center of the target face as even or odd in Experiment 3 rendering the emotional expression of the target face as task relevant in Experiment 1 but task irrelevant in Experiments 2 and 3 Faster reaction times RTs were observed in the monetary incentive condition than in the nonincentive condition demonstrating the effect of reward on facilitating task concentration Moreover the reward effect ie RTs in nonincentive conditions versus incentive conditions was larger for emotional faces than for neutral faces when emotional expression was task relevant but not when it was task irrelevant The findings suggest that topdown incentive motivation biased attentional processing toward taskrelevant stimuli and that task relevance played an important role in regulating the influence of reward expectation on the processing of emotional stimuli
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