Abstract：
It remains unclear to date whether spatial attention towards emotional faces is contingent on, or independent of visual awareness. To investigate this question, a bilateral attentional blink paradigm was used in which lateralised fearful faces were presented at various levels of detectability. Twenty-six healthy participants were presented with two rapid serial streams of human faces, while they attempted to detect a pair of target faces (T2) displayed in close or distant succession of a first target pair (T1). Spatial attention shifting to the T2 fearful faces, indexed by the N2-posterior-contralateral component, was dependent on visual awareness and its magnitude covaried with the visual awareness negativity, a neural marker of awareness at the perceptual level. Additionally, information consolidation in working memory, indexed by the sustained posterior contralateral negativity, positively correlated with the level of visual awareness and spatial attention shifting. These findings demonstrate that spatial attention shifting to fearful faces depends on visual awareness, and these early processes are closely linked to information maintenance in working memory.
摘要：
迄今为止，尚不清楚对情感面孔的空间关注是否取决于，或者独立于视觉感知。为了调查这个问题，使用了双侧注意眨眼范式，其中在不同的可检测性水平下呈现侧向恐惧的面孔。26名健康参与者被展示了两个快速的连续人脸流，同时他们试图检测在第一目标对(T1)的近距离或远距离连续显示的一对目标面部(T2)。空间注意力转移到T2恐惧的面孔上，由N2-后-对侧分量索引，依赖于视觉感知，它的大小与视觉感知的消极性一致，感知水平上的意识的神经标记。此外,工作记忆中的信息整合，以持续的后对侧阴性为索引，与视觉意识水平和空间注意力转移呈正相关。这些发现表明，空间注意力转移到恐惧的面孔取决于视觉意识，这些早期过程与工作记忆中的信息维护密切相关。
