Emotion-specific Sensitivity in an unconscious Facial Perception Task

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

2 Institute for Cognitive Science Studies (ICSS), Tehran, Iran

3 School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

4 School of Cognitive Sciences, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Niavaran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Emotions are crucial in social interactions, influencing communication and relationships. Distinguishing the perceived emotion in conscious and unconscious emotional processing is a key research area with cognitive and physiological implications. This study investigates conscious and unconscious emotional processing through behavioral and pupillary responses. Participants completed emotion recognition tasks under varying states, revealing higher accuracy in conscious emotion identification. Emotions like anger, happiness, fear, surprise, and neutral elicited distinct response patterns. Pupillometry data showed pupil size suppression in the conscious state and enhancement in the unconscious state, with differences in peak pupil size across emotions. Task-related components, amplitude, and latency parameters differed between conscious and unconscious states, highlighting the role of awareness in emotional regulation. These findings emphasize the complex interplay of cognitive and physiological processes in emotional responses, providing insights into emotional recognition mechanisms. This study contributes to understanding emotional processing dynamics and has implications for psychology and neuroscience research.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Brainard, D. H. (1997). The Psychophysics Toolbox. Spatial Vision, 10(4), 433–436. https://doi.org/10.1163/156856897X00357
Calder, A. J., Keane, J., Manly, T., Sprengelmeyer, R., Scott, S., Nimmo-Smith, I., & Young, A. W. (2003). Facial expression recognition across the adult life span. Neuropsychologia, 41(2), 195–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0028-3932(02)00149-5
Celeghin, A., De Gelder, B., & Tamietto, M. (2015). From affective blindsight to emotional consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 36, 414–425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2015.05.007
Denison, R. N., Parker, J. A., & Carrasco, M. (2020). Modeling pupil responses to rapid sequential events. Behavior Research Methods, 52(5), 1991–2007. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01368-6
Dimberg, U., Thunberg, M., & Elmehed, K. (2000). Unconscious Facial Reactions to Emotional Facial Expressions. Psychological Science, 11(1), 86–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00221
Duan, X., Dai, Q., Gong, Q., & Chen, H. (2010). Neural mechanism of unconscious perception of surprised facial expression. Neuroimage, 52(1), 401-407.
Eastwood, J. D., & Smilek, D. (2005). Functional consequences of perceiving facial expressions of emotion without awareness. Consciousness and Cognition, 14(3), 565–584. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2005.01.001
Gavas, R., Chatterjee, D., & Sinha, A. (2017). Estimation of cognitive load based on the pupil size dilation. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) (pp.1499–1504). EEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/SMC.2017.8122826
Hess, E. H., & Polt, J. M. (1960). Pupil Size as Related to Interest Value of Visual Stimuli. Science, 132(3423), 349–350. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.132.3423.349
Hoeks, B., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1993). Pupillary dilation as a measure of attention: a quantitative system analysis. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 25(1), 16–26. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03204445
Kiefer, P., Giannopoulos, I., Duchowski, A., & Raubal, M. (2016). Measuring cognitive load for map tasks through pupil diameter. In J. Miller, D. O'Sullivan, & N. Wiegand (Eds.), Geographic Information Science. GIScience 2016 (Vol. 9927). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45738-3_21
Kihlstrom, J. F., Mulvaney, S., Tobias, B. A., & Tobis, I. P. (2000). The emotional unconscious. Cognition and Emotion, 30, 86–94.
Laeng, B., Sirois, S., & Gredebäck, G. (2012). Pupillometry: A Window to the Preconscious? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(1), 18–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611427305
Mathôt, S., van der Linden, L., Grainger, J., & Vitu, F. (2013). The pupillary light response reveals the focus of covert visual attention. PLoS ONE, 8(10), e78168. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078168
Morris, J. S., Öhman, A., & Dolan, R. J. (1998). Conscious and unconscious emotional learning in the human amygdala. Nature, 393(6684), 467–470. https://doi.org/10.1038/30976
Nuske, H. J., Vivanti, G., Hudry, K., & Dissanayake, C. (2014). Pupillometry reveals reduced unconscious emotional reactivity in autism. Biological Psychology, 101, 24–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2014.07.003
Olszanowski, M., Pochwatko, G., Kuklinski, K., Scibor-Rylski, M., Lewinski, P., & Ohme, R. K. (2015). Warsaw set of emotional facial expression pictures: A validation study of facial display photographs. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01516
Partala, T., & Surakka, V. (2003). Pupil size variation as an indication of affective processing. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59(1–2), 185–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1071-5819(03)00017-X
Phillips, M. L., Williams, L. M., Heining, M., Herba, C. M., Russell, T., Andrew, C., Bullmore, E. T., Brammer, M. J., Williams, S. C. R., Morgan, M., Young, A. W., & Gray, J. A. (2004). Differential neural responses to overt and covert presentations of facial expressions of fear and disgust. NeuroImage, 21(4), 1484–1496. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.12.013
 Spikman, J. M., Milders, M. V., Visser-Keizer, A. C., Westerhof-Evers, H. J., Herben-Dekker, M., & van der Naalt, J. (2013). Deficits in Facial Emotion Recognition Indicate Behavioral Changes and Impaired Self-Awareness after Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury. PLoS ONE, 8(6), e65581. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065581
Tamietto, M., & De Gelder, B. (2010). Neural bases of the non-conscious perception of emotional signals. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(10), 697–709. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2889
Tamietto, M., Castelli, L., Vighetti, S., Perozzo, P., Geminiani, G., Weiskrantz, L., & De Gelder, B. (2009). Unseen facial and bodily expressions trigger fast emotional reactions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(42), 17661–17666. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0908994106
Tamietto, M., Cauda, F., Celeghin, A., Diano, M., Costa, T., Cossa, F. M., Sacco, K., Duca, S., Geminiani, G. C., & De Gelder, B. (2015). Once you feel it, you see it: Insula and sensory-motor contribution to visual awareness for fearful bodies in parietal neglect. Cortex, 62, 56–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2014.10.009
Tsikandilakis, M., Balatsou, L., Drimpei, E., & Auksztulewicz, R. (2021). Individualized perceptual thresholds improve the accuracy of unconscious perception studies: A Bayesian approach. Consciousness and Cognition, 93, 103178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2021.103178
Wang, C.-A., Baird, T., Huang, J., Coutinho, J. D., Brien, D. C., & Munoz, D. P. (2018). Arousal Effects on Pupil Size, Heart Rate, and Skin Conductance in an Emotional Face Task. Frontiers in Neurology, 9, 1029. https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2018.01029
Willenbockel, V., Sadr, J., Fiset, D., Horne, G. O., Gosselin, F., & Tanaka, J. W. (2010). Controlling low-level image properties: The SHINE toolbox. Behavior Research Methods, 42(3), 671–684. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.42.3.671
Wu, Y., Zhang, Z., Zhang, Y., Zheng, B., & Aghazadeh, F. (2024). Pupil Response in Visual Tracking Tasks: The Impacts of Task Load, Familiarity, and Gaze Position. Sensors, 24(8), 2545. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24082545
Cognitive Science Research
Volume 1, Issue 3
October 2025
Pages 19-31

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 26 May 2025
  • Revise Date: 08 June 2025
  • Accept Date: 29 June 2025
  • First Publish Date: 01 October 2025
  • Publish Date: 01 October 2025

Share

How to cite

Statistics