Participants who were unable to detect familiarity from masked 17 ms faces did report a vague, partial visual percept. Two experiments investigated the relative strength of the visual percept generated by famous and unfamiliar faces, using masked 17 ms exposure. Each trial presented simultaneously a famous and an unfamiliar face, one face in LVF and the other in RVF. In one task, participants responded according to which of the faces generated the stronger visual percept, and in the other task, they (...) attempted an explicit familiarity decision. The relative strength of the visual percept of the famous face compared to the unfamiliar face was moderated by response latency and participants’ attitude towards the famous person. There was also an interaction of visual field with response latency, suggesting that the right hemisphere can generate a visual percept differentiating famous from unfamiliar faces more rapidly than the left hemisphere. Participants were at chance in the explicit familiarity decision, confirming the absence of awareness of facial familiarity. (shrink)

The nonconscious orientation of attention to famous faces was investigated using masked 17 ms stimulus exposure. Each trial presented a simultaneous pair of one famous and one unfamiliar face, matched on physical characteristics, one each in left visual field (LVF) and right visual field (RVF). These were followed by a dot probe in either LVF or RVF to which participants made a speeded two-alternative forced-choice discrimination response. Participants subsequently evaluated the affective valence (good/evil) of the famous persons on a 7-point (...) scale. Higher accuracy of dot probe discrimination in the same visual field (VF) as the famous face suggested that attention was oriented towards faces of persons evaluated “good”, but a reverse orientation effect was observed for those evaluated “evil”. The awareness check presented the same face pairs under the same conditions, and participants were at chance in a task of selecting the famous face in each pair. The results suggest that famous faces can be identified without awareness, and that attention is attracted by the faces of famous persons not regarded as “evil”. (shrink)

Stone and Valentine presented masked 17 ms faces in simultaneous pairs of one famous and one unfamiliar face. Accuracy in selecting the famous face was higher when the famous person was regarded as “good” or liked than when regarded as “evil” or disliked. Experiment 1 attempted to replicate this phenomenon, but produced a different pattern of results. Experiment 2 investigated alternative explanations and found evidence supporting only the effect of response latency: responses made soon after stimulus onset were more accurate (...) to liked than to disliked faces, whereas responses made after a longer delay were equally accurate to disliked faces. It appears that the effect of negative valence was corrected within the space of a few hundred milliseconds. Experiment 3, using an affective priming paradigm, supported the concept that an early-arising effect of valence is corrected if it is misleading to the directed task. (shrink)

Under many conditions, emotional information is processed with priority and it may lead to cognitive conflict when it competes with task-relevant information. Accordingly, being able to ignore emotional information relies on cognitive control. The present perspective offers an integrative account of the mechanism that may underlie emotional conflict resolution in tasks involving response activation. We point to the contribution of emotional arousal and primed approach or avoidance motivation in accounting for emotional conflict resolution. We discuss the role of arousal in (...) individuals with impairments in visceral pathways to the brain due to spinal cord lesions, as it may offer important insights into the “typical” mechanisms of emotional conflict control. We argue that a better understanding of emotional conflict control could be critical for adaptive and flexible behavior and has potential implications for the selection of appropriate therapeutic interventions. (shrink)

. Certain properties of the body and emotions facilitate the transmission of religious knowledge and the development of religious states through particular qualities of perception and memory. The body, which is the ground of religious experience, can be understood as transformative: the characteristic that recalled emotion is “refelt” in the present enables emotion to be cultivated or developed. Emotions and the stimuli that evoke them are necessarily culturally specific, but the automatic nature of this process is universal. Religious traditions have (...) made use of these processes to educate the feeling toward certain qualities and to develop religious experience, through the use of sacred images, ritual posture and gesture, and repetition of ritual acts. Neuroscience contributes to our understanding of the emotional processes that take place when emotions are evoked, refelt, and developed; the neurobiological processing of emotion parallels experience. Keeping experience central makes it possible to bring religion and neuroscience together in a nonreductive examination of spiritual experience. (shrink)

Influential theories on affect and emotion propose a fundamental differentiation between emotion and cognition, and research paradigms designed to test them focus on differences rather than similarities between affective and cognitive processes. This research orientation is increasingly challenged by the widespread and successful use of cognitive research paradigms in the study of affect and emotion—a challenge with far-reaching implications. Where and on what basis should theorists draw the line between cognition and emotion, and when is it useful to do so? (...) Should researchers build more global, integrative models of cognition and emotion, or should they rely on local, content-specific models that draw attention to a differentiation between affective and cognitive processes? This special issue compiles different viewpoints on fundamental issues in the relationship between affect and cognition. (shrink)