Emotional Facial Expressions

and the Unconscious Activation

of Physiological Responses
BY
FRANCISCO ESTEVES
UPPSALA UNIVERSITY 1993
Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations
from the Faculty of Social Sciences 40
Emotional Facial Expressions
and the Unconscious Activation
of Physiological Responses
BY
FRANCISCO ESTEVES
ACfA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS
UPPSALA 1993
Doctoral dissertation at Uppsala University 1993
Abstract
Esteves, F. 1993. Emotional Facial Expressions and the Unconscious Activation of Physiological
Responses. Acta Univ. Ups., Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of
Social Sciences 40.54 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 91-554-3182-8.
TI1e possibility of unconscious processing of facial stimuli was the focus of the empirical
studies presented in this thesis.
Based on an evolutionary perspective, it is argued that threatening faces, i.e., faces with
angry expressions, can be considered a case of fear-relevant stimuli, and that an early detection and
the activation of appropriated physiological and behavioural responses to angry faces has had an
important survival value. Thus, it is argued that angry facial expressions can be processed at an
unconscious level and activate emotional responses.
In Study I, a backward masking procedure was developed in order to obtain a condition
that prevented the subjects from becoming aware of the facial stimuli presented. In Studies II and III,
a Pavlovian conditioning procedure was employed in order to study the possibility of unconscious
processing of facial expressions and activation of physiological responses. Thus, in Study II it was
shown that, after a conditioned response to an angry face has been established, it is possible to elicit
physiological responses to that face even when the subjects were not aware of the stimuli presented. In
Study III, associative learning was obtained when an angry face was used as the conditioned stimulus
in conditions where the subjects were not aware of the presentation of the stimuli.
The present results support the idea that angry facial expressions are especially sensitive to
unconscious processing.
Francisco Esteves, Deparlment of Clinical Pl)!chology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, 75142 Uppsala,
Sweden.
Francisco Esteves 1993
ISSN 0282"7492
ISBN 91-554-3182-8
Printed in Sweden by Reprocentralen, HSC, Uppsala 1993
To my parents
This thesis is based on the <U>J!UWW1H"' papers, which 'INiH be referred to in the text
their Roman numerals:
n. L'lillOt:I!!. u. and A. elicited
'.rm,fiitin"'"rl skin conductance responses to masked facial
eXJpn::ssions. Ilf.111'1.!u.n'n and Emotion.
Study HI. Esteves, F., Parra, C., Dimberg, U. and Ohman, A (1993).
Nonconscious associative learning: Pavlovian conditioning of skin
conductance responses to masked fear-relevant facial stimuli.
(In press).
Reprints of Study I were made with permission from the publishers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Human facial expressions
1.1.1. The human face
1.1.2. Is face perception a unique process?
1.1.3. Facial emotional expressions
1.1.4. Decoding of emotional expressions under degraded
exposure conditions
1.1.5. Angry facial expressions as fear-relevant stimuli
1.1.6. Summary
1.2. Unconscious processing
1.2.1. Information processing models
1.2.2. Unconscious perception
1.2.3. Unconscious physiological activation
1.2.4. Unconscious associative learning
1.3. Clinical relevance
1.4. Backward masking
2. THE EMPIRICAL STUDIES
2.1. The aim of the studies
2.2. General method
2.2.1. The common features
2.3. Study I
2.4. The conditioning studies
2.4.1. The common method
2.4.2. Study II
2.4.3. Study III
3. GENERAL DISCUSSION
3.1. Unconscious processing of angry faces
3.2. Concluding remarks
4. REFERENSES
7
7
7
8
11
13
14
15
16
16
16
18
19
21
22
23
23
24
24
25
28
28
30
33
37
37
41
43
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The present studies were carried out at the Department of Clinical
Psychology, University of Uppsala. I am grateful to an the staff of the
Department for the good working atmosphere and the positive support my
work was during these years.
All though the inaccuracies that may appear in this of my
own responsibility, the work presented here is the of a team. I am
grateful to an those that have contributed in one way or another to this team.
Among I am grateful to:
Arne Ohman, my and friend. His
knowledge have been indispensable support during this
adventure. It has been a pleasure running with you, Arne.
- Cristina Parra, my friend and co-author. Her companionship and
coHaboration have always been present, despite the distance.
- Ulf Dim berg, and friend, for his encouraging support and who has
introduced me to the mysteries of the psychophysiology laboratory.
- Anders Flykt, colleague and friend for his optimism and positive attitude.
-The people from the Technical Unit, especially Lars-Erik Larson, Karl-Erik
Gryden, Lars Backstrom and Kurt Wikman for aH the hours trying to find
solutions to my many strange requests.
- Joaquim Soares for technical assistance.
For an the exceHent comments and suggestions to a first version of this
summary I want to thank Berit Scott and Staffan Sohlberg. A am also grateful
to Les Shaps for my English.
My gratitude is also extended to an my colleagues at the Department, with a
special to the "old" friends: Lene, Kerstin, Christina H., Alina, Janne,
Raimo, and Orjan Sundin.
Last, but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my family and
friends, those Hving near and those far away, for always having supp0rted me.
Uppsala, October 1993
Francisco Gomes Esteves
7
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. HUMAN FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
1.1.1. The human face
The interest in the scientific study of the human face as a PS'vCtlto!<J_glca!
stimulus is a quite recent phenomenon 1986). empirical studies on face
perception and emotional eJ..rpressiom; have been during the last 10-15
years. Also, several reviews of the field have been presented g., Bruce,
Young & Ellis, 1989). However, even though formal scientific studies have been
lacking, the face has always been an interesting and fascinating stimulus to humans.
Vestiges of this interest can be seen in the History of Art. The statues of Roman
Emperors, more than just serving as artistic expressions of their period, provide a
means of perpetuating into our times something about them as individuals, about
their personality. Indeed, during the Roman Empire, portrait was considered the
most important form of sculpture. For example, efforts were made to make death
masks as correct reproductions of the real faces as possible. This appeal for the
portrait in Arts is associated with one important characteristic of the human face:
The face as a means of identifying a person, to uncover his or her individuality and
personality. Indeed, in painting his self-portrait during different periods of his Hfe,
Van Gogh was not only getting easy access to a model, as he once wrote in a letter to
his brother (Van Gogh, 1960), but perhaps he was also trying to understand himself,
and to give us the image of himself that he felt was the right one.
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa could serve to illustrate another central
aspect of the human face: The face as a means to communicate and interpret feelings
and emotional states. In fact, the to-be-or-not-to-be of her smile is captivating not just
because it is difficult to interpret or classify but, at the same time, looking at it
compels us to try to reveal the emotion( s) behind it.
These examples from the History of Art illustrate two major characteristics of
the human face as a psychological stimulus. First, faces constitute the most important
stimulus pattern for discriminating and identifying people in our everyday Hfe (Bruce,
1988). The possibility of recognizing different people over time is a necessary
condition for social interaction. Second, faces provide a very important source of
non-verbal communication. It is through facial expressions that we convey our
8
feelings and states of mind to feHow human beings. It is also thr.rmrrh the face that we
interpret and infer the affects and moods of others. faces are the most
important part of the body in influencing and regulating social interactions
For example, the use of eye contact is an important sodal skill it can
be noted that faces also are related to verbal communication. It is through the mouth
that we speak, and the reading of the lips and mouth movements facilitates the
comprehension of (Bruce,
One intriguing aspect of face perception is our advanced ability to
discriminate different faces. Thus, we can recognize despite physical
changes such as wearing eyeglasses or beards, and we can recognize we have
not seen for many years. A hundred years ago, Francis Galton, one of the first
experimental psychologists interested in the study of the human face, commented on
our ability to out small details, and to discriminate accurately between different
faces, despite the great similarity of facial traits (Galton, 1883/1928).
This ability in facial discrimination, corroborated by the results of empirical
studies on face perception and the existence of prosopagnosic patients, has led some
authors to speculate that the face is a unique visual stimulus, and that we are
equipped with a special face-processing mechanism (Yin, 1978; Whiteley &
Warrington, 1977).
Basically, four different arguments for this uniqueness have been presented.
The first one is based on developmental studies. Goren, Sarty, and Wu (1975)
showed that neonates, some minutes after birth, paid more attention to faces than to
other stimulus a result later replicated by Dziurawiec and Ems (Ellis, 1990).
In a study with neonates with a mean age of 36 hours, Field, Woodson, Greenberg,
and Cohen (1982) showed that newborn infants could discriminate different
emotional facial expressions. Meltzoff and Moore observed that
newborns could discriminate facial gestures and had an abiHty to imitate adult
expressions. Thus, these infant studies presented data suggesting a strong innate
componentin the perception of faces and facial expressions.
The second argument is based on perception and memory studies that
compared faces to other visual stimuli. An of this tradition are the inversion
studies. Yin showed a impairment in facial discrimination than in
9
discrimination of other visual
g., houses) when the stimuli were presented
upside-down. and Diamond obtained a simHar inversion effect with 10-
...,,u -'"""' children but not with 6- or 8-year-old which attributed to the
development of an ability to encode configurational of a face around 10 years
of age, while younger children appeared to more on detail information. These
results have been interpreted as evidence for the existence of different processes in
the perception of faces to other classes of objects, thus some kind
of unique skin for face Diamond and
obtained comparable inversion effects with another class of stimuli,
when
by inversion of the stimulus is related to and in a general sense, we an
become "experts" in face recognition. studies (e. g., Freedman & Haber,
have also been used to demonstrate that faces are special. For example,
Bahrick, Bahrick, and Wittlinger (1975), showed that subjects performed extremely
weB in the recognition of high school classmates after almost 50 years. However, it is
difficult to compare this kind of learning condition, involving a prolonged exposure
for several months/years, to the learning of other classes of visual stimuli which could
be considered equivalent. Laboratory studies have shown contraditory findings
Deffenbacher, 1986). For example, Goldstein (1977) obtained high recognition rates
for briefly presented pictures of strangers after long intervals; however, more
controlled experiments (e. g., Church & Winograd, 1986; Faw, 1990) have failed to
confirm this special memory for faces.
A third argument for the uniqueness of face perception is the existence of
prosopagnosia. This is a neurological syndrome characterized by an inability to
recognize familiar faces (Bodamer, 1947). This argument would be very strong if the
specificity of the syndrome could be shown, i.e. if the impairment would be restricted
to faces and not include other visual stimulus dasses. However, as it is a rare
syndrome, and as cerebral lesions are never exactly the same, it has been difficult to
prove the specificity of prosopagnosia. The majority of the clinical cases presented
did show in recognizing other classes of objects (e. g., animals), which has
led some authors to consider the syndrome as a manifestation of a more general
neurological dysfunction, not specific to faces (e. g., Damasio, Damasio, & Van
Hoesen, 1982), possibly related to a certain degree of stimulus complexity (De Renzi
& Spinnler, 1966; Warrington & James, 1967). However, there are at least two
reported cases in the litterature that seems to have an exclusive deficit for faces. De
Renzi (1986) reported one patient 4) who did not show other impairments,
thus failing to support the thesis of a general dysfunction. McNeil and
10
also reported a case of a who could discriminate between
pictures of his own but
'"'""u."u'"' different
known faces. Furthermore, studies with other have shown
subtle impairments of face recognition dissociated from impairments on the
recognition of other stimuli,
(Tzavaras, Hecaen, & LeBras,
the existence of a face-specific deficit
another dass of studies that has been invoked to the
specificity of the face are those that measured the cortical of monkeys
exposed to facial stimuli. For example, Rolls (1984) found a number of neurons in the
temporal lobe and in the amygdala of the rherus monkey that
to faces.
To summarize these it appears difficult to argue definitively for the
existence of a unique skin of face perception in the sense advanced Yin (1978),
especiaHy if this uniqueness is interpreted as implying a mechanism for the
perception of faces working in a different way than other visual recognition systems
(Hay & Young, 1982). Instead, some authors have proposed a weaker definition of
uniqueness, what Hay and (1982) caHed specificity, implying a separate
recognition system, but not requiring qualitatively different perceptual processes (e.
g., Bruce & Young, Ellis & Young, 1989; Levine, 1989). This idea of face
processing being organised into a separate fits in wen with a modularity model
(Fodor, 1983; Marr, 1982) and with the idea of "gnostic areas" proposed by Konarski
(1967). Furthermore, the experiments with monkeys that showed that some neurons
responded selectively to faces (RoH:s, 1984) indicate that there is a neurological basis
for some kind of specificity. However, although the "uniqueness" might be difficult to
prove, the innate component supported by some developmental studies (e. g. Goren
et al., 1975) is a strong argument for considering face processing to be very special
(Morton & Johnson, 1989). Tzavaras et al. (1970) related this innate attention-caning
characteristic of facial stimuli to the phenomenon of imprinting. Al.so, Bushnell, Sai,
and Mullin (1989) observed that neonates with a mean age of 49 hours could
recognize their mothers'face. The prosopagnosic syndrome, is an important
piece of evidence. The "pure" cases (De Renzi, 1986; McNeil & Warrington, 1993)
strongly recommend some caution in discarding the argument (see also
EUis& Young,
on face perception to perception of or words. However,
11
some sceptic voices (e. g., Davidoff, 1986), most authors agree that the human face
constitutes a very stimulus. One of this speciality is the
central role of the face in social interactions and its to emotional
expressions. it is the fact that the face conveys information about emotional
expressions and provides a vehicle for nonverbal communication or, as Buck
it, that it also involves communication from information present within the skin,
that makes the face a unique stimulus class.
1.1.3. Facial emotional
The importance of emotional facial expressions in nonverbal social
communication was first in his book The expression of
facial expressions in an evolutionary
perspective, he emphasized the biological, innate characteristics of facial expressions
in humans and other primates.
Evidence for a genetic loading, both in the ability to produce different facial
expressions and in the ability to decode and recognize these expressions, comes from
different types of empirical studies (see Ohman & Dimberg, 1984, for a review).
Cross-cultural studies (e. g., Ekman, 1982; Ekman et al., 1987) have shown that
members of different cultures produce the same facial expressions when experiencing
distinct emotions, and that the interpretation of some basic emotional expressions is
universal also. This universality, showing a consistent pattern over different cultures
and times, has been a subject of debate since Darwin, and some researchers have
defended a culture-specific position (e. g., Kline berg, 1940). However, despite some
recently presented objections (Fridlund, 1992), some consensus now seems to have
been reached regarding the universality of certain emotional facial expressions
(Ekman, 1992; Oster, Daily, & Goldenthal, 1989; Pitcairn, 1989).
Another Hne of evidence suggesting an innate basis of emotional facial
expressions comes from developmental studies. Neonates have a to imitate
facial movements in the first days of life and, after only a few weeks, infants can
produce distinctive emotional displays in social interactions with their caregiver (see
Fridlund, Ekman, & Oster, for a review). The observation of blind and blind-
deaf born children confirms this innate characteristic. They can display some facial
emotional expressions, although their repertoire appears more limited than that of
normal child Daily, & Goldenthal, Finally, studies of other primates
have documented that they use similar facial displays in social interactions (Brothers,
and that such
maintenance of social hierarchies
From an
can be relatively
12
are important in the establishment and
that genetic programs
to modification programs
environmental input in their transformation to neural programs capable of
behaviour Some social which constant
stimulus-response relations, were to be under the control of relatively
dosed genetic programs. This would be the case for behaviour that is directed to
members of the same (intraspecific which because of its survival
relevance should be more dependent on dosed genetic programs
Sexual activity and parent-child relations, for example, should be expected to be
controHed by closed genetic programs. Furthermore, because the ecology of small
groups has remained stable during human evolution, it appears reasonable to assume
that relatively dosed genetic programs may regulate face-to-face interactions
(Ohman & Dimberg, 1984). Studies with nonhuman primates raised in social
isolation also support a relatively closed program for expressive behaviour (Geen,
1992).
A consequence of this reliance on dosed genetic programs could be the
development of a specific system for the processing of facial affect Indeed, several
authors have proposed the existence of such a system. For example, Bruce and
Young (1986) proposed a system to analyse emotional expressions, acting in paraHel
with the recognition of identity. Also, Ley and Strauss (1986) proposed an
independent mechanism for the recognition of emotional expressions. Thus, although
some authors have proposed that the perception of different emotional displays
influences face recognition (e. g., Galper & Hochberg, most researchers seem
to accept the independence of these processes (Bruce, 1988; Calis & Mens, 1986).
For example, Konorskli (1967) considered face recognition and the analysis of
emotional expressions as two independent categories of visual stimuli, which he
postulated to be processed separate "gnostic areas". Furthermore, studies with
rhesus monkeys have shown that different neurons in the brain are specialised on
identity recognition and on facial Finally, dinka] studies
have also provided support for the existence of a specific facial affect system. Kurucz
and Fe]dmar found evidence for the impairment of facial affect recognition
Rapcsak,
13
Kaszniak, and Rubens reported the case of a with a selective
A consequence of the proposed in the
section is that an important survival value should be inherent in the to decode
the human face, It is easy to understand the
advantage of our prehistorical ancestors to possess an correct
interpretation of, for example, a threatening facial expression. This would be
important, both when encountering a stranger which could be a potential enemy, and
in situations within the own group, in the appraisal of relative dominance ( cf.
Keating, 1985). It should be noticed that this interpretation does not necessarily
imply labeling, indeed this appraisal can be considered nonconsdous 1988;
Frijda, Kuipers, & Schure, 1989). In fact, such an ability to recognize emotional
expressions without any conscious processing was postulated already
(1872).
Darwin
This special ability should allow the decoding of facial expressions even under
difficult viewing conditions. Thus, one approach to examine the interpretation of
emotional expressions is to study recognition in situations that are constructed to
degrade perceptual distinctiveness and enhance ambiguity.
Some studies have investigated the recognition of different facial expressions
under conditions of degraded stimulus exposure. For example, Hager and Ekman
(1979) studied recognition of emotional expressions when the subject was at a
relatively long distance (30-45 m) from the stimulus display. They found that at least
certain expressions were quite accurately identified despite the distance, both
live models and pictures were used.
Another dimension of degraded stimulus input is the reduction of exposure
time. Kirouac and Dore (1984) found that subjects could different
emotional expressions under conditions of very brief exposures ms). Also
McAndrew (1986), in a cross-cultural study, obtained good recognition of different
emotional expressions exposed very briefly ( 1 2 ~ 2 5 for both American and
Malaysian
WaHbot examined the effect of reduced resolution, reduced
contrast resolution, and reduced picture size on the recognition of different
emotional facial expressions. He concluded that recognition of the facial expressions
was insensitive to the degradation of the stimuli within a very large range of
In summary, there is empirical for a special ability to decode facial
expressions even when they are presented under poor perceptual conditions. Taking
a step it could be asked if this decoding process awareness. Indeed,
given the evolutionary perspective presented above, it would be reasonable to
assume that some emotional expressions could be decoded automaticaHy, and that
appropriate behavioural responses could be activated without conscious appraisal of
the facial expression. For example, faces expressing anger or that could convey some
kind of threat should be especiaHy to eHcit responses governed relatively
dosed genetic programs.
1.1.5 as fear-relevant stimuU
In the beginning of the seventies, the traditional learning theory, which
assumes that learning of new associations between stimuli was independent of the
stimuli involved, was criticized. Seligman (1970), in particular, refuted this
"equipotentiality premise" and postulated that, because certain associations have
been important to survival, an species inducting humans are biologically predisposed
to learn some associations more easily than others. According to Seligman
one consequence of this predisposition could be observed in human phobic fears. He
argued that natural selection has resulted in a biological preparedness to easily
associate threatening stimuli/situations with avoidance and escape responses, i.e.,
with fear. In fact, dinkal observations showed that most phobic stimuli can be related!
to some potential phylogenetic (see Ohman, Dimberg, & Ost, 1985, for a
review).
This appHcation of the preparedness theory to human fears and phobias has
been studied empirically by and co-workers 1979; Ohman,
Dimberg, & in the context of aversive Pavlovian conditioning. In a series
of studies, autonomic responses to stimuH that could be considered fear-relevant in
the sense proposed by SeHgman were compared with responses to fear-irrelevant
stimuli For example, of snakes and (fear-relevant) were compared
to of flowers and mushrooms (fear-irrelevant). The most consistent finding
15
was
autonomic responses to
conditioned fear-relevant stimuH showed an elevated resistance to extinction
there were some negative results in the to
replicate some of these findings e. g., 1987), in general, the enhanced
resistance to extinction after conditioning to fear-relevant stimuli can be considered
demonstrated (see Ohman, for a review).
Of special interest for this thesis were the experiments that used emotional
facial expressions as conditioned stimuli It was assumed that angry facial
expressions could be considered a fear-relevant stimulus for social In fact,
enhanced resistance to extinction after conditioning was obtained when angry facial
expressions were used as the conditioned stimuli, but not when the CSs were
facial expressions (Ohman & Dimberg, 1978).
That angry facial expressions might have an evolutionary relevance has also
been documented in other studies, both with humans and with nonhuman primates.
In a study with rhesus monkeys, Sackett (1966) found that monkeys reared in
isolation were especially activated by pictures of threatening faces, thus indicating an
innate recognition mechanism behind the activation effect. Schwartz, Izard, and
Ansul (1985) observed that five-month-old infants showed more avoidance to angry
faces than to expressions of fear and sadness. A curious vestige of the use of angry
faces was described by Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Sutterlin (1990). They found that
threatening facial expressions were encountered quite frequently on stone sculptures
in old churches, which they interpreted as a means of driving away evil spirits and
demons. The idea that the sign vehicles for the expression of angry displays could be
found in the art work of different cultures inspired Aronoff, Barclay, and Stevenson
(1988) to try to identify the necessary features for the expression of threat, which they
found to be associated with angularity and diagonality in visual stimulus patterns.
1.1.6. Summary
In this section, evidence suggesting that the human face is a special perceptual
stimulus has been reviewed, both with respect in our ability to recognize individuals
and in our capacity to decode the affective messages conveyed facial expressions.
Furthermore, it has been argued that both the expression of different emotional
displays, and the interpretation of facial emotional expressions rest on mechanisms
for which genes provide an important source of variance.
I' ,,
16
This genetic variance would reflect selection pressure on functional behaviour
over eons of time. As a consequence, the resulting mechanism would be robust and
likely to withstand conditions of degraded informational input. Furthermore, these
mechanisms would be likely to function automatically with no need for conscious
appraisal of the stimulus. A main purpose of this thesis is to examine if angry facial
expressions are especially sensitive to automatic, unconscious mechanisms. In the
next section, data suggesting the existence of unconscious perceptual processes will
be presented, as viewed from an information-processing perspective.
1.2. UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING
1.2.1. Information processing models
Broadbent (1958) presented a model of the human information-processing
system which had an enormous impact on subsequent research in experimental
psychology. The model focused on the role of selective attention conceived as a filter,
letting some information through for further processing in a sequential processing
channel with limited capacity, while most of the stimulus information was filtered out
and ignored. Subsequently, several different models have been proposed in attempts
to integrate new empirical findings (e. g., Cowan, 1988; Ohman, 1979). In general,
following the model proposed by Shiffrin and Schneider (1977), two modes of
information processing have been distinguished, an automatic, involuntary,
preattentive mechanism and a top-down, voluntarily-controlled process. Thus,
Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) differentiated between automatic and controlled
processing, Ohman (1979) between preattentive and capacity-limited processes, and
Marcel (1983) between conscious and unconscious processing. Although these
dichotomies do not overlap completely, in general, they have been regarded as
referring to the same phenomena (e. g., Schneider, Dumais, & Shiffrin, 1984). Thus,
these models suggested the existence of an initial phase of human information-
processing that would be characterized by automaticity and parallel processing across
different sensory channels, and that would be independent of volition and awareness
(Schneider, Dumais, & Shiffrin, 1984).
1.2.2. perception
The idea a substantial part of the information presented to our senses is
not perceived at the conscious level is not a new one. Three hundred years ago,
Leibniz was the first to postulate that our behaviour could be influenced by
17
During the fifties and sixties several
the idea that
with
it runs counter to the
reason and
conducted on
which claimed
such conclusions were called into question in an influential
He showed
had not been
criteria were necessary before empirical of unconscious
perception could be claimed. Although Eriksen' s criticisms were very influential and
still are considered valid by some g., Holender, in the last two decades
several authors have emphasized the importance of unconscious perceptual
processes in many psychological contexts g., 1981; Greenwald,
Nevertheless, the empirical work on unconscious perceptual processes has
resulted in contradictory findings. As Cheesman and Merilde (1986) noted, the main
problem has been the lack of an accepted measure of conscious experience. Thus, in
a review of the literature, they found that studies that employed a very stringent
measure of awareness in general have failed to find unconscious effects, while the
positive results have been obtained in studies that used more subjectively defined
measures of awareness (Cheesman & Merilde, 1986). However, as Merilde and
Reingold (1992) accurately noted, a perfect objective measure of awareness
presupposes two conditions which are practically impossible to satisfy. Thus, the
putative measure must be both exhaustive, L e. be sensitive to all conscious
experience and exclusive, i. e. be only sensitive to conscious experience without
eliminating unconscious information. However, a more reasonable assumption is to
accept that any measure of perception could be affected by both conscious and
unconscious processes (Merilde & Reingold, 1992). As out Bowers
the use of very stringent criteria exclude unconscious perception by definition.
Instead, Cheesman and Merikle (1986) proposed the use of a criterion.
They defined subjective threshold as the level of discriminative responding at which
subjects claim to perform at the chance level (Cheesman & Merilde, Despite
the risk of subjectivity, this criterion is closer to the interesting differentiation
between what the perceivers know and "what they know they know" (Fowler, 1986),
and seems to have been accepted
&
unconscious
FinaHy, in studies with
with the
they could not see.
18
In summary, :it can be conducted that unconscious perception
that we can be influenced by stimuH we are not aware of
using Bowers
terminology, Stimuli that are nPlH"'"'liVf"ffll
there are
several
TPI'P;M .. I<' been
could
be noticed that
(Greenwald, of unconscious influence. One refers to what Greenwald
called the auentionless sense, stimuH that fan outside of selective attention or stimuli
that are perceived but not noticed 1984). The other mode refers to stimuH
that have been consciously perceived at some point but that are not available for
introspection. Such stimuli thus are not appreciated as influential
Although the second mode also can be interesting, for example, concerning memory
bias in dinical groups, it is the first mode of unconsdous influence I refer to in this
thesis.
Physiological measures have been used before in studies intending to detect
effects of unconsdous processing. For Corteen and Wood and
Corteen and Dunn used a dichotic Hstening to demonstrate more
sklin conductance responses (SCR) to shock-associated words than to
" ' ' " " " " ' ~ in the nonattended ear task.
/)
19
"'"''!'."'""'"''-' shock-associated words when the left but not the right ear was used as
the nonattended channel. \ '
In a series of aversive Pavlovian experiments, fear-relevant
pictures (snakes and as conditioned and Soares
demonstrated that it was possible to elicit SCRs to previously conditioned fear-
relevant stimuli even when awareness of a backward
restricted to fear-relevant
that it is possible to elicit autonomic responses to stimuli of which the
remained unaware (see also Dawson & ScheU, 1985).
1.2.4. Unconscious associative leamilng
The possibility of unconscious learning has been tested for some years. In a
series of experiments, Reber and co-workers Reber, 1989, for a review) used an
artificial grammar procedure to show that
and later discriminate between correct
being able to verbalise the rules used. Lewicki and co-workers (Lewicki,
1988; Hill, Lewicki, Czyzewska, & SchuHer, 1990) in a series of experiments
have shown that subjects, exposed to covariations between experimental events they
were not able to report, could use this covariation to improve their task performance,
and thus indirectly show that they could apply knowledge that had been implicitly
learned. Although these experiments have been criticized (e. g., Brody, 1989;
Perruchet & Pacteau, 1990), and some authors claimed that some awareness 'might
have been involved (e. g., Perruchet, Gallego, & Savy, 1990), these results can not be
simply dismissed.
Studies with neurological patients, too, have shown implicit learning effects.
For example, Weiskrantz and Warrington (1979), working with amnesic and
de Haan, Young, and Newcombe (1987) with a prosopagnosic patient, obtained
learning effects even the subjects denied knowing what they were
In the context of Pavlovian conditioning, the role of cognitive factors has been
discussed since Pavlov. Breaking with a rationalistic where consciousness
was a central aspect, Pavlov (1927), after what he described as a mental conflict,
became committed to an objective, physiological approach to conditioning in which
cognitive aspects were deliberately ignored. To view classical conditioning as
among
\.
I')
{
Q
''
0.'
20
psychologists) of classical conditioning as mechanical and mindless. However, during
the last 20 years another view of Pavlovian conditioning has emerged, defining
classical conditioning as a more complex learning process, based on multiple
associations between events in the environment (Ohman, 1988; Rescorla, 1988).
Contrary to the traditional view, this learning process is supposed to demand
advanced cognitive processing and, for humans, conscious mechanisms are
be necessary (Dawson --
In fact, the first Pavlovian conditioning experiments in humans that claimed to
demonstrate unconscious learning (e. g., Lacey & Smith, 1954) were later criticized
(e. g., Dawson, 1973). Dawson and co-workers demonstrated that, with a more
adequate . of conditioning effects were apparent only in
that could. the contingency between the unconditioned
stimulus (US) and the CS (Dawson, 1970; Dawson & Biferno, 1973; Dawson &
Reardon, 1973). Using a continuous measurement of the subjects' expectancy of the
US, it was demonstrated that differential SCRs to the reinforced and the
nonreinforced stimuli were obtained only after the subjects became!J._ware of the CS-
US contingency (e. g., Biferno & Dawson 1977; Ohman, Ellstrom, & Bjorkstrand,
1976). Based on these results, Dawson and Furedy (1976) postulated that awareness
of the CS-US relationship was a necessary but not sufficient condition for human
differential classical conditioning. This is still the common view among researchers in
human Pavlovian conditioning (Davey, 1987; Dawson & Schell, 1985).
In summary, this section introduced some arguments for the existence of
unconscious cognitive processes. First, it has been argued that we can be influenced
by stimuli that are not consciously perceived; for example, that physiological
responses can be activated without a conscious appraisal of the eliciting stimulus.
Second, it has been argued that there exists some evidence for unconscious or
implicit learning, despite the general denial of this possibility among Pavlovian
conditioning theorists.
The possibility of unconscious information processing, together with the
biological relevance of angry facial expressions documented in the first part of the
introduction, leads to the central empirical question of this thesis: To demonstrate
that angry faces can be processed unconsciously, and that this results in the elicitation
of conditioned phys!ological responses and in associative learning.
21
Before the description of the empirical work two issues wm be considered.
First some clinical implications of unconscious are and then a
short introduction to visual backward is
1.3. CLINICAL RELEVANCE
The approach presented here involves
studies that constitute this thesis were not based on dinkal groups, but rather on
students, usuaHy considered a normal the study of
unconscious
be elucidated.
An important aspect is related to the
concept, including different kinds of phenomena, but in most cases it can be said that
anxiety occurs in response to stimuli or situations that are perceived as threatening
(Ohman, 1993a). In fact, it can be argued that the biological function of is to
facilitate the detection of threat in potentially dangerous situations (Eysenck, 1992;
Ohman, 1993a). If this is integrated within an information-processing perspective,
assuming that (Dixon, 1981), it is
easy to agree with the view that early perceptual processes deserve special attention.
Although not an agree on the importance of unconscious processes for the
understanding of anxiety ( cf. Sacco & Beck, 1985), several authors have argued in
favor of their importance. For example, Mathews and co-workers have shown an
unconscious processing bias for anxiety patients to attend to threatening stimuli
(Mathews, 1990; Mathews & MacLeod, The possibility of detecting
threatening stimuli automatically, based on simple stimulus features, is in accordance
with Zajonc's (1980) proposition that the affective evaluation of a stimulus does not
require a conscious stimulus analysis. The work of LeDoux 1990), showing that
there is a neurological basis for a subcortical activation of affective responses, gives
further support to these approaches.
social phobics are especially sensitive to be evaluated others (Liebowitz, Gorman,
Fyer, & Klein, 1985), angry facial expressions that imply some kind of
negative evaluation should be particularly relevant to them (Ohman, JLJu.uuvL
1985). Furthermore, as reviewed above, an early detection of this threat should
!l
ir.lll
;iill
1
1:1'1
U1
i!'i,
:l
.,
22
facilitate the activation of appropriate behavioural and physiological responses and
the implementation of efficient coping strategies.
1.4. BACKWARD MASKING
The visual masking paradigm has been used in many experiments. In general,
it refers to very short presentations of two stimuli, in temporal and spatial proximity.
In the case of backward masking, the presentation of the masking stimulus interferes
witp the processing of a previously presented target stimulus.
Different theories have been put forward to explain this phenomenon and,
'!',depending on interference is conceptualized, they can be classified as
models models (Massaro, 1975). The integration theories
postulate some kind of fusion, or combination of the neural representations of the
target and the mask (e. g., Breitmeyer & Ganz, 1976; Eriksen & Eriksen, 1971).
Other theorists have proposed some kind of interruption on the processing of the
target caused by the presentation of the mask (e. g., Massaro, 1975). This is what
Averbach and Coriell (1960) called erasure of the target. A third line is to admit that
both integration and interruption processes occur, but that the kind of interference
obtained depends on the exposure conditions, such as stimulus intensity or target-
mask interval (Fox, 1978; Turvey, 1973).
The understanding of the phenomenon is further complicated by differences
between central and peripheral masking (Turvey, 1973) or between perceptual and
conceptual masking (Loftus & Ginn, 1984; Potter, 1976). These differences will not
be analysed here, however, as our purpose was to interrupt processing of the target
stimulus before a complete percept was formed, i.e., before the subject became
aware of the target (Marcel 1983; Massaro, 1975). Concerning the
perceptual/conceptual dichotomy, Potter (1976) suggested that conceptual masking
occurred after the picture had been identified. If by this she meant consciously
perceived, then our masking in the unconscious conditions should be considered
perceptual. However, as Loftus and Ginn (1984) remarked, perceptual processing
can be disrupted both by peripheral and by central masking. Although this issue is not
central to this thesis, we were more interested in central masking, i.e. masking caused
by competition between target and mask for cognitive resources, than on peripheral
masking, and as it will be commented below, it seems that the masking effect
obtained was more of central origin.
23
2. THE EMPIRICAL STUDIES
2.1. THE AIM OF THE STUDIES
In the introduction some pnJp(JSi1:iOJ1S about facial stimuli that serve as the
basis of the research reported :in trus thesis were presented. First, the human face
constitutes a special class of visual stimuli, in due to its communicative character .
..., .. ,-uuu, some facial reflecting basic emotions, are
and recognized. Third, threatening faces, faces with angry eX]pre:ssions,
considered a case of fear-relevant implying a
conditions of degraded input. it has been demonstrated that, in the context of
Pavlovian conditioning, aversively conditioned responses to angry faces show an
enhanced resistance to extinction.
A second point of departure is provided by evidence suggesting that some
types of stimuli can be processed at an unconscious level. In particular, it appears
that il:t!t_<?I!()J:rlli(:resp_()nses can be elicited in subjects who remain unaware of the
nature of Furthermore, though more controversial, there is
..,., .... ._,,,...,,., suggesting the possibility of unconscious learning.
The present thesis provides the convergence of these two points of departure
in a series of studies focused on unconscious processing of facial stimuH. The main
purpose was to test the stimulus properties of angry faces when the recognition of the
expressions is made impossible by backward masking. Thus, using a Pavlovian
conditioning context, two main questions were examined: a) I:s it possible to elicit
physiological responses even when awareness of the
stimuli is prevented through backward masking? and b) Using angry expressions as
conditioned stimuli, is associative learning possible without requiring the to
be aware of the CS-US contingency? These two questions are addressed separetely in
Studies H and HI. I investigated some parameters for of
backwardly masked stimuH and is a prerequisite for the other experiments. To study
unconscious presentation of the stimuli it is necessary to more closely define
conditions for recognition of the stimuli.
24
2.2. GENERAL METHOD
Both used Pavlovian differential conditioning paradigms with skin conductance
.. as the dependent variable. I, however, since its purpose was to
'-A<uum .... the effect of backward on the of emotional
conditions to be used in Studies II and
central issues of this thesis. Thus, in this
three studies win be described. The
the common COJIDJ:IOn.ents
method for the conditioning studies wiH
be described later under the heading The conditionig studies.
l.l.l.The common features
Some elements are common to the three :studies. In general, the same basic
apparatus was used and the subjects were recruited from the same population.
However, more important was the use of the same stimulus material - slides
representing human facial expressions, and the fact that backward masking was used
in order to prevent the subjects' awareness of some of the stimuli they were exposed
to.
The majority of the subjects who participated in the experiments were
university students. They participated on an informed consent basis and were paid for
their participation. Different subjects participated in the different experiments, i.e.
they were not aHowed to participate in more than one experiment.
The subjects were seated inside a Tegner sound-attenuating chamber
equipped with a milk-glass screen onto which the slides were projected. The
apparatus was located outside the cubicle. Two projectors equipped with high-speed
shutters (Vincent Associates Uniblitz 214L, Rochester, New
stimulus presentation.
The sHdes were selected from Ekman and Friesen's
were used for
affect. These are black-and-white slides that have been used in earlier eJ...'Periments
(e. g., Kirouac & Dore, 1984; The sHdes selected were
of six males and six females, each angry, happy, and neutral facial
expressions. In the conditioning experiments (Studies II and III), of
male persons were used as CSs.
25
The use of slides :in the
is taken of the *",""'""" 1
in addition to the advantage of some studies have
reported quite good accuracy in the of emotional cmnp,an::u
to live stimuli (Hager & Ekman,
one after the other :in time but in the same
exJJmied immediately after each other
are not
neutral faces have
two pictures were displayed,
location. The two stimuli could be
offset of the to the
onset of the mask) or with between target and mask. The concept of
i.e. the time interval between the onset of the
target and the onset of the mask, provides an unequivocal specification of the target-
mask interval. Thus, the SOA and the exposure times of the target and the mask
provide an exhaustive description of the temporal exposure conditions.
\
The reason for neutral faces rather than other stimulus patterns as
masking stimuli is that have similar luminosity to the target pictures and occupy
the same spatial area. Furthermore, in the conditioning in which both
masked and nonmasked stimuli were used and compared to each other, it is a dear
advantage that an stimuli belong to the same stimulus class.
2.3.STUDYI
Masking the face: Recognition of emotional facial expressions as a function of the
parameters of backward masking.
The purpose of
the recognition of emotional facial expressions in order to define the conditions of
stimulus presentation that are outside of awareness. Thus,
for Studies H and HI.
I consisted of four different experiments. The general idea was to
present pairs of stimuli. The was the emotional face for which we
wanted to determine thresholds of
The masking conditions were
26
subjects were informed that the stimuli occurred in
that the picture would
re(:ogniz:e the emotional
PYI"IPri-mPnt<: The
were further informed
and that their task was to
in the pair.
was held constant at 30 ms, and the duration of the
increased from tria] to tria] until the could

of the face. The masking face

after the target Thus in this experiment,
exposure time of the target. Furthermore, of emotional was
compared to the recognition of the gender of the stimulus picture and to the
identification of the stimulus person. The results indicate that the subjects could
guess the correct expression of the target when the was about 70-100 ms. A
SOA of about 100-150 ms was required in order to get a confident recognition uf the
correct emotional The thresholds for faces were lower than those
for the other expressions. In the thresholds obtained for emotional
expressions were quite similar to the obtained for the gender recognition and
person identification.
,,,;
The method employed in Experiment 1 to measure of recognition was based
on each subject's criteria for correct identification, could be criticized for its
subjectivity Cheesman & Merikle, 1986; Eriksen 1960). Thus in Experiment 2, a
forced-choice procedure was introduced in order to obtain a more subject-
independent measure of recognition. The exposure time of the target and the mask
stimuli was always the same ms ), but the SOA varied between 30 and 230 ms.
Half of the subjects were instructed to decide if the target was an angry or a happy
face, and the other half was asked to report if they saw one or two pictures. In
general, the results of this experiment confirmed the recognition thresholds obtained
with the less stringent method of limits. targets were at
shorter SOAs than angry faces. 1 and 2 used quite
different methods to assess the third experiment was to directly
compare the more objective forced-choice to a more phenomenological
defined criterion ( cf. Cheesman & 1986).
In Experiment 3, the e:A'Po:mre time of the picture was he]d constant
at 30 ms, and the target was exposed for 20 ms (in the lowest SOA and in the control
27
all other As in 2, it was the SOA that was
between 20 and 300 ms. A control condition was also with
a neutral exJpm;ed for 20 ms followed a neutral mask. On each tria] the
had two tasks to npd'n .. .-n
was a or an angry
to rate their confidence in that
Once again, the results showed an in the rates with
and no above chance SOAs under 50 ms. The confidence data
showed that, when the SOAs were not more
confident when choose the
Thus on these trials, even when correct answers were the """'i"'"t<
were guessing.
The comparison between the two dependent measures was ....
the bias obtained in the control condition. When a neutral target was
subjects showed a bias to answer more often angry than also
complicated the comparison of and angry recognitions. if the control
condition was used as the base rate, it was confirmed that it was easier to
happy expressions than angry, both on the forced-choice and on the confidence data.
Experiment 4 was a the same method that had been
developed in Experiment 3. In addition to the SOA used the
exposure times of the target and the mask were also varied. It was observed that the
SOA manipulation was the main factor influencing recognition, thus the
increased performance with longer SOAs obtained in the three previous experiments.
Exposure time of the target and the mask showed
Two main conclusions can be drawn from this series of experiments. it
was shown that the SOA was the principal factor influencing of masked
facial expressions. In an four of the emotional of
the target with longer SOAs. Thus, it seems that rather than the exposure
time of the target per se ( cf. Experiment it was the time available for of
the target that was decisive. This the idea that the masking obtained
was of central origin ( cf. Turvey, In general, these ex]pex]m:ents indicated that a
SOA of about 100 ms was necessary to accurately the facial of
the target
28
...,.,...,u.n.uy, and as a consequence of these rec:ognition
conduded that a SOA of 30 ms, which was the SOA used in the PV1riPri,.,.,
in Studies II and did not
of the there were individual
it seems that
a SOA of 30 ms was below threshold level of awareness for aU
independently of which measure was used to assess rec:og1nition.
2.4. THE CONDITIONING STUDIES
2.4.1. The common method
The experiments reported :in Studies II and III were cases of aversive
Pavlovian conditioning manipulations. The conditioned stimuH as weB as the
masking stimuli were of human facial expressions. The CSs could be
or angry expressions and the masking stimuH were pictures of neutral ell.'])ressions.
The USs were m:ild electric shocks on the of the first and the second
fingers of the subjects'right hand. The intensity of the shock was adjusted individually
for each subject, to a level defined as "uncomfortable but not painful". The electric
shocks were delivered through silver electrodes and consisted of 18 Hz current of 0.5
seconds duration.
A differential conditioning paradigm was used. This consists of the
comparison between two equivalent stimuli, one of which is reinforced (the CS+ ), i.e.
is presented together with the US, and another that is never reinforced (the CS-).
This different treatment during the conditioning procedure (also called the
acquisition phase), provided that responses to the stimu]i do not differ before
conditioning, allows the of later differences in responding to be
attributed to associative
The dependent variable
Electrodermal
research for about one hundred years ScheU, & FiHion, The changes
in the electric conductance of the human skin are attributed to the
innervation of the eccrine sweat which are exclusively controlled the
29
also been used as a measure of unconscious activation
c) The three
there was a
habituation
experimental conditions, and to score the SCRs to the different stimuli before the
procedure to rule out initial response differences as a COJ1foundil11!!
4-6 trials were exposed this phase.
The second phase was the conditioning phase, usually caned the
phase. Here, one of the stimuli was foHowed by the shock US (the CS+ ), and another
equivalent stimulus was presented nonreinforced (the CS-). In the experiments
reported in Study the CSs were not masked during the acquisition phase. Thus,
although the exposure time was brief (60-200 ms), the acquisition phase was
nonmasked, and the subjects were given the opportunity to become aware of the
pictures presented and which CS that was associated with the US. In the experiments
reported in Study III, the CSs were masked during the acquisition phase, either with a
short SOA (usually 30 ms), not allowing conscious :identification, or with a longer
SOA (e. g., 180 ms), aHowing the subject to consciously perceive both the target and
the masking stimuli. Usually 12-16 trials for each CS were administered.
The concluding part of the experiments was the extinction phase. Here, the
shock US was omitted and a series of CSs+ and CSs- was presented. In the
experiments reported in Study II, where a nonmasked acquisition had been
administered, the CS:s were presented masked during el\.1::inction. The SOA used
could be very short (30 ms ), not aU owing a conscious of the CSs, or
somewhat longer (e. g., 180 ms ), aHowing the cm1scm1.1tslv discriminate
HI, where masked aCCIUIS:mcm had been among the different stimuli. In
the extinction phase was nonmasked. Here, differential responding to the stimuli that
had been presented masked during acquisition could be attributed to associative
learning. Usually, this phase consisted of 16-20 trials for each CS.
30
Phasic SCR amplitudes were scored as the maximal response ..,t<,rtirn
intervall-5-sec or 1-4 sec after CS onset, with an
.05 microsiemens or more. The number of responses this level divided
the number of trials gave response
2.4.2. II
Is it possible to elicit physiological responses to previously conditioned angry facial
expressions, even when awareness of the CS is prevented through backward
masking?
The purpose of Study II was to examine if it was possible to elicit differential
physiological responding to masked CSs when angry faces were used as the CS+.
Different control conditions were used in the three experiments that were performed.
In Experiment 1, a group conditioned to an angry face, with a happy face as the
control stimulus, was compared to a group conditioned to a happy face with an angry
facial expression as the CS-. It was expected that, once conditioning to an angry face
had been achieved, it would be possible to elicit SCRs to that even when
backwardly masked in a way that prevented the subject's conscious perception of the
CS. In the group conditioned to a happy face no such automatic responding was
expected. Experiment 2 was a replication of the angry group in Experiment 1 with an
improved methodology. Finally, Experiment 3 was concerned with the importance of
attentional resources in the elicitation of SCRs to masked angry faces. Would this
kind of automatic elicitation of physiological responses be independent of attentional
manipulations?
Experiment 1
Can angry facial e:;que;ssicJns previously associated with a shock-US elicit
SCRs when presented masked in a way that inhibits their accessibility to
awareness? Do happy expressions show the same response pattern?
31
In Experiment 1, two groups were compared. One group was conditioned to
an angry facial expression (angry CS+) with a happy face serving as the control
stimulus, and the other one was conditioned to a happy facial expression (happy
CS+) with an angry CS-. The experiment consisted of two phases - a habituation
phase and a conditioning phase. The conditioning phase consisted of different trial
conditions: (a) conditioning trials - 12 unmasked presentations of each CS, with the
US delivered 0.5 seconds after the onset of the CS+; (b) test-trials - three
nonreinforced presentations of the unmasked CS+, which were compared to three
adjacent CS- trials in order to examine if conditioning had occurred; (c) masked trials
- six presentations of each CS, exposed for 30 ms and followed by a neutral masking
face also presented for 30 ms.
Although the exposure of the CSs was only 60 ms in the nonmasked trials, it
was sufficient to allow the subjects to become aware of which picture was shown on
each trial and, consequently, to figure out after some exposures which slide was
associated with the shock and which was not. It was hypothesized that both groups
would show conditioning in the nonmasked test-trials, i.e., both groups would show
larger SCRs to the nonreinforced CS+ than to the correspondent CS-. Furthermore,
it was expected that in the angry CS+, but not in the happy CS+ group, some
differential responding between the CS + and the CS- would be obtained in the
masked trials condition.
The analysis of the results showed the predicted conditioning effect in both
the angry CS+ and the happy CS+ groups, i.e., in the nonreinforced trials, subjects
in both groups responded more to the nonmasked CS+ than to the corresponding
CS-. The differential effect found between the CS+ and the CS- in the masked trials
was, as expected, present only in the group conditioned to an angry expression and
... only on the first trials. Thus, some support was obtained for the hypothesis of
physiological masked stimuli. :Sl
tnal-bloc}::..lhe presentation of masked (and
'nonremforced) trials interspersed among the conditioning trials could have resulted
in the masking picture becoming an inhibitory stimulus, reducing the responding to
the CS+. Furthermore, stimulus changes from trial to trial could interfere with
habituation and result in increased electrodermal orienting responses (OR) that
could complicate the interpretation of the conditioned responses. Thus in
Experiment 2, acquisition and extinction phases were separated in order to allow
habituation to the masked CSs and to prevent inhibitory conditioning.
32
2
AI; the group conditioned to a
on the masked and the lack of differentiation extinction
obtained before with an angry group was run
.in Experiment 2. It was to the angry CS+
to the happy CS- would be obtained in the masked extinction. In the
results replicated the effect obtained in 1. SCRs to the
masked CS+ were reliably than responses to the masked CS-.
Taken together, the results of 1 and 2 :indicate that it is vu"''"'"''"
to elicit responses to angry facial despite the
interruption of information-processing caused the backward masking. a
preliminary stimulus analysis was sufficient to elicit SCRs under these conditions. The
interference in the processing of the CSs prevented the subjects from becoming
aware of the stimuli presented. However, whether this should be to mean
that the processing of the masked stimuli would be completely preattentive (as would
be suggested, e. g., Marcel, or if some controlled prcJce;ssixig would take
place (as suggested by Ohman, 1992) needed to be clarified.
A method that has been used to separate preattentive from controlled modes
of information processing is to study the interference caused by a secondary task.
Preattentive processing is usually defined as effortless, not requiring the aUocation of
cognitive resources, while interference caused by shared cognitive resources is taken
as a central criterion of controlled processing. Thus in Experiment 3, a manipulation
of attentional resources was used in order to study this issue.
Experiment 3
Four groups with 12 subjects in each were studied. Two groups of subjects
were instructed to attend to the masking stimulus and count the number of females
appearing in that position, while the other two groups had no attentional task.
Furthermore, two SOA conditions were orthogonaHy combined with the two levels of
attention: one preattentive condition (30 ms and a condition that aHowed the
subject to consciously perceive the target CS ms In an four groups, the
CS+ was an angry face and the CS- a happy one.
33
It was expected that differential responding between the masked CS+ and the
masked CS- would be obtained in the groups without the attentional task, both for
the group with 30 ms SOA (replicating Experiments 1 and 2) and for the group with
the longer SOA ( cf. Ohman & Dimberg, 1978). It was also hypothesized that the
attentional task would interfere with the physiological responding in the long SOA
condition, resulting in decreased differential responding. The last group, the one with
short SOA and attentional task, was indeed the most interesting one. Both decreased
differentiation between the CS+ and the CS- and no effect of the secondary task
could be expected, depending on the level of processing interrupted by backward
masking.
The results showed differential responding during extinction only in the
groups not given the attentional task. The two groups that had to pay attention to the
mask did not show any significant differentiation between the CS+ and the CS-.
Thus, the fact that the attentional task eliminated the differential responding in the
30 ms SOA group supports the hypothesis that some controlled processing was
possible even though the subjects had been prevented from becoming aware of the
masked CSs (cf. Ohman, 1992a).
In summary, the three experiments showed that it is possible to elicit
autonomic responses to masked conditioned stimuli when an angry face is used as the
CS+. The results of Experiment 3 also suggest that although the subjects were not
aware of the eliciting masked CSs, the processing involved is not completely
preattentive in the sense that some controlled processing seems to occur.
2.4.3. Study ill
Is associative learning in a context of Pavlovian conditioning possible when the CSs
are masked and the subject is not aware of the CS-US relationship?
The general method used in these experiments can be said to be the opposite
to that used in Study II. While in Study II the conditioning procedure was nonmasked
and the extinction phase was masked, here it was the acquisition phase that was
masked and the extinction phase nonmasked to test whether some associative
learning had occurred.
Study III consisted of two experiments and a pilot study. The pilot study can
be considered a complement to Study I. Because the recognition experiments (Study
34
I) were conducted with no of and the conditioning
experiments (in both II and III) involved electric shock it is
conceivable that differential responding to masked stimuli was a result of lowered
recognition thresholds because of US administration. The pilot was
conducted with ba:sicaHy the same method that had been used in I, Experiment
3 above, p. The main difference was that ten at a level as
uncomfortable but not painful the were delivered during the
experiment.
The results gave no indication that the thresholds had been
lowered by the shock exposure. Thus, the 30 ms SOA condition that was used before
could be used again in Study III in order to the conscious of the
masked CSs.
Experiment 1
In Experiment 1, three groups with 20 subjects in each were compared. One
group was conditioned to an angry face, exposed for 30 ms and masked
face also exposed for 30 ms, with a masked happy face serving as the CS-. the
extinction phase, the CS:s were exposed unmasked for 500 ms. This group, the
Preattentive Conditioning Group, was compared to two control conditions. One
group was also conditioned to an angry face, exposed for 30 ms, with a happy face as
the CS-. Both CSs were foUowed masks exposed for 30 ms, but the SOA between
the target and the mask was extended to 330 ms. This group was the Conditioning
Control Group. The extinction phase was identical to that of the Preattentive group.
Another control group was conditioned to the masks, the Pseudo-conditioning
Control Group. During acquisition, subjects were exposed to two neutral faces, one
followed by a shock-US and the other serving as the CS-. During extinction they were
tested in the same way as the subjects in the two other groups, i.e. they were
presented with a sequence of trials with a happy face or an angry face, exposed for
500ms.
The theoretical notions behind the possibility of conditioning in the
Preattentive group were somehow contradictory. If, as most authors
Dawson & Furedy, 1976; Dawson & ScheU, 1985), awareness of the contingency
between the CS and the US is a necessary condition for conditioning, then no
conditioning effect should be expected. As the exposure conditions in this group
prevented the subjects from becoming aware of the the of awareness
35
of the CS-US contingency was logicaHy excluded. On the other
SCRs to angry
faces have survived backward masking after a procedure and,
the hypothesis of a special to detect angry faces Hansen & Hansen,
there are theoretical reasons to expect a positive effect. Indeed, a
preliminary experiment in our laboratory, although lac.ldng the necessary control
and therefore not reported, gave indications in that direction.
Conditioning group was the reason for the two control groups. In the case of a
negative result, it was to show that a effect could have been
obtained if only the subjects became aware of the CSs. Thus, in the '-'"U"'"U'""'"'
Control group, where the subjects were given the opportunity to become aware of the
CScUS contingency, differential responding to the angry CS+ and the happy CS- was
expected. This was important for interpreting possible negative results in the
Preattentive Conditioning group. In the case of positive results in the Preattentive
Conditioning group, the Pseudo-Conditioning group allowed the exclusion of
alternative explanations. For example, :in the preattent:ive group, differential
responding to the angry and the happy faces during extinction could be attributed to
a generalisation from the reinforced neutral mask to the angry face exposed during
extinction, without necessarily implying that the association between the masked
angry face and the shock-US had been learned. From the subject's point of view this
control group was designed to be similar to the Preattentive group both cases only
the neutral masks were consciously perceived). Thus, if differential responding was
obtained because of generalisation in the PreaUentive Conditioning group, then the
control group should also show a similar effect. Also, the possibility of a sensitization
effect to the angry expression rather than to the happy one due to the shock
presentation could be ruled out by the same logic.
The results showed during the extinction phase, SCRs to the angry face
were larger and more frequent than to the happy face, both in the Preattentive
Conditioning group and in the Conditioning Control group. The Pseudo-conditioning
control group showed no differentiation. Thus, Experiment 1 the
of Pavlovian conditioning without the subjects being aware of the CS-US "'"'''" .. 'F>""".J
However, if this effect was specific to angry faces or if associative learning also could
be obtained with, for example, happy faces, was stiH an open question. The purpose
of Experiment 2 was to investigate the specificity issue, and replicate Experiment 1
following some methodological improvements.
36
Six groups with 20 subjects each were run. One group - Angry preattentive -
was a replication of the Preattentive Conditioning group in Experiment 1, i.e. it was
an angry CS+ and a happy CS- both masked neutral faces with a SOA of 30
ms. Furthermore, a Happy preattentive group was with a happy CS+ and
an angry but was otherwise similar to the Angry Preattentive group. A third
group was a of the Control group in 1, with a
longer interval to further facilitate the perception of the CSs
to a face with an angry face as the the Happy conditioning control group.
The remaining groups were two sensitization control groups. During the
subjects in these groups were exposed to the same series of masked that
were used in the conditioning groups and received the same number of shocks, but
these were delivered at random instead of being associated with one of the masked
faces. One group had a 30 ms SOA and the other a SOA of 500 ms. During extinction
the subjects in an the six groups were exposed to the same series of pictures.
It was expected that the two groups conditioned to angry faces would show
differential responding during replicating the results of Experiment 1. In
the two groups conditioned to happy faces, considering that conditioning to happy
faces in other experiments (e. g., Dimberg, 1986) did not show resistance to
extinction, no effect was expected. Finally, no differentiation between the SCRs to
angry and happy faces was expected in the sensitization control groups.
The results supported the hypothesis and replicated those results in
Experiment 1. Only the two groups conditioned to angry facial expressions showed
differential responding during extinction, i.e. subjects in these groups had larger and
more frequent SCRs to the angry CS+ compared to the happy CS-.
In summary, these two experiments showed that associative learning is
possible in conditions where the subjects are not aware of the contingencies of
reinforcement Furthermore, this effect appears to be restricted to some stimulus
categories, such as angry facial expressions.
37
3. GENERAL DISCUSSION
3.1. UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING OF ANGRY FACES
The main conclusion to be drawn from these studies is that angry facial
to elicit physiological responses in a conte:Kt
the experiments reported in II
indicate that it is to elicit autonomic responses to conditioned angry
even when a backward masking presentation the from
aware of the CSs. The IH showed that learning of an
association between an aversive shock and an angry face did not the
to be aware of the contingencies of reinforcement
One of the aims of Study I was to define conditions of stimulus exposure
outside of awareness. The results of the recognition experiments reported in Study I
showed that, with the pictures of facial expressions that were used and with the
iHumination conditions available, a mask exposed for 30 ms immediately foHowing a
target stimulus also exposed for 30 ms was sufficient to interfere with the processing
of the target in a way that prevented the subject from becoming aware of it.
Furthermore, this conclusion was confirmed by the result of the Pilot work reported
in Study HI. That is, the recognition thresholds did not seem to be affected shock
stimulation. Thus, ahhough awareness was not assessed individuaHy in the
experiments reported in Studies II and III, it can be argued that the exposure
conditions employed prevented the subjects from becoming aware of the target
pictures.
From Study I, three other condusions should be emphasized. First, the SOA
seems to be the principal factor influencing the identification of the of the
target. Thus, it was the increase of the SOA that facilitated recognition and not only
exposure time of the target. This result is best integrated within an
model of backward masking (Massaro, 1975), suggesting that the presentation of the
masking stimulus interrupts the processing of the iconic representation of the target
(Neisser, From an integration model perspective, where some kind of fusion
between the target and the mask is postulated (e. g., BreHmeyer & Gan:z:, it
would be expected that the exposure time of the target should have
importance. Furthermore, the of the SOA in the uw"'"'''u
5
characteristic of central masking (Turvey,
of central origin. Second, ,,.,..r,.,..,h
our masking conditions were
parameters other than the SOA have
38
little effect on the thresholds. This is an interesting result which
'lH>nrrt' the that the of. emotional expressions should be a
robust phenomenon, even in cases of & JWA<ua.u,
1991 ). Third, happy faces seem to be easier to identify, especiaHy
compared to the angry This easier of happy compared to
angry not unprecedented is
<Jnmn"Pn,thr in conflict with the enhanced biological relevance of angry faces and the
results obtained for example, Hansen and Hansen should it be easier
to detect an angry face in a group of faces than the reverse (Hansen &
Hansen, when faces are easier to dassify? At least two
PY11,1>ln>J1t1oln< for this discrepancy could be entertained. The first one is that
the easier detection of faces could be the result of some kind of bias derived
from the positive/negative dimension of emotion categorisation. A<> several authors
have pointed out (e. g., Wagner, there are more negative than positive basic
emotions. Thus if, for example, the six basic emotions of Ekman are used, there is
one positive emotion (happiness), four negative (anger, fear, sadness, and disgust),
and one that can be either depending on the context (surprise). This bias for negative
emotions would make any categorical decision easier in the case of happy
expressions, not necessarily because of the perceptual properties of happy faces but
because there are less alternatives. However, although this bias could theoreticaHy
influence the results of the first experiment in Study I, the use of a forced-choice
procedure with one negative and one positive emotion (in an other recognition
experiments) reduces the appeal ofthis explanation.
Another theoreticaHy more interesting possibility would be that the
differences between happy and angry expressions are consequences of the function of
these expressions. Pitcairn (1989) argued that happy faces are easier to recognize in
still pictures because they have a communicative function, to communicate non-
aggression or friendliness. He argued that the happy face has evolved to become
more of a social signal than a reflection of some internal emotional state. On the
contrary, angry faces represent an internal state of anger, and part of the information
has a movement component that is not totally transmitted to still pictures. Thus, an
interpretation of this discrepancy would be that happy because of the
communicative function, have a redundancy of signals (Pitcairn, 1989) that make
them easy to identify, while angry faces are more important to evoke defense
strategies and physiological and motor responses. In other words, angry faces would
more easily elicit-action tendencies (Frijda, 1986), while perhaps because of their
communicative role or just as a consequence of physical stimulus characteristics (e.
g., the teeth in a
that this is just a
sense used Frijda
The results of
reported
39
and not unconscious emotional
that elicitation of SCRs to masked stimuH was
are in accordance with the results
and Soares
obtained a similar effect when snakes and
of fear-relevant
were used as the CS+. The fact that ,..,,,l,hnnirm
faces did not


should not be
by -'-"' '"'" U'v >
to the resuhs with
angry faces, did not show resistance to extinction
& this
faces have an inhibitory effect on aversively
conditioned responses. Aliso other cases of conditioning with neutral CSs have faHed
to show unconscious eliciting effects. Both Ferreira, and Ross (1974) using
letters as visual and and Soares (1993) with flowers and mushrooms
as the showed that effective backward eliminated differential
responding during extinction. Taken together, this obtained selectivity, that
only stimuli can resist masking and elicit conditioned responses,
supports the preparedness
Although faces have failed to survive backward masking it must be
admitted that the possibility of a association between a US and a
happy face was not examined. Would it be possible to elicit responses to a masked
happy face after a Pavlovian conditioning procedure using a US? This
question, although important for the CS-US belongingness issue &
Droungas, Ohman, 1993b), was not addressed in this thesis.
From the results of Experiment 3 in II attentional task was found to
interfere with physiological activation at a unconscious an important
theoretical conclusion can be drawn. The elicitation of physiological responses is not
completely automatic. Such a automaticity would imply no influence of
manipulation in the direction of attention. u"''"""" it seems to be a case of
& Graham, 1991). A consequence of this result is the
of human information
(Ohman,
40
integrate into the mainstream of the human Pavlovian literature. In
general, awareness of the CS-US contingency is assumed to be necessary for
coJ10JtJo:nmg to occur (Dawson & Furthermore,
has been denied in other contexts g.,
III showed that that had been
conditioned to effectively masked angry faces showed differential responding
afterwards when to the CSs without masks. One criticism of our
results could be to question the effectiveness of backward uw"ru'"l';
block
results of Study I and the Pilot experiment in
ignoring the
that some
on some became aware of the masked and also could become
aware of the CS-US contingency. the comparison with groups which
became aware of the CSs by (i.e., the conditioning control and
therefore also could became aware of the CS-US contingency, did not show any
difference. In fact, if awareness of the contingency of reinforcement was a necessary
condition for conditioning to occur, it should be expected that more subjects in the
conditioning control groups, compared with the preattentive groups, would become
conditioned. Thus, some differentiation should have been obtained between these
conditions, which was not the case.
This unconscious conditioning effect was obtained with fear-relevant
stimuli (see also Ohman & Soares, Thus, a possible explanation of the
discrepancy between our results and the dominant perspective would be to admit
that, in general, awareness of the CS-US contingency is necessary for Pavlovian
conditioning to occur, but when biologically relevant stimuli are used, partially
automatic stimulus analysis can take place and result in impHcit learning. Such a
capacity of potential threatening stimuli to elicit brief attentional shifts (Ohman,
is in accordance with the "pop-out" effect described by Hansen and Hansen
(1988).
is dependent on the definition of awareness and the choice of criteria for its
assessment. It should be emphasized that awareness of a perceived stimulus is not an
ali-or-none process. Some features of the target picture, by the attentional
could be integrated with the perception of the masking face (Breitmeyer &
Ganz, what is important here is that the subjects were not aware of
having been exposed to the CSs. Thus, a more awareness criterion
integration of the target and the mask deserves a last comment. In the control
conditions used in 2 and 3 neutral faces were used
as showed a tendency to more often the
"'"'"'"''<'"'' and also with relatively short were
easier to
3.2. CONCLUDING REMARKS
faces than angry ones.
and mask would become
faces are
The idea that our perceptual mechanisms are especially sensitive to the
detection of threat can be considered plausible from an evolutionary ""'"n"'"'rti"'"'
The early detection of potentially threatening stimuli/situations should aHow the
mobilisation of physiological and behavioural defense mechanisms and activate the
adequate responses before it is too late. Being a preliminary analysis, based on the
detection of some critical features, these eady mechanisms might exaggerate the risk
of encountering threatening situations and activate defense responses even in cases
of no potential danger. It should be noticed that, as postulated Ohman (1993a),
this unconscious activation of defense responses can take place at two levels. The first
would be a direct activation of the arousal system when some biologicaHy relevant
threatening features are detected. The second level would have more a "top-down"
origin, related to expectancies and the situational context, but stiH able of activate
defense responses before a conscious evaluation is completed. The bias to detect
threat studied by Mathews and coworkers (e. g., Mathews, 1990) falls into this second
level of unconscious activation of the defense system. The studies presented in this
thesis are related to the first level, an activation of physiological responses upon the
detection of significant threatening stimuli. The relevance of the angry faces as
threatening stimuli is garanteed the conditioning procedure.
The activation of anxiety and fear responses is a consequence of the normal
of our defense system. The tendency to discover danger even in situations
that offer none, although logical from an evolutionary point of must nri,crin,,.t,.
many "false-alarms". If it is accepted that this first evaluation is unconscious, then the
activation of the arousal system without a clear association to a perceived
stimulus could be responsible for the general state of uneasiness that characterizes
anxiety. Feelings of unexplained tension or even "spontaneous" panic could
42
of an appropriated conscious appraisal
The importance of the detection of angry faces to social fear and phobia
follows from this approach. Although the political, economic and social structures of
the existing societies have been the product of many transformations in the last
centuries, social interactions at the level of the smaH group have not changed much.
A reason for the actuality of the classic works in literature is this
Stories of love and hate are still regulated by the same mechanisms,
whether they be called primitive or not. A correct of a person's emotions
and intentions an important role in our social interactions. Furthermore, the
correct display and appraisal of facial expressions is related to the establishment of
dominance hierarchies, to the regulation of status within groups. Thus, early
detection of facial threatening cues has a dear functional value. In given the
importance of faces in nonverbal communication it is plausible to admit that much of
our social interactions are influenced by unconscious appraisals of others facial
displays. Furthermore, there is empirical evidence that this unconscious processing
can be self-perpetuating (Lewicki, Hill, & Sasaki, 1989). For example, negative first
impressions could be confirmed by a biased decoding of emotional expressions.
This approach suggests that it is plausible that the unconscious processing of
affective expressions plays a role in the development and maintenance of social
phobias and in anxiety disorders. Furthermore, the impairment of the ability of a
evaluation of others' emotional displays could be related to other dinical
problems. The study of impairments in the recognition of emotional facial
expressions in schizophrenics is a recent but growing field (see Morrison, Bellack, &
Mueser, 1988, for a review). Also, Cooley and Nowicki (1989) obtained slower
reaction times in the discrimination of emotional expressions in depressed patients
compared to normal subjects. Much work is still to be done in the understanding of
emotional behaviour and disturbances. The studies presented in this thesis are just a
small contribution to the field.
43
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ISSN 0 2 8 2 ~ 7 4 9 2
ISBN 91-554-3182-8
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 1993, 34, 1-18
Masking the face: Recognition of emotional facial
expressions as a function of the parameters
of backward masking
FRANCISCO ESTEVES and ARNE OHMAN
Department of Clinical Psychology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Esteves, F. & Ohman, A. (1993). Masking the face: Recognition of emotional facial
expressions as a function of the parameters of backward masking. Scandinavian Journal of
Psychology, 34, 1-18.
Four experiments are reported investigating recognition of emotional expressions in very
briefly presented facial stimulus. The faces were backwardly masked by neutral facial
displays and recognition of facial expressions was analyzed as a function of the manipula-
tion of different parameters in the masking procedure. The main conclusion was that
stimulus onset asynchrony between target and mask proved to be the principal factor
influencing recognition of the masked expressions. In general, confident recognitions of
facial expressions required about 100-150 msec, with shorter time for happy than for angry
expressions. The manipulation of the duration of both the target and the mask, by itself, had
only minimal effects.
Key words: Facial expressions, backward masking, recognition thresholds.
F. Esteves, Department of Clinical P.,yclwlogy, University of Uppsala, Box 1225, S-75142
Uppsala, SHeden
Human faces are psychologically interesting in several ways. First, since the face is funda-
mentally associated with an individual's identity, it provides unique information for his or
her identification. Second, facial expressions are a major source of nonverbal communica-
tion. It is through facial expressions that feelings and states of mind often are revealed.
Furthermore, facial expressions may allow the abstraction of a person's intentions. Thus,
facial expressions have a signaling function, allowing an observer to discriminate between,
for example, threatening and friendly encounters. Because of this functional significance,
humans are highly accurate in identifying facial expressions (Ekman, 1982). From these
considerations it could be expected that emotional expressions can be recognized easily, "'at
a single glance" as Francis Galton put it more than a hundred years ago (Young et a/.,
1987).
Zajonc ( 1980). argued that affective reactions to emotional stimuli (e.g. facial expressions)
are automatically evoked. that is, they do not require conscious analysis. The ease and
accuracy of emotional facial recognition has been demonstrated in several studies. Kirouac
& Dorc ( 1984) found that subjects were able to interpret emotional facial expressions
accurately under conditions of limited exposure ( 20- 50 mscc). McAndrew ( 1986) supported
these results in a cross-cultural study in which he found that accurate recognition of
emotional expressions was not impeded by a very brief exposure time ( 12-25 msec).
However, a briefly exposed visual stimulus may be available for processing as a sensory icon
lo9g after it is physically terminated. A standard technique to disrupt a sensory icon is to
present a new stimulus in a backward masking arrangement (e.g. Massaro. 1975). Thus. to
accurately control the available time for processing of a facial stimulus. it is necessary to usc
a masking stimulus. A primary aim of the present series of experiments was to examine
2 F. Esteves and A. Ohman Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
recognition of emotional expressions in very briefly presented facial stimuli using backward
masking as a means of accurately controling stimulus duration. It was inspired by classical
conditioning experiments (Ohman, 1986; Ohman eta!., 1989), which suggested that recog-
nition of emotional facial expressions occurs automatically, after a very brief stimulus
presentation.
Ohman et a!. ( 1989) reported that subjects previously conditioned to an angry face (with
a mild electric shock as the unconditioned stimulus), responded with larger and more
frequent skin conductance responses (SCRs) to the angry face (CS+) as compared to
another expression (a happy face. the CS- ), when the stimuli were presented very briefly
(e.g. 30 msec) and pattern masked by other faces showing neutral expressions. These results
indicate that the SCRs could be elicited despite the masking procedure which prevented the
subjects from becoming consciously aware of the stimulus (cf. Marcel, 1983).
The present series of studies was designed to further elucidate the effect of masking on
the recognition of emotional facial expressions. The masks employed in these experiments
portrayed men and women displaying neutral facial expressions. The use of these masks
had the advantage that they were similar to the target in two ways: (I) they had similar
luminance, and (2) they occupied approximately the same area as the target on the slide.
The purpose of the experiments was to study to what extent the manipulation of different
parameters in a backward masking paradigm affected perceptual thresholds for identifica-
tion of emotional expressions of a target picture. In Experiment 1, using the ascending
method of limits, thresholds for identification of emotional expressions were compared to
thresholds for the recognition of gender and person identification. In Experiment 2, a
forced-choice paradigm was used and recognition of emotional expressions at different
stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) was compared to the ability to perceive two pictures
(target and mask) or just one (control condition). In Experiment 3, a forced-choice task
similar to the one used in Experiment 2 was combined with confidence ratings where the
subjects were instructed to the rate level of confidence in their answers. In Experiment 4,
target and mask exposure time, as well as SOA, were varied, to determine the effects on
recognition of the target.
EXPERIMENT I
In the series of masked conditioning experiments mentioned above, Ohman and co-workers
have mainly used a 30 msec SOA between target and mask (Ohman, 1986; Ohman et at.,
1989). The primary purpose of Experiment I was to investigate identification thresholds of
emotional expressions in a backward masking procedure.
Another purpose was to compare recognition of these briefly exposed emotional expres-
sions to the recognition of gender and the identity of a person. The information-processing
models of face recognition (e.g. Bruce & Young, 1986; Ellis, 1986; Rhodes, 1985) do not
agree on whether identification of a face or its emotional expression is encoded first.
Although some authors (Galper & Hochberg, 1971; Sorce & Campos, 1974) have argued
that differences in emotional expressions influence face recognition, most authors agree on
the independence of these processes, and suggest that recognition of facial expressions
occurs in parallel with the recognition of identity (Bruce, 1986; Bruce & Young; 1986, Calis
& Mens, 1986). The relationship between the analyses of physical characteristics such as sex
or age and the identification of a familiar person is somewhat more controversial. Ellis
( 1986) has proposed a sequential processing model: First a face is identified as such, second
simple physical characteristics are identified (e.g. sex and age), and third the face is
categorized as familiar or not. In support of such a notion, Sergent ( 1986), has obtained
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993) expressions
shorter reaction times to sex as compared to face identification. Oppos-
ing this view, Bruce and co-workers eta!., 1987; Roberts & Bruce, have
for the independence of these different stages.
that characteristics such as sex, and emotional less time
than judgements of familiarity. processing, on the other hand, would not result
in different times to recognize sex or identity of faces. Thus, the secondary purpose of
Experiment I was to compare thresholds of emotional to thresholds
of gender recognition and person identification.
METHOD
Thirty subjects (19 females and II males, aged 15-57 yrs, with a mean of 27 yrs), mainly Psychology
students, participated in the experiment and were paid for their participation. The subjects were
randomly assigned to one of three conditions: the emotion-group, the gender-group and the person-group,
with ten subjects each.
Apparatus
The subject sat in a comfortable armchair inside a Tegner sound-attenuating cubicle (2.7 x 1.2 x 2.0 m).
Two projectors equipped with high speed shutters (Vincent Associates Uniblitz 214L), were used (one
for each slide, the target and the mask). The pictures were projected through a window in the chamber
onto a milk-glass screen inside the experimental room, approximately 2m in front of the subject. The
projected picture had a size of 33 x 22 em. The exposure time of the slides (i.e. the time the shutter was
open) was controlled by an electronic timer. All apparatuses were placed outside the cubicle.
The experimental room was equipped with an intercom, allowing the subject and the experimenter to
communicate, and the room was dimly lit in order to avoid total darkness and reduce problems of light
adaptation ( cf. Purcell et a!., 1987).
Thirty-six black and white slides of facial expressions chosen from Ekman & Friesen's ( 1976) Pictures
of Facial Affect were used. They depicted 12 models (six males and six females), each expressing three
types of emotional facial expressions, angry, happy and neutral. Ten different sets of stimuli were
constructed with these slides, so that in each set only four different persons (two males and two females),
expressing three different emotional expressions (angry, happy and neutral), were used as targets (picture
I). The remaining eight persons were used as masks (picture 2), balanced to allow the same number of
pairs in each sex-combination of target and mask (i.e. three male-male pairs, three female-male pairs,
etc). Each set was shown to three subjects, one from each experimental group, and the presentation
orders of the pairs of stimuli were randomized.
Procedure
Subjects had different experimental tasks depending on which group they had been assigned to. In the
emotion-group the task was to identify the facial expression of picture I. Subjects were informed that the
expression would be either angry, happy or neutral and that picture 2 was always a neutral face. In the
gender-group subjects were instructed to report whether picture I was a man or a woman. The
person-group entailed a more complicated task. Prior to the experimental proper, subjects participated in
a learning phase, in which they were shown pictures of four different. persons (two men and two women).
These persons were named Adam. Berti!, Ann. and Birgit, that is, common Swedish names.
The learning phase began with 12 exposures (two seconds each). and the experimenter indicated
through the imercom the name of each person (e.g. "'this is Adam"). After these 12 exposures the
Slnl>jects were asked if they thought that they could recognize the faces. If the answer was negative more
exposures were given until the subject expressed confidence in recognizing the faces. The learning task
was terminated by a test series. Accurate recognition of all persons was a prerequisite for initiating the
3
4 F. Esteves and A. Ohman Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993 J
experimental task. The criterion for learning the persons was six successive correct answers. The subjects
were encouraged that it was not important how long it took to l e ~ r n to recognize the persons. hut that
it was important that they could recognize the faces without errors before the second pan of the
experiment begun.
The subjects were seated comfortably in the cubicle before receiving mstructions. They were instructed
to look at the screen where piclures of facial expressions were to be shown. They were told that each
time a new slide was shown there would be. in fact. two pictures. exposed in the same part of the field,
one preceding the other in time. Because of the short duration of the exposure. they would not be able
to see the first one---picture I (the target) but just the second one-picture 2 (the mask). An ascending
method of limits procedure was used. The exposure time of the first picture. where their allention was
to be directed, was gradually extended. Subjects were instructed to identify each new target in a three
stage process. First they should say when they began to see "something more" then just one face. The
second step was to "guess" the correct characteristic (different for the three experimental groups) as soon
as they suspected il. The experimenter would continue to increase the duration time of picture l until
they could "be sure" of the right attribute. When picture 1 was identified the same procedure begun with
another pair of faces. Each trial was preceded by a warning from the experimenter. who said "now"
through the intercom.
The exposure time of the masking stimulus was always 30 msec. For each new pair of slides, ex-
posure time of the target began with l 0 msec in the first presentation and was increased by 5 msec
for each trial (new presentation). The same pair of slides was exposed. until the subject could correctly
identify the relevant characteristic. The interlrial interval ranged between two and ten seconds and
was manually controlled by the experimenter. Each subject was required to identify twelve target
pictures.
The dependent variable was the target-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) (i.e. the exposure time
of the target) in the three response categories: ( l) When the subject reported that something more then
just one face could be seen. (2) when the subject made a correct guess, and (3) when the subject asserted
that he or she was sure of the attribute. The three times were recorded by the experimenter on a score
sheet for the twelve target-mask pairs. In the case of a wrong sure-answer the experimenter continued
to show the same pair, increasing the exposure time of the target, until the subject could correctly
identify the characteristic.
The data were analysed separately for each response category by an A NOVA with 3 (experimental
group) x 3 (emotion of the target) x 2 (sex-combination of target-mask) split-plot model (Kirk, 1968).
with experimental group as the between-groups factor and the other two variables as within-groups
factors.
RESULTS
The mean SOAs for each response category, in the three experimental groups, are shown in
Table I.
Only four trials in the complete experiment (two subjects with two each) had correct
guesses at SOA 30 msec and none were sure of the correct answer at that SOA. At SOA
40 msec there were three correct identifications (2.5'!;,) in the AH three were
happy expressions.
Recognition of happy faces was obtained at lower SOAs compared to the angry and
neutral expressions, as shown by a main effect of Emotion of the target in the ANOV As of
Table l. Mean SOA (in milliseconds) for each response category in the three experimental groups
Response category
Group Something more Guess Sure
Emotion 42 100 126
Gender 53 109 144
Person 47 113 142
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
uSomething more"
200
200
150
150
4!
0
"'

100
100
.,
:0:
50
50
0
0
(a)
HAPPY NEUTRAl (b)
200
150
100
50
0
ANGRY HAPPY
(c) Emotion of the target
nGtneSS!o
ANGRY HAPPY
Experimental Group:
"Emotion
" Gender
., Person
NEUTRAL
expressions
NEUTRAl
Fig. 1. Mean SOA (in milliseconds) in the three response categories, in Experiment I: Something more
(a), guess (b), and sure (c). The results are displayed in the three Experimental groups (Emotion,
Gender, and Person), for angry, happy, and neutral target emotions.
each of the three response categories, F( 2,54) > 8.00, p < 0.001. The interaction between
Experimental group and Emotion of the target was also significant in the response categories
guess and sure, F(4,54) > 10.82, p < 0.001 (see Fig. I, (b) and (c)).
As can be seen in Fig. I, it was the emotion-group which had a different pattern of
responding compared to the other two groups. In this group only, a Tukey's HSD
test (at a rejection level of 0.05), revealed. for both the response categories guess and sure,
that the mean SOA for happy faces was significantly shorter than that for angry faces, which
was in its turn. shorter than the mean SOA for neutral ones.
Target-mask pairs of sex were identified at lower SOAs compared to same-sex
pairs, as shown a main effect of Gender combination, which was in all the three
response categories, F{ I ,27) > 11.29. p < 0.01.
Fig. 2 shows the interaction between Experimental group and Gender combination. The
difference between same and opposite sex was greater in the to the
other two groups. m a interaction in the response categories
guess and sure, F( 2,27) > 5. 78, p < 0.01. Indeed, in these response the differ-
ence between same and opposite sex in target-mask pairs was significant in the gender-
group, I( 27) > 2.3, p < 0.05, but not in the other two groups (see 2, (b)
and (c)).
5
6 F. Esteves and A. Scand .I Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
----------------------------------------------------------
"Something more" "Guess"
200
<
150
0
(I)
iii
"
100
2:
(a)
Emotion Gender Person (b) Emotion Gender Person
II SAME
0 OPPOSITE
"Sure"
(c) Emotion
Gender Person
Experimental Gmup
Fig. 2. Mean SOA (in milliseconds) in the three response categories, in Experiment I: Something more
(a), guess (b), and sure (c). The results are displayed in the three Experimental groups (Emotion,
Gender, and Person), for the same and opposite sex combinations of target-mask.
DISCUSSION
Identification thresholds for the three Experimental groups were quite similar in all response
categories-no significant group differences were obtained. This result is in accordance with
Bruce & Young's (1986) model, and it suggests that identification of facial expressions,
analyses of physical characteristics such as sex, and judgements of identity of faces occur in
parallel.
We found that the thresholds for happy faces were lower than those for the other
expressions, which is in accordance with the better performance in the identification of happy
expressions reported before (Ekman, 1982; Kirouac & Don':, 1983).
The thresholds scores we obtained in the three experimental groups indicate that, a subject
requires approximately 100-150 msec to accurately different attributes in a target
face, when using a 30 msec mask of a face. Thus, the SOA of 30 msec used Ohman and
co-workers in their conditioning studies, should be regarded as below threshold for conscious
perception, and subjects could be considered unaware of the presented stimuli ( cf. Ohman,
eta!., 1989). However, some caution should be taken in these conclusions. The method of
limits, relying on subjects own interpretation of, for example, being sure of a stimulus
attribute, can be criticized as subjective. This implies that these results should be confirmed
means of other methods. Kn Experiment 2 a forced-choice procedure was used in order to
further investigate recognition of masked facial expressions.
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
Recognition of masked facial expressions 7
EXPERIMENT 2
The forced-choice detection paradigm is one of the most
determine thresholds for conscious Typically this method subjects to
make presence-absence about a target, while varying stimulus energy levels (e.g.
different exposure Thresholds are defined as the minimal level significantly ~ A ' - ~ ~ u u s
chance performance.
In 2, a modified forced-choice method was used in two
decided whether the target a
whether they saw one or two
examine if the results emotional m
using a forced-choice task. The second aim was to
able to report the perception of more than one stimulus.
when were
A main effect by SOA was
so that SOAs were to facilitate pe1fo1m<mce. Lower thresholds
for the identification of happy faces compared to angry faces were Pv1-oPrtPrl from the results
in Experiment I.
METHOD
Sixteen new subjects (which had not taken part in Experiment I), mainly Psychology students,
participated in the experiment. There were 12 females and four males, aged 18-42 yrs, with a mean of
29 yrs. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups and were paid for their participation.
Apparatus and stimuli
The apparatus was the same as that used in Experiment I. The stimuli were male pictures only, taken
from the set used in Experiment I, six males, each displaying three facial expressions-angry, happy
and neutral.
Eight orders of 24 pairs of stimuli were constructed. Each list was shown to two subjects, one from
each group. The targets were 12 happy and 12 angry faces (each picture was used twice) and the mask
list was composed by the six neutral faces, shown four times each, with the restriction that, on each
trial, target and mask person could not be the same.
Presentation orders of the pairs of stimuli were randomized. Each pair was shown eight times, seven
times with different SOAs. and one control trial. in which only the mask was shown, yielding a total of
192 trials per subject.
Procedure
Subjects in the Emotion-group were informed that each time they saw a new picture on the screen it
had actually been preceded by another picture. Due to its brief but varying exposure time they would
sometimes but not always be able to distinguish the first picture. The first picture would always show
either a happy or an angry face. In contrast, the second picture would always portray a neutral
expression. The task was simply to guess whether the first picture revealed an angry or a happy
expression.
Subjects in the Numher-group were informed that each new trial would sometimes consist of either
two overlapping pictures, one preceding the other in time, or of only one picture. The first picture
would always be of an angry or a happy expression while the second slide would be a neutral face.
Their task consisted of reporting whether they saw one of two pictures, if in doubt, they were
instructed to guess.
Exposure time of target and mask stimuli was always 30 msec, while SOAs varied (30, 60, 70, 90,
120, 180, and 230 msec). In the control trials only the mask was shown for 60 msec. The intertrial
interval varied between 5 and I 0 sec and was manually controlled by the experimenter. The answers
were recorded by the experimenter on a scoring sheet.
The data were analysed separately for each experimental group by an AN OVA with a 2 (emotion of
!he target) x 8 (seven different SO As and the control condition) factorial design.
8 F. Esteves and A. Ohman ScanJ J Psvchol 34 ( 199]
1
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Percent correct identifications in the dillerent SOAs and percent and angry responses
in the control condition are shown in Fig. 3, (a).
A increase in with longer SOAs was obtained .. as shown a mam
effect of SOA, = 55.90, p < 0.001. An interaction between SOA and Emotion of the
target was observed, with higher for angry faces at lower SOAs. but better
faces when the SOA was long, F(7,49) = 4.09. p < 0.01.
the mask stimulus (neutral was shown on the control trials.
rPrlrwtPrl them more often as angry rather than happy (means of 61.5'/':, and
that is, there was a bias for nPr''"""''n
were greater than
chance. Post-hoc comparisons were made using
Correct identifications
100
%
80
60
Ill
40 <!>
-HAPPY
20
0 .,-
c 50 100 150 200 250
(a)
SOA
Reports of two stimuli
100
%
80
60
40
-ANGRY
-+--- HAPPY
20
0
Ill
I
c
50 100 150 200 250
(b)
SOA
Fig. 3. Percent correct recognitions of happy and angry targets, at different SO As (a), and percent
identifications of two pictures with happy and angry targets (b), in Experiment 2. The results of the
control condition (only one neutral face) are shown by the letter C: Percent happy and angry answers
(a). and percent two-pictures responses (b).
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
expressions 9
For the angry percent correct identifications at SO As up to !80 msec were not
statistically different from the control condition. The SOA of 230 msec reached ~ ' " ' " u ' ' - " H ' - ' ~ ,
< 0.05).
The number of correct identifications significantly differed < 0.05) from
chance for SO As of 60 msec or more. However the number of correct answers did not exceed
chance when the SOA was 30 msec.
1
These thresholds are in accordance to the ones obtained in Fig. I). Thus,
a neutral face for 30 msec as a mask, SO As under 60 msec can be said to be
subliminal, i.e., under the threshold of conscious oerct:otlotl.
The of better identification of
condition was used as the measure of chance. Since
were rated as angry, the of the results becomes
between angry and neutral faces has been
Hansen, I In this the confusion interacted with the
mance for faces.
2
The confusion
1982; Hansen &
better perfor-
Better discrimination of two pictures was obtained with increasing SOA, and when the target
was a happy face compared to an angry one. Thus the ANOVA revealed a main effect of
SOA, F(7,49) =47.67, p <0.001 and a main effect of Emotion, F(l,7) = !3.82, p <0.01.
To test if the number of correct reports of two stimuli, at the different SOAs, was greater
than chance, we used the control condition as the measure of chance. As previously
described, Tukey's HSD test was used for these comparisons. Both for angry and happy
faces, percent reports of two stimuli at SOA 60 msec and above differed significantly from
chance (p < 0.05). However, this was not true for SOA 30 msec (see Fig. 3,
3
Thus,
subjects were able to discriminate two pictures at a SOA at 60 msec, or even 30 msec for
happy faces when using t-tests. This corresponds quite well to the SOAs in Experiment I
where subjects begun to see "something more" than just one picture.
In general, the results of Experiment 2 were in accordance with the thresholds obtained in
the less stringent method of limits procedure. Nevertheless, due to the controversy on which
methods to use to assess conscious perception (e.g. Eriksen l 960; Cheesman & Merikle,
1986) it should be interesting to compare thresholds obtained means of forced-choice
procedures to more subjectively defined thresholds within the same experiment This was the
purpose of Experiment 3.
EXPERIMENT 3
Several empirical and theoretical studies have focussed on the possibility that semantic
decisions may take place in the absence of conscious perception (for reviews see Holender,
1986; Marcel, 1983). Cheesman & Mcrikle ( 1986) observed that experiments different
1
Using one-tailed 1-lests to minimize type II errors. the same thresholds were obtained for happy
faces, but for angry faces a SOA of 90 msec resulted in reliably bctlcr recognition than the control
condition.
2
The use of Signal Detection Theory ( Swets, 1964: McNicol. 1972) is usually the method of choice
to deal with this problem, making it possible to distinguish sensitivity of the decisions from response
bias. One problem with this method is !he high number of trials demanded. Having only 10 trials per
condition for each subject made the usc of this method inappropriate (McNicoL 1972, p. 101 ).
one-tailed 1-tesls, the same pattern was obtained for angry faces, hut for happy faces all SOAs
had significantly more reports of two stimuli than the control condition.
10 F. Esteves and A.
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
methods to assess
thresholds discordant results. In order to reconcile the
a distinction between and thresholds.
they
Objective threshold
was defined as the level of discrimination corresponding to chance
assessed in a forced-choice (Cheesman & Merikle, 1984;
threshold referred to the
assessed their reports on what
The method of limits, used
2 assesses the
similar to the one used in used in Experiment 3 to assess objective
thresholds for conscious confidence on each decision
were used as a measure of the subjective threshold. The main purpose of Experiment 3 was
to compare thresholds of emotional faces these two methods at
SOAs. Cheesman & Merikle ( 1986), obtained subjective thresholds at higher stimulus energy
levels to the objective ones. it was here, that
thresholds. measured confidence ratings, should be associated with SOAs than
thresholds obtained in the forced-choice condition.
METHOD
Subjects
Twenty one psychology students (14 females and 7 males. aged 20-36 yrs, with a mean of 27 yrs)
volunteered to participate in the experiment. One subject had a strong bias to identify neutral faces
(control condition) as angry (96'X,) and was not included in the subsequent analyses. The subjects had
not participated in the previous experiments and were paid for their participation.
Apparatus and stimuli
The apparatus was similar to the one used in the previous experiments with the exception that the
sound-attenuating cubicle was different (2 x 2 x 2m). Consequently. the distance between the subject's
eyes and the screen was shorter (about 1.5 m) and the size of the projected picture was smaller
(29 x !9 em).
The stimuli were the same as those used in Experiment 2. Ten orders of 15 pairs were constructed and
each list was presented to two subjects. The targets were six happy. six angry and three neutral faces and
the mask list was composed of the six neutral faces, repeated two or three times, with the restriction that
target and mask person could not be the same on an individual trial.
Presentation orders of the pairs of stimuli were randomized and each pair was shown eight times.
The pairs with happy and angry targets were shown with eight different SOAs and the control pairs
(neutral target and neutral mask) were shown with a SOA of 20 msec, resulting in a total of 120 trials
per subject.
Procedure
Instructions were given orally and were the same for all subjects. The first part of the instructions was
the same as in Experiment 2 for the Emotion-group. In order to reduce the bias obtained in Experiment
2. subjects were explicitly told that the first picture would be a happy face in half of the trials and an
angry face in the other half. so the chance for a correct guess was 50%.
Subjects were to underline either the word angry or happy on a scoring sheet each trial. Subjects
also rated their of confidence on a nine-point scale, ranging from guess, believe to sure.
Guess corresponded to values I. 2, 3. believe to 4, 5. 6, and sure to 7. 8. 9. A dim red light was
shown for two seconds preceding each pair of slides in order to prepare the subject to attend to the
screen.
Exposure time of the mask stimulus was always 30 msec. The target was exposed for 20 msec in the
control condition and in the lowest SOA (SOA 20) otherwise the exposure time was 30 msec. The SOAs
used were 20. 30, 50. 80, 120. 170. 230, and 300 msec. Thus. the increase between two SOAs followed
a geometric series. Each subject saw 120 trials ( 15 pairs repeated eight times), with an intertrial interval
between seven and twelve seconds.
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993) expressions
The results were analysed separately for the forced-choice and the confidence data. In the forced-
choice data an ANOV A with 2 (emotion of the target) x 9 (eight SO As and the control) factorial design
was used. An ANOVA with 3 happy, correct angry, and errors) x 8 (SOA) factorial
design was used for the confidence ratings.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Forced-choice data
Percent correct identifications in the different SOAs and percent
in the control condition are shown in Fig. 4,
and angry responses
Better nPriAnn
with increased SOA was The A NOVA showed a main effect
of SOA, = 37.88, p < 0.001. The interaction between SOA and Emotion of the
target obtained in 2 was significant, F(S/152) =4.77,p <0.001.
Correct idelltificatiolls
100
%
130
60
ill
-ANGRY
40
<I>
-- HAPPY
20
0 .,-
c 50 100 150 200 250 300
(a)
SOA
--
ANGRY
Confidence ratings
-
HAPPY
-
ERRORS
9
7
5
3
so 100 150 200 250 300
(b)
SOA
Fig. 4. Percent correct identifications for happy and angry targets, at different SO As (a), and mean
confidence ratings for correct (happy and angry) responses, and for errors (b), in Experiment 3. Percent
happy and angry responses in the control condition (neutral target and neutral mask) are shown by the
letter C (a).
ll
12 F. Esteves and A.
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
As m
2, although only neutral faces were shown in the control condition,
them more often as angry than (means of 61 . 7% and
the control condition was used as a measure of chance level for
responding or angry, and
with percent correct identifications at
the different SOAs were made
For the angry faces, percent correct identifications for SOAs of 170 msec or more were
different from the control condition, < 0.05), but the difference remained
for SOAs up to 120 msec. For happy faces, when SOA was 50 msec or more,
percent correct identifications was greater than chance < For SOAs of 20 and
30 msec this difference was not
4
the subjects were informed that 50';1,, of the targets portrayed
faces, the bias toward angry answers in the control condition was again obtained. For this
reason, the control condition was used
forced-choice task. Using this base rate,
ones, the results obtained in
Confidence data
as the criterion for chance
faces showed better
I and 2.
To analyse these data, the mean confidence ratings for correct happy and angry identifica-
tions and for errors was computed for each within each SOA. Because the number
of errors, at SO As, was small, confidence ratings for and angry errors
were collapsed.
Fig. 4, (b), shows the mean confidence ratings of the different SOAs for correct identifica-
ions (happy and angry) and for errors. The ANOVA revealed main effects of Answer
'correct happy. correct angry and errors), F(2,38) = 65.76, p < 0.001, and SOA,
!'( '7 .13 3) = 30.9 I, p < 0.00 L The interaction between Answer and SOA was also significant,
r"! 14.266) = 13.08, p < O.OOL
To test if subjects could subjectively differentiate correct answers from errors by using
different confidence post-hoc comparisons were made within each SOA using Tukey's
HSD test At SOAs of 20, 30. and 50 msec the differences were not significant For SOAs of
~ 0 and 120 msec, the subject's ratings of correct happy responses were significantly above the
ratings of errors, but no difference was obtained for angry faces. For SOAs of 170 msec or
greater, subjects were more confident in their correct answers (both for happy and angry
faces) compared to errors, p < 0.05). Confidence ratings did not show the bias for angry
answers at lower SOAs, and, in general, showed greater confidence for answers.
Our between objective and subjective thresholds for conscious perception was
based on two assumptions: ( l) the control condition can be used as a criterion for chance
level in the forced-choice decision, and (2) subjective threshold can be measured as the SOA
where subjects begin to show more confidence on correct responses than on errors. Given
these two premises, we found that, the objective threshold for identification of happy faces
ranged between 30 and 50 msec, and the threshold between 50 and 80 msec, using
tesL Thus, for faces, the between the two thresholds was in
accordance with Cheesman and Merikle 's ( 1986) hypothesis. For the angry faces, both
and subjective thresholds were between 120 and 170 msec, i.e., no clear differences
were found between the thresholds using this method.
Experiment 3 demonstrated that it was to study of masked stimuli
using both and methods to assess thresholds. In Experiment 4 this
one-tailed 1-lesls to minimize type II errors, the same pallern was obtained for angry faces. For
happy faces all SOAs had significantly more correct responses than control condition.
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
method was used to further
and mask duration times.
EXPERIMENT 4
The results of backward
this issue,
expressions
conditions with target
used. Eriksen & Eriksen ( 1971) a silent target on:sent<Ltl
m the stimulus parameters
in which exposure time
in which exposure time
was enhanced in the
of the target was held constant, to a continuous target
was the same as the SOA. The results indicated that
continuous condition.
I used a continuous target 2 and 3, in
which a silent presentation was employed. 4 these two conditions in a
within design. Based on Eriksen & Eriksen's (1971) finding we hypothesized that
performance would be facilitated in the continuous condition.
The duration of the mask is another parameter requiring further analysis. In Experiments
1-3 a duration of 30 msec was used. Increasing mask duration would probably enhance
the masking effect A verbach & Coriell, Experiment 4 compared a mask duration
of 30 msec to durations, 60 and 120 msec, for which performance was expected
to worsen. As m Experiments 1-3, we hypothesized that SO As would facilitate
recognition.
METHOD
Subjects
Sixteen new subjects ( eigth males and eight females, aged 17-27 yrs, with a mean of 20 yrs) participated
in the experiment. The subjects were paid for their participation.
Apparatus and stimuli
The apparatus was the same as that used in Experiment 3. The stimuli were the same 36 black and white
slides used in Experiment I.
Eight orders were constructed using 36 pairs of stimuli, which formed two blocks of 18 pairs each.
Each list was shown to two subjects in different block order. The targets were 18 happy and 18 angry
faces (some pictures, taken by chance, were used twice). The masks consisted of 12 neutral faces,
presented three times each. The target-mask pairs could not include the same person nor persons of the
opposite sex. Each target-mask pair was presented six to seven times, in different exposure conditions
(SOA and mask exposure time could vary), forming two blocks of 120 trials. Each block contained five
angry and five happy targets in four different SOAs, and each SOA was tested in three different mask
exposure times. In order to use a within subjects design, the number of different SOAs was reduced to
four.
Procedure
The oral instructions were similar to those in Experiment 3, but no mention was made regarding the
probability of angry versus happy face presentations. The experiment was divided into two blocks, one
with a silent target presentation, i.e. exposure time was always 30 msec, and one with a continuous target
presentation, i.e. exposure time was the same as the SOA. The order of these two blocks was randomized
between subjects. Each block consisted of four different SO As: 30, 60, 120, and 240 msec. and within
each SO A, exposure time of the mask was 30. 60, or 120 msec. Five happy and five angry trials of each
SOA x mask-duration x block yielded 240 trials.
The results were analyzed separately for the forced-choice items and the confidence ratings. An
ANOVA with 2 (block) x 4 (SOA) x 3 (mask exposure time) x 2 (expression of the target) factorial
design was used in the forced-choice analysis. The confidence rating data was analysed with a similar
factorial design with the difference thai expression of the target had three levels-correct happy answer,
correct answer and wrong answer.
13
14 F. Esteves and A. Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Forced-choice data
A increase of correct identifications with increased SOA was as shown
a main effect of SOA, = 101.77, p < 0.001. A HSD test indicated that a!l
SOA significantly differed from each other < 0.05).
A interaction between SOA and Emotion of the target was obtained,
= 4.28, p < 0.0 I, which replicated Performance was better for
angry faces at a SOA of 30 msec, but better faces was obtained when
the SOA was The lack of a control condition does not allow its use as a measure of
chance level, but a bias for angry answers in low SOAs, similar to the one obtained in the
would be expected.
The prediction that performance would be enhanced in the continuous block was
not The variable Block, comparing silent versus continuous stimulus presenta-
tion, did not produce any significant differences, F( I, 15) = 2. 72, p > .I 0 (see 5,
Correct identifications
100
%
80
60
40
- Silent
20 - Continuous
0
0 50 100 150 200 250
(a)
SOA
Confidence ratings
9
7
5
3
- Continuous
0 so 100 150 200 250
(b)
SOA
Fig. 5. Percent correct identifications (a) and mean confidence ratings (b) for the silent and the
continuous conditions, at different SOAs, in Experiment 4.
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993) expressions 15
ratings
These data were analysed m the same manner as in Experiment 3. The mean confidence
ratings were for each for correct angry, correct and wrong answers.
The A NOVA indicated main effects of Block, SOA, and Expression. In the Block
were more confident in the continuous trials to the silent ones,
F( I, 15) = 13.34, p < 0.0 I (see Fig. 5, There was a significant main effect of SOA,
F( 3,45) = 71.82. The test indicated no significant differences between 30 and 60 msec
(means of 3.4 and but these were in turn significantly different from 120 which,
was signficantly different from 240 msec of 7.0). The Expression-of-the-target main
effect was = 62.80, p < 0.001, the test that the three
levels significantly differed from each other.
The interaction between SOA and Expression of the target was
= 27.45, p < 0.001. A Tukey's HSD test resulted in no significant differences in the
SOA 30 condition; in SOA 60, confidence in correct happy answers was statistically different
from correct angry and wrong answers; in SOA 120 the three categories were significantly
different from each other; and, in SOA 240 msec, both correct categories were significantly
different from wrong answers.
Exposure time of the mask did not influence the results as Neither the
forced-choice nor the confidence data showed any effect of mask duration. As in the
preceding experiments, an effect of SOA was obtained. Both the forced-choice and the
confidence data showed better performance at longer SOAs.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The main conclusion from the present studies is that SOA seems to be the principal factor
influencing perception of masked emotional faces. In all experiments, recognition of the
emotional expression of the target was improved monotonically as the SOA increased.
Identification of the expressions did not seem to depend on an increased exposure time of the
target ( cf. Experiment 4 and the distinction between silent and continuous presentation).
Instead, accurate identification depended on the availability of time in which to process the
target (i.e. the time elapsed until the onset of the masking picture). Taken together, this series
of studies indicated that a target presentation of approximately 100 msec is necessary for
accurate recognilion of facial expressions.
One important consequence is that with the SOA of 30 msec used by Ohman and
co-workers in their conditioning studies (Ohman, 1986; Ohman et a/., 1989), there was no
evidence of conscious identification of the facial expressions of the target This conclusion
appears valid independently of the method used to assess thresholds, be they forced-choice
paradigms or more subjective ones, like confidence and the method of limits.
Although there were individual differences, a SOA of 30 msec appeared clearly to be below
threshold for all subjects.
with letters and pattern masks (e.g. A verbach &
197 i), Massaro ( 1975) concluded that subjects needed
From backward masking
Coriell, 1961; Eriksen & Eriksen,
about 250 msec to
The fact that faces appear to
require less time than arbitrary stimuli such as leUers is consistent with the
notion of based skills to decode facial Ohmann &
1984), and in with the importance of faces as valid stimuli for humans.
H is interesting to note that the manipulation of other physical parameters of the stimuli,
like duration of the mask, influenced identification. Indeed, another
of the target and the mask were
16 F. Esteves and A. Ohman Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993)
lated. When intensity of the target was greater than intensity of the mask, a U-shaped curve
was obtained, similar to the results reported by Turvey ( 1973). However, the absolute
intensity level, at least within the intensity range used, did not seem to influence recognition.
Concerning the distinction between objective and subjective thresholds of awareness, the
results of Experiment 3 showed that objective thresholds for happy faces were obtained at
lower SOAs than subjective thresholds. This is in accordance with Cheesman & Merikle's
( 1986) results, with higher stimulus energy levels associated with subjective rather than
objective thresholds. This differentiation was not obtained for angry faces. One reason for
this failure to differentiate objective and subjective thresholds could be that the SOAs used
were too far apart to detect possible differences. Thus, had we used several SOAs around
150 msec we could have been able to show differentiation.
Lower thresholds for happy faces were observed as a general pattern in all the experi-
ments. This result is in accordance with other studies ( cf. Kirouac & Dore, 1983), and
consistent with the higher percentage of correct identifications of happy expressions (Ek-
man, 1982). Apparently, this contrasts with the "Face-in-the-crowd effect", described by
Hansen & Hansen ( 1988). They presented subjects with pictures of a group of happy faces
which included one deviant angry face, and pictures of an angry crowd containing one
happy face. Hansen and Hansen obtained shorter reaction times to identify an angry face
m a happy crowd than vice versa. They concluded that angry faces could "pop-out" of a
,;rowd, and they demonstrated that preattentive mechanisms were involved in this phe-
nomenon. This notion seems to be contradicted by the results obtained in our studies.
However, several important differences should be noted. In Hansen and Hansen's studies,
- an important function of the preattentive analysis was the direction of attention. Angry
cues in the crowd appeared to direct the attention to that part of the stimulus array. The
fact that the focus of attention was directed to the "right" face at a preattentive level
facilitated the response. However, it may be assumed from their latency scores that
conscious mechanisms were already activated at the time a response was made. In our
studies, however, attention was always directed to the masking face. At short SOAs, and
with short mask exposures, subjects could not pick-up much information, either from the
target or from the mask. Interestingly, despite instructions explicitly stating that masks
were always neutral and that targets were happy faces in half of the trials, subjects tended
to classify the neutral masking faces as angry more often than as happy. One possible
interpretation of this finding is in line with the face-in-the-crowd effect. When information
is scarce, as, for example, with short SOAs, subjects tend to search for threatening cues
because of their survival value. Subjects were able to pick up threatening features ( cf.
Aronoff et a/., 1988), both in the target and the mask, at a preattentive level. The response
they chose in the forced-choice task was then influenced by the isolation of these features,
although the subjects were not aware of their existence. At longer SOAs, and because
attention always was directed to the stimuli, subjects began to pick up physical characteris-
tics of happy faces (e.g. the teeth in a smiling face), which became more salient than the
preattentive threatening cues. This could also be a possible explanation of the interaction
obtained between Emotion of the target and SOA.
This preattentive analysis of threatening features in masked angry faces, may explain the
results in Ohman's conditioning studies (Ohman, 1986; Ohman eta/., 1989). The differen-
tial responding to aversive stimuli they reported can not be attributed to less effective
masking of angry faces, since, on the contrary, our experiments showed higher thresholds
for angry faces. We postulate that differences in responding to aversive stimuli is due to the
possibility of directing attention to threatening cues before a complete analysis of the
stimuli is reached (see Ohman, 1992).
Scand J Psycho! 34 ( 1993) expressions
This research was supported by grants to Arne Ohman from the Swedish Council for Research in
Humanitites and Social Sciences.
The assistance of Ulf Dim berg, Cristina Parra, and BriH-Marie Edberg during different stages of this
research is gratefully acknowledged.
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Received 29 September 1991
Automatically elicited
Conditioned skin conductance responses to m2s:ked facial eXJilressions
Francisco Esteves, Ulf Dimberg, and Arne Ohman
Department of Clinical Psychology, University ofUppsala, Sweden
This research was supported by grants to Arne Ohman from the Swedish Council for Research in
Humanities ami Social Sciences.
1
Correspondence should be directed! to Arne Ohman, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section
of Psychiatry am! Psychology, Karolinska Hospital, 17176, Stockholm, Sweden.
2
Abstract
This study examined auHomatic elicitation of conditioned skin conductance responses (SCRs), when a
backward masking the subject's conscious awareness of the conditioned stimuli (CSs).
The CSswere
facial
of emotional facial expressions. A differential conditioning procedure was used. One
an angry was aversively conditioned by a shock urucondlitioned stimulus, whereas
another facial expression (e.g., a happy
were presented masked by a rueutral face. This procedure prevented conscious of the
CS but still reliable differential SCRs were obtained when the CS had been an angry face. However, this effect
was dependent on the subject's direction of attention. When attention was focused on the mask, no
differential responding was observed. Thus it was concluded that, when fear-relevant stimuli (angry faces)
served as the CS, elicitation of SCRs was automatic in the sense that it was possible even when the subjects
were not aware of the stimuli presented. However, it was only partially automatic because the effect was
modified by attention.
Automatically elicited fear:
Conditioned skin conductance responses to masked facial expressions
Francisco Esteves, Ulf Dimberg, and Arne Ohman
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Uppsala, Sweden
3
According to Seligman (1970), biological evolution has predisposed animals to learn more easily to
form associations between some stimuli rather than others because such associations were instrumental in
promoting survival. Seligman (1971) used this theory to analyse phobic fears in humans. He argued that
natural selection has resulted in a biological preparedness to easily associate fear and avoidance to situations
that provided survival threats to pretechnological man. This assumption accounts for the pattern of
prevalence of situations that become associated with phobia. This pattern is better understood in terms of
phylogenetic threats than of potential ontogenetic danger (Seligman, 1971; Seligman & Hager, 1972). For
example, snake phobias are very common whereas car phobias are rare. Furthermore, some characteristics of
phobias such as their rapid acquisition, high resistance to extinction, and their "irrational", non-cognitive
nature, could be explained better within this theory than within alternative theoretical approaches (Seligman
& Hager, 1972; Ohman, 1979a).
Ohman and co-workers (Ohman, 1979a; Ohman, Dimberg, & Ost, 1985) have examined empirically
some propositions originated in the preparedness theory of phobias in the context of aversive human classical
conditioning. This research compared autonomic responses to stimuli that could be considered fear-relevant
in terms of Seligman's theory (e. g., pictures of snakes or angry faces) with responses to fear-irrelevant stimuli,
(e. g., pictures of flowers or happy faces). The basic design was one of differential Pavlovian conditioning,
where one stimulus (the CS+) was reinforced by a mildly aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). The most
consistent finding was elevated resistance to extinction of skin conductance responses (SCRs) to fear-relevant
CS+s as compared to responses to fear-irrelevant CS+s. Similar effects were obtained both for animal phobic
stimuli such as snakes and spiders (Ohman, Fredrikson, Hugdahl, & Rimmo, 1976), and for social phobic
stimuli such as angry facial expressions (Dimberg & Ohman, 1983; Ohman & Dimberg, 1978). Even though
these findings have not been consistently replicated by other laboratories (see e.g., McNally, 1987), a critical
assessment of the literature suggests that elevated resistance to extinction after conditioning to fear-relevant
stimuli remains a viable generalization (Ohman, 1993).
The lack ofvohmtary control that characterizes res poruses 1969) led Ohmaru (1986;
1987; 1992; Ohman & Soares, 1993) to that the difference between responses to fear"relevam ami
fear "irrelev:mt stimuli couldl be attributed to differences in the way in which information about the two types
of stimuli was processed. from the distinction between two levels of information processing; (orne
automatic, preauentive level and one voluntary controlled, attentional processing level) (Posner, 1978;
Shiffrin & Schneider, Ohman suggested that fear-relevant stimuli could! be processed at an automatic,
pre:auentive level, with no need for a conscious representation of the stimulus before the phobic response is
elicited. Thus, in contrast to other stimuli in our environment, which require auentional resources before
correlates as a collateral effect of an automatic switch of attention to give the stimulus priority for further
processing. Automatic, preattellltive processing is characterized! by the absence of voluntary co111trol; it is
activated automatically; and, once initiated!, it cannot be terminated voluntarily. Furthermore, because it is
effortless andl can analyse several input channels in parallel, it is assumedl111ot to compete for the capacity-
limited! cognitive resources that characterize attentive mechanisms (cf. Kramer & Spinks, 1991).
Hit is assumed that the result of controlled processing is accessible to conscious awareness, but that
preattentive processing is not (Posner, 1978; Ohman, 1988), it shouldl be possible to elicit autonomic
responses to a fear-relevant stimulus even in a condition that precludes coru;dous perception of the stimulus.
One way of examining this hypothesis experimentally is to: a) condition the subject to a fear-relevant stimulus
by pairing it with 1111 aversive US, dms making it "significant" to the subject, and b) in a subsequent phase,
expose that CS in a way that precludes coru;dous perception and then measure the subject's autonomic
reactions (for example, electrodermal responses).
Backward! masking is a method that bas been used to separate automatic, preauentive processing
from conscious, controlled processing (Marcel, 1983). Thus, given a short interval betweeru the events,
presentation of a maskirug stimulus following a target stimulus interrupts the l!lf(lce:ssiKU! of the target before a
complete conscious percept is formed. The use of this method requires that the exposure times of the target
andl the masking stimuli, as well as the stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) between them, are appropriately
chosen to result in effective masking. With the right parameters, the is prevented from becoming
aware of the target stimulus, some information about it may still be registered. Using tl!.e distinction
made by Bowers to perceive the target, but
not w no lice it. In a series of experime!Hs, Esteves and Ohman (1993) investigated recognition of backwardly
5
masked target stimuli as a function of masking pammeters such as me:t-IJmas.JIC SOA or mask duration. The
stimuli were pictures of human faces, and the
target face, which was masked! by a face with a neutral expression. They concluded! that a 30 ms masking
interval, i.e. a 30 ms target exposure immediately followed a 30 ms mask, resulted in random rec:ognHJlon
Furthermore, with these parameters the pe1rceivedl only one stimulus
and reported very low confidence in their answers (see also Parra, Esteves, &
Using a differential oonditioning paradigm and animal fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and!
Ohman and! Soares (1993) showed that differential to the CS+ and CS- oouldl be obtained even
when the CSs were masked, but fear-relevant stimuli were used. In another group
abolished! by
masking. In the present series of experiments a similar backward masking paradigm was used in mder to
investigate the possibility of eliciting SCRs in oonditions that prevented the subject from perceiving the
stimuli consciously. Furthermore, as angry facial expressions have been classified as fear-relevant stimuli
(Ohman, 1986; Ohman, Dimberg & 1985), the emotional of the stimuli displayed was
manipulated in order to compare responses to angry faces and to fear-irrelevant happy faces. Thus, the
general purpose of this series of experiments was to examine whether electrodermal responses could be
elicited to masked previously conditioned facial expressions.
Experiment 1
The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine if conditioned responses to fear-relevant and fear-
irrelevant facial stimuli could be elicited by backwardly masked stimuli that did not allow conscious awareness
of the CSs. Two groups were compared. One group was conditioned to an angry face (fear-relevant stimulus)
with a happy face as the comrol stimulus (CS-), and the other was conditioned to a happy face (fear-irrelevant
stimulus) with a angry face serving as the CS-. Masked test-trials were interspersed among the series of
conditioning trials. They involved angry and happy target faces presented for 30 ms and immediately followed
by a 30 ms presentation of a neutral facial masking stimulus. With these exposure conditions, the subjects
could only consciously perceive the masking faces and were not aware of having been to the CSs
(Esteves & Oilman, 1993). The general idea was to examine if the differential responding to the CS+ and the
CS- observed on the nonmasked test-trials (confirming that oonditioning had also could be
obtained in trials with masked CS presentation. This would! demonstrate automatic activation of oonditioned
6
responses. II was hypothesized that, in the group conditi011ed w angry but not in the happy-CS+
would react group, some differential responding would be observed in the masked trials, i. e., that the
with larger electrodermal responses to the masked! angry CS+ compared to the masked
Method
CS-.
subjects males and 20 females, 16 to 43 years), mainly Psychology st1.1dlents, served in
the experiment on an informed consent basis arudl were for their participation. The s1.1bjects were
assigned to one of two conditions: the Angry group (angry CS+) and! the Happy grouQ
CS+ ), with W males ami 10 females in each.
Apparatus
The subjects were seated! iru a comfortable armchair inside a Tegner (Stockholm, Sweden) sound-
attenuating cubicle (2.7x1.2x2.0 m), with the apparatus located outside the chamber.
Two projectors equipped with high speed shutters (Vincelllt Associates Uniblitz 214L, Rochester,
New were used! to present the visual stimuli. The stimuli, chosen from Ekman and! Friesen (1976), were
eighteen black and white slides (24x36 mm) of males, displaying angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions.
These pictures were projected through a window in the cubicle onto a milk-glass screern inside the
experimental chamber, approximately 2m in front of the subject. The projected picture measured 33x22 em.
The electric shocks were delivered through silver electrodes from a capacitor charged by a
manipulable stabilized current, providing an 18-Hz pulsed output of 0.5 sec. duration.
Skin conductance responses were measured! through Beckman silver/silver-chloride electrodes, 8 mm
diameter, filled with 0.05 M NaCl-electrode paste. A Hagfors type constant voltage circuit (Venables &
Christie, 1973), was used to record SCRs that were continuously recorded on a Hewlett-Packard 7700
polygraph.
Design
The basic design was a Group x Stimuli x Trial!frial block factmian
(angry or happy CS+) was a randomized! factor and Stimuli ami Trial involved repeated measures.
During the habituation phase the stimulus factor had four levels: the to-become CS+, the to-become CS-, and
both masked (CS+/mask and CS-/mask). During the separate analyses were
performed for masked and nonmasked trials Thus, in this phase the Stimulus factor had two levels (the
CS+ and the CS-).
7
Procedme
The were asked! to wash their hands before entering the cubicle. After being
seated in the armchair they were told that the purpose of the was to measure physiological
responses to a series of human faces that were going to l:Je onto the screen. The skin conductance
electrodes were fastened by adhesive collars to the sidle of the medial phalanx of the first and the
second! of the subjects' left hand! (Venables and Christie, The shock electrodes were attached to
the tips of the first and second of the right hand!. The intensity of the shock was determined!
individually for each subject Beginning from a below-threshold level, the experimenter increased the shock
intensity step by step until the subject the shock as "uncomfortable but not . The
subjects were instructed to sit comfortably, avoid movements, and pay attention to the pictures dlisplayedl on
the screen. They were also informed! that they were free to terminate the experimerut at aruy time.
The electric shock was used as the unconditioned stimulus and was delivered 0.5 sec after CS+ onset
on reinforced trials. Four slides of different male faces were used for each subject (different combinations
from the set of 18 slides were chosen). One picture was used as the CS+, which was an angry facial expression
iru the Angry group and a happy face in the Happy grou_I!; one face served as the CS-(happy expression in the
Angry group and angry in the Happy group), and two neutral faces were used as masks, one masking the CS+
and the other masking the CS-.
The experimem consisted of two phases. During the habituation phase the subjects were exposed to
two trials for each of the fmu stimuli (the CS+, the CS-, the CS+/mask, and the CS-/mask). The unmasked!
CSs were presented for 60 ms. In the masked pairs a 30 ms exposure time was used, both for the CSs and the
masks. Presentation of the mask followed immediately after CS exposure, i.e., the SOA between the CS and
the mask was 30 ms. Thus, the total exposure time for each trial was always 60 ms. The conditioning phase
consisted of a total of 39 trials: a) 24 conditioning trials- twelve presentations of each unmasked CS, with the
CS+ always followed by the US and the CS- never followed the US; b) three test-trials to determine if
conditioning had occurred (three trials in which the CS+ was presented nomeinforced, the responses of
which were to responses to three adjacent CS- trials); and c) 12 masked trials- six masked
presentations of the CS+ and the CS-. In the total series of 39 trials, the first six trials were three unmasked
presentations of each CS. The order of the remaining trials was randomized, with the masked trials presented
interspersed among the nonmasked ones. The intertrial interval varied randomly between 15 - 25 sec.
8
Scoring of responses
Phasic SCR amplitudes were scored as the maximal deflection starting in the interval1-5 sec after CS
onset. The minimal response criterion was 0.05 microsiemens.
Results
Separate analyses of variance were performed for the habituation and conditioning phases. Data in
the conditioning phase were analysed separately for the masked and the nonmasked test-trials. A square root
transformation of SCRs was performed in order to normalize the distributions.
Habituation
There was a general decrease from the first to the second trial (means of 0.41 and 0.22 microsiemens,
respectively), resulting in a significant main effect of Trial, F(1,38) =35.21, p<.OOOl. No other significant
differences were obtained in this phase.
Conditioning phase- nonmasked trials
Skin conductance responses to non-reinforced CS+ trials were significantly larger than SCRs to
comparable CS-, as shown by a main effect of Stimuli, F(1,38) =22.51, p<.OOOl. This conditioning effect was
evident in both the Angry group, t(19) =4.64, p<.01 (means of0.60 and 0.28 microsiemens for the CS+ and
the CS-, respectively) and in the Happy group, t(19) =2.15, p<.05 (means of0.42 and 0.26).
Conditioning phase - masked trials
A general decrease from the first masked trials to the last ones was obtained as indicated by a main
effect of Trial block, F(2,76) =6.70, p<.Ol. As shown in Table 1, the predicted differential response to the
masked CS+ and CS- was present on the first test trials in the Angry group, but disappeared in the later trials.
This effect was much less obvious for the Happy group. Although not resulting in a reliable interaction
between Group, Stimuli, and Trial, the Angry group showed reliable differential response on the first masked
trial block, t(19) =3.27, p<.01, but no such differentiation was obtained in the Happy group (see Table 1).
Discussion
The fact that the predicted reliable differentiation between the CS + and the CS- was obtained in the
Angry group on the first masked trials provides some supp6rt for the hypothesis that eliciting of physiological
responses is possible after a brief preattentive analysis, at least for biologically fear-relevant stimuli. However,
the effect was small and disappeared after the first trial block.
The presentation ofnonreinforced masked test-trials interspersed among nonmasked reinforced CS
presentations introduced interpretational difficulties. First, the test-trials involved a change in stimulus
9
conditions to the training trials. In the nonmasked test-trials, the US was omitted. This stimulus
shmt & Defran, 1970; & Grisberg, 1975). However, a set of control groups, Ohman
1983) has shown that this confounding is not fatal, because the response on CS-alone test-
trials still involves a component which can be attributed to associations between the CS and the US.
Nevertheless, the OR to the omitted US may introduce variability that makes it more difficult to determine
reliable effects of the CS. On the masked test-trials, this
of another change, i.e., the mask. Second, 1mers,pemu1g masked test-trials among tmining trials may not only
have promoted ORs, but it could! also result in conditioning to the mask. Thus, presenting a CS+ in
conjunction with another stimulus, A, on nonreinforced trials is a standard! method! to establish A as a safety
associated with shock omission. A:; the present procedure involved nonreinfmced joint presentation of
the CS+ and the mask, the mask may have become an inhibitory stimulus, inhibiting the response to the CS+
Wilkinson et al., 1989). Establishing an inhibitory CS requires trailllirng, and! thus the gradual
disappearance of the response to the CS+ seen in Fig. 1 would be expected. Thus, the decrease in responding
to the masked CS+ in the angry group might have been due to this factor. In Experiment 2, the acquisition
phase (nonmasked) was separated from the extinction phase (masked) in order to allow habituation ofthe
OR with repetition of the changed stimulus conditions during extinction, as well as preventing inhibitory
conditioning to the mask.
Experiment 2
The purpose of Experiment 2 was to examine the possibility of eliciting SCRs to masked, fear-
relevant facial stimuli, using a somewhat different experimental procedure. The experiment consisted of three
phases: An habituation phase, similar to the one used! in Experiment 1, an acquisition phase, where the CSs
were presented unmasked!, and an extinction phase in which the CS+ and the CS- were consistently presented!
masked.
In Experiment 1, the Happy group did not result in differential responding on the masked trials.
Furthermore, in previous studlies, conditioning to happy faces was ruot maintained during extinctioru
(Dimberg, 1986; Ohman & Dimberg, 1978). Consequently, only a Angry group was nm in Experiment 2.
Hwas
CS+ than to the masked CS-.
The subjects were 12 female and U male students
They on an informed! consent basis and were
Apparatus
10
would respond more to the masked
19 to 39 years, with a mean age of 25 years).
for their services.
The apparatus was the same as the one used in Experiment 1. The criteria for the measurement of the
dlejJelll<leJtlt variable were also the same.
The design was a Stimuli x Trial/Trial block factorial design, witlm two trials in the habituation
phase andll6 trials in the extinction phase. The Stimuli were the CS+ (angry face) ami the CS- (happy face).
In the extinction phase, responses were averaged! over four trial blocks, with four trials each. No analysis was
performed on the acquisition phase data, because the short CS-US interval (.5 s) did not allow separate
measurements of responses to the CS and the US.
Procedure
The basic procedure was identical to the one described in Experiment 1, with two exceptions. First,
the experiment consisted of three phases: an habituation phase with two trials of each unmasked CS; an
acquisition phase with 12 presentations of each CS, with the CS+ always reinforced; and an extinction phase,
with Hi masked trials. Second, the eltposure time of the nonmaskedl CSs was extended to 200 ms. Because the
masked and nonmasked phases were separated, it was not necessary to maintain the same trial duration, and!
thus a longer CS exposure could be used!. The extinction trials were similar to the masked! trials in Experiment
1, i.e., a 30 ms exposure of the CS immedliately followed by a 30 ms exposure of a neuual face.
Results
The results were analysed separately for the habituation and the extinction phases. As in Experiment
1, a square root transformation of SCRs was used!.
Habituation
There were no differences between the angry CS+ and the CS- in this phase; however as in
Experiment 1, a decrease from the first to the second trial was observed!, F(1,22) =9.03, p<.OOl (see
1).
11
Extinction
Skin conductance responses to the masked! CS+ were sigruificaratly
than responses to the
masked CS-, =4.95, p<.05. There was also a general decrease in SCRs with Trials,
""5.70,
(see Figure 1).
Disc11ssion
This

.. a .. ,y the tendency towards differential response on masked trials with an angry

CS+ obtained in Experiment 1. Thus, it provides support for the notion of preauentive, automatic elicitation
of physiological responses to fear-relevant stimuli, even under backward masking conditions that prevent a
complete conscious analysis of the stimuli.
among the training trails, seemed to the intended effect. Insofar as the masking faces only were present
after conditioning, there was no mixture of nonreinforced masked and reinforced nonmasked trials.
Consequently, the possibility of inhibitory conditioning to the mask was excludled. Furthermore, the
repetition of masked trials dming extinction also allowed habituation of the OR to the stimulus change
introduced in the beginning of the extinction phase. Indeed, the lack of differentiation obtained in the first
triall:Jiock dming extinction could be due to a confound between the OR to stim11lus change and the
conditioned response (see Figure 1).
However, although the backward masking parameters used did prevent the subject from becoming
aware of the CSs (Esteves & Ohman, 1993), it is not clear what level of processing was interrupted by
backward masking. The distinction between the two modes of information processing has been made in
different terms, automatic/cmutrolled (Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977), preattentive/capacity-limited (Ohman,
1979b), conscious/unconscious (Marcel, 1983) but, in general, these dichotomies have been regarded as
referring to the same phenomena (e.g., Schneider, Dumais, & Shiffrin, 1984). However, Ohman 1992)
has hypothesized that resource-limited controlled processing does not necessarily result in awareness. Indeed,
there are nemopsychological studies with prosopagnosic patients (e.g., de Haan, & Newcombe, 1987)
and studies of auentional bias in anxiety subjects (e.g., Mathews, & MacLeod, that show that
interference with a secondary task couldl be obtained at anonconscious level. Since this limitation of cognitive
capacily (showed by the interference with a secondary task) is generally as a defining characteristic of
controlled! processing, Ohma11 suggested that the processing of a stimulus could take place at a controlled
level, and yet without the subject showing any sign of being aware of it 1988; 1992).
12
In Experiment 3, a manipulation of attentional demands was used to examine whether attention
demands of the mask would interfere with responses to the target. In this way, it was possible to put two
competing hypotheses against each other. First, assuming that a preattentive analysis of the stimuli, requiring
no cognitive resources, was completed before the information entered the central resource-limited channel,
then masking would simply prevent the entrance to the central channel. From this perspective, attention
demands of the mask should not influence preattentively controlled responding. However, from a more
continuous view of information processing (e.g., Ohman, 1992), interruption caused by backward masking
could take place later, after some controlled processing had occurred, but before information had become
available to awareness. Consequently, from this perspective the manipulation of cognitive resources could be
expected to affect processing of backwardly masked stimuli, even when the masking conditions prevented
awareness.
In Experiment 3, subjects' attention to the masking picture was manipulated in order to test the
interference of voluntary controlled cognitive strategies with the elicitation of conditioned responses to fear-
relevant masked stimuli.
Experiment3
Taken together, the results of Experiments 1 and 2, as well as those reported by Ohman and Soares
(1993), indicate that it is possible to elicit physiological responses to fear-relevant stimuli at an early stage of
information processing, i.e., at a preattentive level. In Experiment 3, the possibility of some controlled
processing without awareness was tested by the manipulation of the attentional resources required.
Furthermore, the SOA was also manipulated, using a condition similar to Experiments 1 and 2; a preattentive
condition (30 ms) and a condition allowing the subject some awareness of the stimuli presented (180 ms).
These two SOA conditions were orthogonally combined with two levels of attention namely low and high
attention demanding conditions. In the high attention condition, the subjects were instructed to count the
number of females appearing in the mask position, while in the low attention condition there was no such
task. From the hypothesis that processing of fear-relevant stimuli occurs at a preattentive level, i.e., before
initiation of controlled processing (Marcel, 1983; Ohman, 1979b), there should be no influence of attentional
manipulations in the contlition of effective backward masking (30 ms). However, the alternative hypothesis
that allows some controlled processing despite masking, even though the subject remained unaware of the
stimulus (Ohman, 1988, 1992), predicts that the high attention group should be affected even with 30 ms
13
SO A. With longer SOA, where the
would
expect for attellltional resources between the target and the mask. This would reduce the
differential r<>.<nnmilli"" to the CS+ and the CS-. Indeed, Pana, Esteves, & Ohman
memory
for masked! faces, showed that attention to the masking stimulus affected recognition even when a SOA as
as 330 ms was used.
In Summary, it was that the cornp<:Hiiion for attentional resources should interfere with
SOA,
CS+ compared to the masked CS-, while the irufluence of the auentional task on the preattentive condition
30 ms) would reveal whether resource limitations could occur to effectively masked stimuli. A
replication of the results of Experiments 1 and 2,
preauentive level was expected! in the 30 ms SOA and no attentional task group.
Method
Forty-eight subjects (29 females andl19 males) participated in the experiment on an informed
consent basis and were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups. The majority were psychology
students, with a mean age of 26 years, with a range between 16 and 43 years. Four groups with 12 subjects each
were run: One group with no auentional demands and a 30 ms SOA (Low/30); a group with an attentional
task and a 30 ms SOA (High/30); a third group without an attentional task and a SOA of 180 ms (Low/180);
and a fourth group with an attentimml task and a long SOA (High/180).
Apparatus
The apparatus was the same as in Experiments 1 and 2.
The basic design was a 2 x 2 x 2 x trial/trial block split-plot factorial design (Kirk, 1968), with
Attention (high/low) and SOA (30/180 ms) as randomized factors, and Stimuli (CS+/CS-) and Trial(frial
block as repeated measures. There were two trials in the habituation In the extinction responses
were averaged over four trial blocks, with four trials each. No analysis of the acquisition phase was made for
the same reason given in Experiment 2.
Procedure
The general procedure was similar to tlhe procedures used in the previous experiments. Four
experimental groups were compared. In two of the groups, the mask was held! constant for each and
14
no further instructions were given on the masking procedure (low attention condition). In the other two
groups, the person displayed on the masking stimuli varied and the subject was instructed to count the
number of females presented in the mask position (high attention condition). In each attention condition,
half of the subjects had a short SOA between the CS and the mask (30 ms ), while the other half had a longer
SOA (180 ms).
The stimuli used were similar in all groups. An angry facial expression was used as the CS+ and a
slide of another person displaying a happy face served as the CS-. The US was the same as in Experiments 1
and 2, with a 500 ms CS-US interval. The experiment consisted of three phases. During the habituation phase
two trials of each CS were presented, with a duration of 200 ms. An acquisition phase followed, with 12 trials
of each CS, where the CS+ was always reinforced. As in the habituation phase, the stimuli were presented for
200 ms, unmasked. The third, an extinction phase, consisted of 16 trials for each CS, with each CS exposed for
30 ms and masked by neutral faces, also exposed for 30 ms. In the groups with no attention task, pictures of
two different men displaying neutral expressions were used as masks. In the groups that had the attention
task, four different neutral male expressions were used as masks. Furthermore, four additional trials were
randomly interspersed among the extinction trials. Two CS+ and two CS- were shown masked by female faces
displaying neutral expressions.
Habituation
A general decrease from the first to the second trial was again obtained, resulting in a main effect of
Trial, F(1,44) =40.11, p<.OOOl. Again, no other effects were obtained.
Extinction
Skin conductance responses to the angry CS+ were overall larger than responses to the happy CS-, as
shown by a significant main effect of Stimuli, F(1,44) = 11.54, p<.Ol. However, this effect was more
pronounced in the low attention condition compared to the high attention groups as shown by a interaction
between Stimuli and Attention, F(1,44) = 4.63, p<.05 (see Fig. 2). Separate t-tests for each group showed
that differentialresponding to the CSs only was obtained in the groups that did not have the attentional task;
both the group masked with a SOA of 30 ms, t(11) =2.69 and the group with longer SO A, t(11) =2.96, p< .05.
An overall Trial block effect was also obtained with a general decrease during the extinction phase,
F(3,132) =32.42, p<.OOOl. Skin conductance responses to the female mask pictures in the groups with the
attentional task were also analysed separately but no reliable differences were found.
15
Discussion
The pauem of differential responding to the CS+ to the CS- was blllt only in
the groups that did not have an adldlitional attention task. Thus, both the group with effective masking
30 ms) and the group with a longer SOA ms) showed larger responses to the angry CS+ compared to the
CS-. The fact that the attention task eliminated the dlifferenHal ><nnnrlii"" even in the eff,ectnvelv
masked! group, contradicts the stimulus processirug at a level Marcel,
1983; 1979b). Instead!, some controHecl processing seems to be although the subjects were
not aware of the stimuli (Esteves & Ohmaru, 1993). This was "'"'I'""'"IJL from the alternative nVIJotlllesJs
1988, based! on a more continuous of information pn)cessi1111!.
General discussion
Taken together, these experiments support the hypothesis that it is possible to elicit autonomic
responses to conditioned stimuli, even when the subject is prevented from becoming aware of the stimuli
presemed. Thus, in the three experiments reliable dlifferential responding was obtained with the effective 30
ms SOA when the CS+ was an angry face, although the effect was small and! disappeared! after the first trials
in Experiment L
In Experiment 1, when a stimulus was used as the CS+ (a happy face), no differential
responding was obtained. This failure of eliciting physiological responses to fear-irrelevant masked stimuli
has been reported in other studies. Ross, Ferreira, and Ross (1974), in a differential conditioning experiment
with letters as visual stimuli, found that masked trials with an effective SOA (40 ms) eliminated! differential
eye-blink conditioning, while a longer SOA (120 ms) resulted in more frequent conditioned responses to the
CS+ compared to the CS-. Similarly, Ohman and Soares (1993) reported that backward masking eliminated!
differential responding to the CS+ and the CS- when fear-irrelevant stimuli were used (flowers andl
mushrooms), but not when the subjects were conditioned to fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and The
fact that backward masking appears to eliminate dlifferemial responding to fear-irrelevant stimuli, whereas
fear-relevant stimuli survive such a manipulation, may be attributed to differences in the preattentive
processing of different Cllltegmies of stimuli. Indeed, if it is assumed that backward masking
processing before controlled mechanisms are activated, but after a quite complete analysis at the preauentive
level (Marcel, 1983; 1979b), then the differentiation obtained should on the restdt of some
kind of comparison between the percept formed by the preauentive and corresponding memory
Hi
representations. Thus, some stimuli, either because they are unexpected
this call, activating a realocation of cognitive resources for the analysis of the stimuli, that has been assumed
to be associated with the orienting reflex, of which the si'"Jn conductance response is a component (Ohman,
1979b ). On the other hand, if H is accepted that backward masldng does not completely prevent comrolledl
processing (Ohman, 1992), as suggested! by the results of Experimem 3, then the temporal localisation of
attention must be reconsidered. In this case, it is not necessary to postulate the selection for further
analysis, perhaps based only on the physical characteristics of the stimuli 1992). This early selection
Naatanen, 1990). These early selection models presuppose the possibility attentional shifts toward
stimulus attributes that, following the preliminary analysis, are considered relevant. Indeed, at least for
auditory stimuli (Dawsoru & Schell, 1982; Naatanen, it has been shown that subjects may rapidly shift
their attention from one stimulus channel to another. This means that the difference between fear-relevant
and fear-irrelevant stimuli in their ability to resist masking, could be that attributes defirning the former have
the capacity of automatically auracting attention. This capacity corresponds to the automatic vigilance
postulated by Prano ami John (1991). Using Stroop's color-interference task arud adjectives with positive and
negative connotation, they obtained longer color-naming laterucies on trials with negatively evaluated
adjectives. This was interpreted as an automatic, involuntary tendency to direct attention to undesirable
stimuli. Thus in our experiments, even though the masking procedure may block conscious representation of
the stimulus, fear-relevant stimuli could be able to catch attention after a very quick, preliminary analysis of
the stimulus, making some information available for controlled processing for a very short time before his
interrupted by processing of the mask. Fear-relevant stimuli such as angry facial expressions or pictures of
snakes ami (Ohman & Soares, could have a biologically given to catch attention very
early in the information processing flow (before the intenuption caused by the 1992, 1993).
This characteristic of angry faces could be similar to the "pop-out effect" described by Hansen and Hansen
(1988), They observed that subjects could! better identify an angry face in a happy crowd than a face in
an angry group. Aronoff; Barclay, and Stevenson (1988), based on a study oftlueatening masks in different
cultures, managed to isolate some stimulus features of such masks that were rated as when presented
isolated to subjects. This would mean that it is not necessary that the complete masked face is perceived
17
the brief aHenHomll shift. Rather, it would be sufficient that some critical features are detected.
However, it should be noticed that the differentiation obtained in om studies between fear-relavant and fear-
the habituation did not discriminate between different emotional Thus, the critical
feature must be activated by an aversive context g., shock in order to have this
the s attention.
Although the difference between and negative stimuli in this for automatic pn)ce:>silU!
has been in several studies (Hansen & Hansen, 1988; Fratto & John, 1991; Ohman & Soares, 1993),
Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kanies
rating of a target stimulus when a congruent priming word (positive or negative) had been presented.
they define automatic activation in the sense of inescapable, and used a condition that allowed the
subjects to be aware of the priming words, a similar effect was obtained by Greenwald, Klinger, and Liu
(1989) with dichoptically masked priming words, and a procedure that guaranteed that the priming words
were not consciously perceived. It is possible that stimulus relevance plays an important role. The priming
effect obtained by Fazio et al. (1986) was related to a strong evaluative (both positive and negative)
association of the priming word. Concerning the lack of resistance to extinction after conditioning with happy
faces (Dim berg, 1986; Ohman & Dimberg, 1978), it should be made clear that aversive conditioning was used,
requiring presumably non prepared associations between positive CSs and negative USs (Seligman, 1970).
Whether a prepared association of a happy face with a positive US would be stronger, resulting in resistance
to extinction ami allowing automatic elicitation with masked presentations, is a mauer of speculation and!
deserves further investigation.
The results of Experiment 3, which showed interference by aUell.tional demands at a nonconscious
level, prompt a more corutinuous view of the different stages in information Ohman,
where the effect of auentional demands may proVJide early interference that is potentiated with further time
for processing. Such a view is consistent with neuropsychological data de Haan, et al., 1987). From such
a perspective, automaticity would not be For example, as argued by Kal:meman ami Treisman
(1984), the notion of complete automaticity would imply that tile process is entirely insensitive to the
direction of attention. However, as the results of Experiment 3 indicate, attention on the mask
11mderminedl the SCR w the target stimulus that was observed in the low attention condition. Thus, direction
18
of attention did have a clear dfect 011 the response to the masked! fear -relevant stimulus. In other words,
Experiment 3 dlemonstratedl that the automatic response documented! in ExpeJ'im1ernts 1 and 2 dlid not
fulfill the criteria for corruplete automaticity. H appears, therefore, that we are with a case of
a partially automatic response (see Hackley & Graham,
One general with this research is the concept of nonawarerness. The definition of criteria of
conscious/nonconsctous 1Je1rcenti.on has been a consistent theme
subreption (e.g., L81zarus & In a distinction can be made between more
criteria, adopted by Eriksen (1960) ami Holernder (1986) and more based definitions
1984; Cheesmarn & Merikle, 1986; Kihlstrom, 1990). Although in a restricted! sense, it might be
impossible to prove nonaware mediation of psychological processes (cf. Bowers, 1984), the masking
procedure used here has been tested in differem recognition experiments (Esteves & am:! the
subjects can be considleredlunaware of the stimuli presented!, regardless of whether the threshold is objectively
(i.e., in terms of performance) m subjectively in terms of confidence) defined (see Esteves & Ohman,
1993). Furthermore, the potential lowering of recognition thresholds because of shock presentation was
addressed by Esteves, Dimberg, Pana, and Ohman (1993). The authors found no support for a change in
recognition of masked stimuli in the presence of an aversive shock. Thus, in operational terms it is difficult to
challenge the conclusion that the subjects in these experiments remained unaware of the target stimuli in the
3() ms masking condition. However, to elaborate this simple-minded conclusion into an articulated theoretical
noHon of awareness and non-awareness is beyond the scope of this article.
19
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Table 1.
Mean amplitude of the SCRs (in microsiemens) to the CS+ and the CS- by trial block on the
masked trials for both the Angry and the Happy groups
Group
Angry Happy
Stimulus CS+ cs- t(19) CS+ cs- t(19)
Trial
1 .48 .35 3.27* .32 .27 <1
2 .35 .33 <1 .29 .24 1. 09
3 .19 .24 1.09 .24 .24 <1
*p<. 01.
Figme Captions
Figme 1. Mean magnitude (square root
conductance responses (SCR) to reinforced
plotted as a function of trials for the skin
and nonreinforced (CS-) stimuli in the
habituation and extinction of Experiment 2.
Figure 2. Mean magnitude root transformed) skin comll11.1ctance responses (SCR) to
reinforced (CS+) andlnomeinforced stim11.1li for the four groups in the extinction phase of
Experiment 3. Two groups had to auem:ll to the mask by looking for female faces (High) and the
other two groups had no instructions attention Within each attentional
condition, one group had 30 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and the other a SOA of 180 ms.
2
Habituation Extinction
0,5
0,4
!I)
0,3
0::
0
(/)
0,2
0,1
0,0
2 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Trial Blocks of two trials
Figure 1
3-
0,5
0,4
0,3
0,2
0,1
0,0
Low/30 Low/180 Higll/30 Higll/180
Experimental group
Figure 2
Nonconscious Associative Learning:
Pavlovian Conditioning of Skin Conductance Responses to Masked Fear-relevant Facial Stimuli
Francisco Esteves, Cristina Pa"a, Ulf Dimberg, andAme Ohman
Department of Clinical Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden
This research was supported by grants to Arne Ohman from the Swedish Council for Research in
Humanities and Social Sciences.
Correspondence should be directed to Arne Ohman, Department of Clinical Neuroscience,
Section of Psychiatry and Psychology, Karolinska Hospital, S-17176, Stockholm, Sweden.
1
2
Running title: Conditioning to masked facial expressions
Abstract
We examined the possibility of nonconscious associative learning in a context of skin conductance
conditioned to a backwardly masked angry face followed by electric shock, with a masked happy face as the
nonreinforced stimulus. In spite of the effectively masked conditioned stimuli, differential conditioned
This effect could
not be attributed to differential sensitization or pseudo-condiHoning. In Experimem 2, the differential
responding during extinction was replicated with angry but not with happy faces as conditioned stimuli. It
was concluded that, with fear-relevant facial expressions as the conditioned stimulus, associative
was possible even in conditions where the subjects remained unaware of the conditioned stimulus and its
relationship to the US.
Descriptors: Pavlovian conditioning, skin conductance responses, nonooru;cious learning, facial emotional
expressions, fear-relevant stimuli.
3
Nonconscimlls Assodmtive Leaming:
P!llvlovian Conditioning of Skin Conductance Responses to Masked Fear-relevant Facial Stimuli
Francisco Esteves, Cristina Parra, and Arne Ohman
Early claims that stimuli could acquire power to elicit responses unconsdou.sly through Pavlovian
Lacey & Smith, 1954) have been effectively refuted (e.g., Dawson, 1973). The work of
Dawson in particular has shown that when awareness is assessed adequately, conditioning can be
demonstrated only in
unconditioned stimulus (CS and! US, respectively) (Dawson, 1970; Dawson & Biferno, 1973; Dawson,
Catania, Schell & Grings, 1979; Dawson & Reardon, 1973). Furthermore, concurrent measurement of US
expectancy have revealed that differential skin conductance responses (SCRs) to the reinforced arud
nonreinforced CSs emerged only synchronously with the subject's detection of the CS-US contingency
(Bifemo & Dawson, 1977; Dawson & Bifemo, 1973; Ohman, EHstrom, & Bjorkstrand, 1976; Pendery &
MaUzman, 1977). This led to a firm proposition that awareness of the CS-US contingency is necessary for
human Pavlovlian conditioning (Dawson & Furedy, 1976; 1983).
However, using visual stimuli and backward masking as a procedure to strictly preclude conscious
perception (Marcel, 1983), Ohman and co-workers have demonstrated performance of conditioned SCRs
to stimuli presented outside the subject's awareness (Esteves, Dimberg, & Ohman, 1993; Ohman, 1986;
Ohman & Soares, 1993; Soares & Ohman, 1993). After a conditioning phase, in which one conditioned.
stimulus (the CS+) was paired with an aversive US, and another stimulw (the CS-) was presented non-
reinforced, subjects were exposed to the CSs. back\vardly masked, with a maslting interval preventing
consciou.s perception of stimuli (Esteves & Ohman, 1993; Ohman & Soares, They reported that
subjects showed! enhanced SCRs to the CS+ compared to the CS-, even though the masking conditions
used resulted in complete recogruition failures (Esteves, et al., 1993; Ohman & Soares, 1993; Soares &
Ohman, 1993).
The electrodermal differentiation w non-aware sHmuli obtained by our group, however, was
restricted to stimuli that rould be denoted as "fear-relevant" (Ohman, 1986; 1993). We reported! that
differential responding could! be obtained 10 the masked when the CS+ was a ofanangry
4
face. However, when a happy face was used as the CS+, no differentiation was obtained with the masked
presentation (Esteves, et at, 1993). In other experiments, pictures of snakes a11KI spiders were compared to
pictures of flowers and mushrooms. H was observed that backward masldng eliminated differential
responding to neutral
masked snakes and
and! mushrooms), U J ~ t left reliable differential responding to
& Soares, 1993; Soares &
1993). restricted to fear-relevant stimuli, these studies document that conditioned
SCRs can be generated even the remained unaware of the eliciting stimulus (Esteves et
at, 1993; Ohman & Soares, 1993). However, these results have no bearing on another, perhaps more
fundamental issue referred to earlier, whether responses can be conditioned to stimuli presented
outside of awareness. Consequently the present series of studies, the backward masking procedure
and emotional facial expressions, was directed at the issue of nonaware learning of conditioned SCRs.
The distinction between learning and performance in the con ten of human Pavlovian
conditioning was emp!ruasized by Dawson and co-workers (Dawson & Furedy, 1976; Dawson & Schell,
1985; 1987). They proposed that the performance of already leamed conditio111ed responses could be
possible without the subjects' awareness of the CS. However, for the learning of new associations, they
postulated that awareness of the CS-US contingency was a necessary condition (Dawson & Schell, 1985;
1987). In fact, conditioning to stimuli presented outs idle of awareness is a possibility that appears to be
denied by virtually aU contemporary conditioning theory. For example, Ohman (1979) explicitly proposed
that both the CS a11d the US must be simuhaneously processed in a cenual capacity-limitted information
processing channel to become associated with one another. Similarly, although Wagner's (1976, 1978)
influential model of Pavlovian conditioning was directed to animal learning, where awareness becomes a
problematic issue, his emphasis of rehearsal as a central prerequisite for learning seems to require
capacity-limited processing for learning to occur.
In the previous conditioning studies with masked presentation amll facial stimuli (Esteves, et at,
1993; 1986), subjects were comiitioned to nonmasked facial stimuli in a differential conditiolling
paradigm where the CS+ (e.g., an angry face) signaled a shock US, whereas the CS- (e.g., a happy face)
signaled In t.he subsequent testing phase, these faci21! stimuli were presented for 30 ms and were
immediately foHowed by a 30 ms exposure of a stimulus consisting of a neutral face. The present
series ofstudies, ill a sense, represent the oppmiite pnlce,llme from the previous one: subjects were
5
com:litioned to masked
oftllie CS+ and the CS-, and they were then tested with nonmasked
presentations of the CSs. Thus, if they had learned something about tile CS-US contingency from the
masked conditioning trials, this would be manifested as differemial responses 10 the CS+ and the
CS- when they were presented without masks.
Learning a cmningency with masked CSs could be considered a case of degraded
input, thus fulfilling the definition of preparedness by Seligman and! Hager (1972).
They defined the relative preparedness for leaming a particular contingency in terms of how degraded the
could! be before learning becomes undermined! (Seligman & Hager, in our
studies, H would be expected that associative learning as revealed by conditioned SCRs to masked stimuli
would! be more likely if fear-relevant rather than fear-irrelevaml stimuli were used.
Masking provides the crucial experime!llal manipulation in these experiments. Following Marcel
(1983), it was assumed that backward masking could be arranged. as to allow complete perceptual analysis
of the preceding target stimlllus but dleny its conscious representation. In a critical analysis of the
literature claiming to demonstrate complete nonconscious semantic allalysis of meaningful stimuli,
Holender (1986) concluded that backward masking provided. one of the best means of controlling
conscious access to a stimulus. We have previously reported an extensive series of backward masldng
experiments using the type of facial stimuli that were used in the present series of studies (Esteves &
Ohman, 1993). However, in the conditioning studies to be reported in this paper, subjects were exposed to
shock USs while in the recognition studies reported! by Esteves and Ohman (1993) no such shocks were
delivered!. It is possible that the shock stimulation could lower recognition thresholds for the masked
stimuli. Therefore, before proceeding to test the main hypothesis, it is rnecessary to report some data from
a pilot experiment where the recognizability of facial stimuli as a function of backward masldng
parameters was eXll.mlined in a con ten including electric shock stimulation. Specifically, it was important
to determine if the SOA of 30 ms that had been used before (Esteves, et a!., 1993) could stiH be considered
an effective condition.
Pilot
The general method used in this recognition experiment was the same as that used by Esteves and
Ohman (1993, Experiment . Ten university students (six females ami four males, aged 22-28 years)
6
volunteered to as subjects. They were informed that they were going 10 see pairs of male faces,
at very shon dunnions, exposed in lhe same part of the visual field but one succeeding the other
in time. BeC1l!use of the short andl varying durations,
but, many times, it was suggested that
sometimes be able to distinguish the two
only be al:Jie to see one the second one.
The first picture would always ponray either a or am angry face. The second one, the masking face,
wo11ld always be a person with a neutral ... nu,..,<irm Their task, on each trial, was to guess if the first
rate their level of confidence in this decision on a""''"'-''""" sC1l!le, where face was happy or angry; and
would reflect their guessing at random, and (9) their being fully confidernt in their decisio11. The
stimulus onset asynchronies (SO As) 11sed were 15, 30, 60, 120, and240 ms. Fmtllermore, a control
conditiorn (neutral target) was used (cf. Esteves & Ohm:m, 1993). Exposure time of the masldrng stimulus
was always 30 ms. The target was exposed for 15 ms in the control condition and irn the SOA 15 corndition,
and for 30 ms in all other conditions. Subjects were exposed! to six happy and six angry pairs at each SOA
andl15 neutral-neutral pairs, in a total of 75 trials. During the experiment, ten shocks were delivered
randomly at the intensity level accepted by the subject as "11ncomfortable but not painful". The stimuli,
both the facial picwres and the shocks, were the same as in the two main experiments ami will be
described below.
Table 1 shows recognition rates and confidence ratings for angry and expressions at
different SOAs. Consistent with previous data (Esteves & Ohman, 1993), the subjects showed a bias to
classify Ute neutral faces more often as angry than happy (54. 7 %and 45.3 %, respectively), in the control
condition. However, this bias was not statistically signifiC1l!nt (1<1). The recognition rates at lower SOAs
(including 60 ms) were not signifiC1l!ntly better than chance, either when the control condition was used as
an estimate of the chance level or comparing to 50 %. The results of the confidence ratings also confirmed
the failure of the subjects to discriminate between angry and! targets at lower SO As. Indeed, at
SO As up to 60 ms, subjects rated their correct answern ami errors with similar confidence. In addition, tile
control trials, which could not be correct because the targets were neutral faces, hadl an average confidence
rating of3.6 (cf. Table 1).
Insert Table 1 abom here
7
In general, the results of this experiment showed that recognition performance was not better
than the results obtained by Esteves and Ohman (1993) for corresponding SO As. With a SOA of 30 ms
subjects had a recognition performance at the chance level, and their rated confidence when correct
answers were given was not better than their confidence on the trials they answered incorrectly. Thus, the
fact that the subjects were exposed to a series of ten shocks did not give any indication of a lowering of the
perception thresholds. It was concluded that the previously used condition.(Esteves eta!., 1993; Ohman,
Dim berg, & Esteves, 1989), that is, an SOA of 30 ms with a 30 ms mask exposure time would not allow the
subjects to consciously perceive the masked stimuli.
Experiment 1
The purpose of Experiment 1 was to investigate the possibility of differential conditioning to
masked facial stimuli, using the masking parameters determined in the pilot experiment. Thus, in the
Preattentive Conditioning Group, an angry face was used as the CS+ and a happy face as the CS-, and
both were masked by two different neutral faces during acquisition. The exposure time of all faces was 30
ms. During the extinction phase both the CS+ and the CS- were presented unmasked. If the subjects
showed differential skin conductance responding on the nonmasked trials, then nonaware, implicit
learning would be demonstrated.
The performance of this group was compared to two control groups. The Conditioning Control
Group was exposed to a similar paradigm except that a longer SOA between the CS and the mask was
used to allow conscious perception of the CSs during acquisition. Thus, in this group, differentiation
between the CS+ and the CS- would be expected. This group was necessary in order to be able to interpret
negative results in the Preattentive Conditioning Group. Failure to demonstrate conditioning in this latter
group most likely would be due to the fact that the subjects were prevented from consciously perceiving
the CSs during acquisition. However, such a failure could also be due to nonoptimal conditions for
Pavlovian conditioning. For example, interspersing the masking stimulus between the CS and the US
could hamper conditioning to the CS (e.g., by "external inhibition", Pennypacker, 1967); irrespective of
whether the masking_was effective or not. Thus, failure to demonstrate conditioning in the Preattentive
Conditioning Group combined with successful conditioning in the Conditioning Control Group would
imply that the failure was due to masking. A third group, the Pseudo-Conditioning Control Group, was
8
conditioned to single neutral faces, one foliowed by shock amli the other not, and then exposed to the same
"extinction" pmcedl11re with angry andl faces as the other groups. From the of view,
this condition was similar to the Preatlentive Conditioning Group. First, they were presented with two
neutral faces, one of which was with shocks, and then two other faces were presented, one
and one angry. Because neutral faces often are rated as somewhat angry (e.g. Ohman & Dimberg, 1978),
larger responses to angry than to
could conceivably be attributed to generalization from COJl<litionirig to the neutral mask, which was
reliably associated with shock. Such generalization effects would also be present in the Pseudo-
Conditioning Comrol Group. In additio11., this group controlled! for pseudo-conditioning (i.e., the effect of
repeated! US presentations), which conceivably would resullt in more sell.Sitization
threatening angry face than to the non-hostile happy face.
In general, larger responses to the angry than the happy face during extinction in the
Conditioning Control Group were expected. No such effect was expected in the Pseudo-Conditioning
Control Group. In the Preauentive Com:litioning Gm11p, granted that awareness of the contingency
between the CS and the US is a necessary condition for conditioning (e.g., Dawson & Furedy, 1976;
Ohman, 1979), then no conditioning effect should! be expected. However, given the results of preliminary
work, and given that the CS+ was an angry face, some differentiation between the CS+ and the CS- could
not be completely ruled out
Sixty students attendi11.g introductory courses in psychology at the Uppsala University were paid
to participate. They were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Nine males and 11 females, with a
mean age of 25.4 years, were assigned to the Preauentive Group. The two other groups, had eight males
and 12 females, and mean ages of 24.2 and 24.0 years, respectively. Another six subjects were run and
discarded; three failed to show any SCRs, and the other three were lost because
Apparatus
failures.
The subjects were seated in a comfortable armchair inside a Tegner (StocllduJilllll, Sweden) sound-
with the apparatus located outside the chamber.
9
Eighteen black-and-white ph1Jiograqpllic slides (24 x 36 mm) of male faces, chosen from Ekman
and Friesen's (1976) sample, and displaying happy, angry, and neutral emotional were used.
They were by two projectors onto a screen in the cub ide, 2 m in front of the subject. The size of
the picture was 22 x 33 em. Exposme times were controlled by two electronic timers that
activated two shuuers (Vincent Associates Uniblitz 214L, Rochester, New York). Each
at the center of the screen.
Sldn conducl:am.ce resporu;es were measured Beckman silver/sHver-chloridle electrodes, 8
mm diameter, filled with 0.05 M NaCI-electmde paste. A Hagfors type coru;tant voltage circuit (Venables
& Christie, 1973), was used 10 record SCRs on a Hewlett-Packard 7700
The electric shocks were delivered silver electrodes from. a capacitor charged by a
manipulable stabilized current, providing a 18-Hz pulsed! output. The shock duration was 0.5 s. Intensity
was adjusted for each subject to a level that was subjectively defined as "uncomfortable but not painful".
Design
The basic design was a Gmup (Preauentive, Conditioning Control and Pseudo-conditioning) x
Conditioning (CS+ and CS-) x Trial split-plot factorial design (Kirk, 1968). For each CS there were 2
trials in the habituation phase, 12 trials during acquisition, and16 trials during the extinction phase.
Group was a randomized factor while CS and Trial involved repeated measures.
Procedure
The subjects were asked to wash their hands in warm water before they were seated in the chair
inside the cubicle. The skin conductance electrodes were fastened by adhesive collars to the palmar side of
the medial phalaM of the first and second fingers of the subject's left hand (Venables & Christie, 1980).
The shock electrodes were attached to the tips of the first and the second fingers of the right hand. The
intensity of the shock was determined individually for each subject Beginning from zero, the experimenter
increased the level of shock interu;ity step until the subject reported the intensity as being
"uncomfortable but not painful". The was then assured that the shocks delivered during the
experiment would! have exactly the same interu;ity and d11ration. The was instructed to sit
dlisiolaved on the s1..:reen. Each trial was comfortably, avoid movements, and pay attention to the
preceded by the activation of the LED, which was presented for 5 s at the center of the screen, and which
the was instructed to foone whenever it was lit. The subjects were instructed that, if necessary,
10
could communicate with the experimenter via the intercom. They were also instructed that they were free
to terminate the experiment at any time.
The Preattentive Conditioning Group had an angry face as the CS+ and a happy face as the CS-,
both exposed for 30 ms, and each followed by a neutral mask, which also was exposed for 30 ms. The
interstimulus inteJVal from the onset of the target CS to the US was 500 ms. During the extinction phase
the exposure time of the angry and happy faces was 500 ms. The Conditioning Control Group was
identical to the previous group with regard to exposure times and emotional expressions of the CSs and
masks, but a 330 ms SOA was used, making confident identification of the CSs possible (Esteves &
Ohman, 1992). The CS-US inteJVal during acquisition was 500 ms. The Pseudo-conditioning Control
Group had two neutral faces (one CS+ and one CS-) exposed for 60 tns during Habituation and
Acquisition. Thus, the exposure time was equal to the total duration of the visual stimuli in the
Preattentive Group, in order to give the same luminosity. The US was presented 500 ms after the onset of
the neutral face CS+. The same extinction procedure as the other two groups was used, that is, an angry
and a happy face were each exposed for 500 tns.
The experiment consisted of three phases. A habituation phase with two masked trials of each CS,
an acquisition phase with 12 reinforced trials of the masked CS + and 12 nonreinforced trials of the
masked CS-, and an extinction phase consisting on 16 nonmasked trials of each CS. Exposure conditions
during the habituation phase were the same as during acquisition but no USs were delivered. The
extinction phase was identical for the three groups. 1\vo nonmasked faces, one happy and one angry, were
exposed. More precisely, the angry face was the CS+ in the Conditioning Control Group, the previously
masked CS+ in the Preattentive Group, and a new face in the Pseudo-conditioning Group. The happy
face was, respectively, the CS-, the previously masked CS-, and a new face.
During each phase of the experiment the order of CS presentation was randomized with the
restriction that no more than two identical successive presentations were allowed. The intertrial interval
could be 15, 20, or 25 s, in a randomized order.
Scoring of responses
Phasic SCR were scored as the maximal response starting in the interva11-4 s after CS
onset. The minimal response criterion for the SCRs was .05 microsiemens. Response probability was
11
12
calculated by counting the number of responses exceeding .05 microsiemens and dividing by the number of
trials.
Separate analyses of variance were performed for the habituation and extinction phases. As the
first trial in the extinction phase represented a "new" or an "old" picture depending on the experimental
group (it could be a completely masked CS in the Preattentive group, a masked, but consciously perceived
CS in the Conditioning Control group, or a new face in the Pseudo-conditioning Control group), it was
excluded from the analysis
2
. The responses were averaged over three blocks, with five trials each. Because
it was not possible to distinguish the conditioned responses from the unconditioned ones (i.e., responses
to the shock) during acquisition, no analysis was performed on the data from this phase. A square root
transformation of SCRs was performed in order to normalize the distributions on magnitude data.
Habituation
A large decrease in SCRs from the first to the second trial (means of0.22 and 0.13 microsiemens)
was obtained in magnitude data, as shown by a main effect of Trial, F(1,57)= 23.77, p<.Ol. The
interaction between Trial and Group was also significant, F(2,57)= 3.97, p<.05. The decrease from the
first to the second trial was smaller in the Conditioning Control Group (means of 0.19 and 0.17
microsiemens, respectively) than in the other groups (0.22 and 0.11 in the Preattentive group, and 0.25
and 0.10 in the Pseudo-Conditioning Control group).
The probability data showed no significant differences.
Extinction
Main effects of Conditioning and Trial block were obtained in the magnitude data. Skin
conductance responses to the CS+ were larger than to the CS-, F(1,57)= 5.43, p<.05. The Trial block
variable showed, as expected, a general decrease during extinction, F(2,114) = 9.51, p<.OOl. However, the
interaction between Conditioning and Group, F(2,57)= 2.25, did not reach significance (p=.ll).
Nevertheless, to examine whether the Preattentive Conditioning Group showed any conditioning effect,
separate t-tests-were performed in the three groups. The results showed significant differences between
CS+ and CS- in both _the Preattentive and the Conditioning Control groups, t(57)= 2.08 and 2.34, p<.05,
respectively3. No effect was found in the Pseudo-conditioning Control Group, t < 1 (see Figure 1).
Insert 1 abmnt here
The probability data were analysed with a 3 X 2 (ConditiOIIIilllg) factorial
Responses to the CS+ were more frequent than responses to the CS-, resulting in a main effect of
Conditioning, F(1,57) = 6.74, AfJ in the data, the interaction between Group and
'-A.>"Y''"'-'"'""'was llOI significant at a .051evel, F (2,57) = 2.84, p=.066. Separate !-tests showed the same
pattern, that is, significam effects in both the Preauentive alld the Conditioning Control groups,
1.94, p< .05, andl2.92, p<.01, respectively, and t< 1 ill the Pseudo-conditioning Control Gwup
4
.
The examination on an individual subject basis showed that nine subjects ill the Preattentive
group exhibited larger responses to the CS+ compared to the CS-, and four had larger responses to the
CS- than to the CS+. In the Conditioning Control group, 10 Sll!bjects showed the predicted response
pauem and only two exhibited larger responses to the CS-.
Discussion
Differential responding to the CS+ and the CS- was obtained during the extinction phase of the
Preauentive Conditioning Group. Thus, the effect obtained in preliminary work was replicated. In the
Pseudo-Conditioning Control Group no such effect was observed, although as experienced by the subjects
the procedures in these two groups were quite similar. During the first part of the experiment, the subjects
were given the to perceive two neutral faces, one of which was associated with a shock. During
the second part, two other faces were presented, one happy and one angcy. The fact that the Preauentive
Group but not the Pseudo-Conditioning Group responded reliably more to the angry than to the happy
face should exclude both sensitization ami generallization from the consciously perceived ne111tral
CS, as alternative explanations to the preattentive acquisition of a differential response in the Preattentive
Conditioning Group.
Both the Conditioning Control and the Preatlentive Collditioning Group showed reliably
larger and! more freqiUient responses to the CS+ than the CS-. Although the group that was allowed to
become aware of the CS-US contingency during acq11isition showed larger difference between the CS+
13
and the CS-, the interaction between Group ami Conditioning was not significant. to Marcel's
(1983) theory, the CS in the PreaHentive was allowed a quite complete stimulus analysis, up to the
semantic level, therefore delaying the SOA may not have resulted in enhanced conditioning. However,
because awareness was not directly measured, one can not take for granted that the extended SOA in the
Conditioning Control which should have allowed conscious perceJIHo'n of the CS, also resulted in
the CS+ and the US may have impeded detection of the CS-US contingency.
The data from the habitl.lation phase showed slower habiiUation in the Conditioning Control
than in the other groups. This could be due to a more perceptual pauern because in this
group the 330 ms SOA allowed the subjects to perceive consciously both the target andl the mask stimulus.
However, as the to-become-CS- showed larger responses habituation than the to-become-CS+, the
differentiation obtained on the extinction phase cannot be attributed to differences prior to co!lditioning.
In general, it can be concluded that an associative learning effect for angry faces was obtained
even though the subjects remained unaware of which stimulus was associated with shock. However, that
the interaction between Conditioning and Gro11p was not significant implies that some caution must be
taken and that further experiments are necessary to reach more definitive conclusions.
A possible explanation of this weak effect could be that conditioning to the mask overshadowed
conditioning to CS+. As the two masks used were perfectly correlated with the CSs, conditioning to the
neutral face masking CS+ could be expected, thus inhibiting conditioning to the angry face CS+.
Another factor that could have colltributed to the small effects obtained was the habituation of
the subjects to the US. The use of a non-painful shock (the mean intensity was 90 volts) contributed to a
habituation of the unconditioned response (UCR) for several subjects. Indeed, twelve of the 60 subjects
extinguished their responding before the extinction phase had begun. However, this was a general problem
which sho11ld not difficult the interpretation of the results (the correlation between the differential
responding and the intensity of the shock was .04 ).
It could also be speculated that a longer exposure time duri11g extinction might have further
enhanced the SCRs, improving the odds of obtaining reliable effects.
14
Experiment 2
In a series of experiments using pictures of groups of faces, Hansen and Hansen (1988) reported
faster identification of an angry target face embedded in a group of happy faces than vice versa. They
interpreted their results as suggesting that facial threat features, in contrast to happy features, could be
processed preattentively. In Experiment 1 subjects were conditioned to angry faces using a happy face as
control. This procedure was based on the results of other experiments reported elsewhere (e.g., Dim berg,
1986; Ohman & Dimberg, 1984) where angry but not happy faces showed slower extinction after having
been paired with an electric shock US. Furthermore, the data from our experiments with masked
extinction showed that happy faces did not survive backward masking (Esteves et al., 1992). To examine if
the conditioning effect observed in Experiment 1 would be specific to angry faces, it is necessary to reverse
the conditions and expose the subjects to a happy CS+ and an angry CS-. Such specificity would be
predicted from an evolutionary perspective (Hansen & Hansen, 1988; Ohman, 1986; Ohman & Dimberg,
1984; cf. Lewicki, 1986; Reber, 1989, for examples of implicit learning with neutral stimuli).
In order to reduce the possibility of overshadowing during acquisition, four neutral masking faces
were presented randomly, that is, they could serve as masks both for the CS+ and the CS-. Thus the masks
did not, as in Experiment 1, provide any information regarding the occurrence of the US.
Because the neutral masking stimuli were not consistently coupled with the US, generalization of
conditioned responses from these stimuli to the angry test stimuli could not be expected. Consequently,
this experiment used a conventional sensitization control group rather than the pseudo-conditioning
control used in Experiment 1. Subjects in the sensitization control groups were exposed to the same series
of pictures during acquisition as were the subjects in the conditioning groups but they received random
rather than paired presentation of visual stimuli and the US.
In Experiment 1, the masking picture came early in the CS-US interval in the Preattentive
Conditioning Group and late in the interval in the Conditioning Control group, because both groups had
a short CS-US interval and different SOAs between targets and masks. Thus, in the Conditioning Control
group the US came temporarily much closer to the masking picture than to the the target. By extending
the CS-US interval t o ~ seconds in Experiment 2, both the conditioning groups had the potentially
distracting masking stimuli presented in the early segment of the interval. Thus, although the interval of
15
500 ms used in Experiment 1 could have been considered optimal for \AI'"'""'""'");, this longer interval was
used to beuer compare the two SOA conditions.
A final modification was that not all CS+ trials acq1,1isition were reinforced!. Two CS+
SCRs to (masked!) CS+ and (masked) CS- uncontaminated! by unconditioned responses. Finally, the
exposure lime during extinction was increased to two seconds.
Differential response to the CS+ andlthe CS- during extinction, was pn!clli<cted for the grollps
conditioned to angry faces, both in the 500 ms SOA and in the 30 ms SOA No difference was in
the other four groups.
One hundred and twenty llniversity students were randomly assigned to one of six groups, with the
restriction that the sex ratio (11 females and nine males) was constant across groups. The mean age in the
gro11ps varied between 23.2 and 25.5 years, with a total mean age of 24.5 years and a range between 19 and
42 years. Subjects were paid for their participation. Another 12 subjects were run but were eventually
discarded. Nine were lost because they did not reach the criterion of six UCRs
5
, two becaw;e of technical
problems, and one wanted to withdraw from the experiment.
Apparahis
In general the appara111s was the same as in Experiment 1 except that another, larger Tegner
Cllbicle was used (2.5 x 2.0 x 1.8 m). As a consequence, the distance from the subject to the screen was
shortened (1m) and the size of the picture produced was redllced (14 x 21 em). Another difference was
that the timers were triggered automatically through a tape recorder, programmed with the sequence of
intertrial intervals.
Design
The basic design was a split-plot factorial design with Group (angry CS+, happy CS+, and
control) and SOA (30 and 500 ms) as randomized factors, and Emotional Expression or happy) and
Trial as repeated e ~ u r e s . b should be noted that in this experiment we compared the responses to the
two different emotional expressiorns all'ld not responses to CS+ and CS- as in Experiment 1. This
procedllre allowed a comparison of all gro11ps in the same analysis, including the sensitization control
16
groups formally had! no CSs since no stimuli were with the US), since all groups were
to the same series of expressio111s extinction. There were two trials with each eJQ:Ires;sio'n
during the habituation phase, 12 exposures of each
reinforced and two nonreinJorced in the conditioning groups
trials with each expression during the extinction
"'-"1""'"""" ten of which were
seventh and eleventh trials), and 16
Pmcedure
The general procedure was similar to "'"''"rim'"'"' 1. Four main modifications were introduced.
During acquisition, four neutral masking faces were randomly, such that they could mask both
the CS+ and the CS-. The second modification was that two CS+ trials
nonreinforced. The interstimulus interval (CS-US) was extended to two seconds.
time of the happy and angry faces during extinction was extended to two seconds.
were
the exposure
Six groups were nm. Two groups were conditioned to an angry face as the CS+ with a face
as the CS-. One of these grolllps was a replication of the Preauentive Conditioning Groups in &.'periment
1, with a 30 ms SOA In the other a 500 ms SOA was used and hence was a replication of the Conditioning
Control Group in Experiment 1, with a longer masking interval to further facilitate perception of the CSs.
Similar exposure conditions (30 andl 500 ms SOA) applied! to two other groups, only these groups had
happy faces as CS+ and angry faces as CS-. The two remaining groups were sensitization control groups
where the same number of USs were delivered at random during the presentation of an acquisition series
similar to the other groups. One of these groups had a 30 ms SOA and the other one a 500 ms SOA
Results
The results were analysed as in Experiment 1, with separate analysis for the three different phases,
both for magnitude and probability.
Habituation
The ANOV A on magnitude data showed a decrease from tile first to the second! trial (means of
0.23 and 0.16 microsiemens, respectively), res11lting in a main effect onnial, F(1,114) =25.0, p<.Ol.
A 3 (Group) x 2 (SOA) x 2 (Expression) split-plot AN OVA on the probability dlata showed! no
significant effects.
l7
Acquisition
Because the USs were not paired with the faces in the Sensitization Control Groups, SCRs on the
trials that corresponded to the test trials were few and were not analysed. As we were primarily interested
in ascenainingwhether conditioning had occurred, Conditioning (CS+ orCS-) was used as a factor
instead of Expression. Thus, on the magnitude data, a 2 (Group) x 2 (SOA) x 2 (Conditioning) x 2 (Trial)
split-plot AN OVA was used. On the probability data a similar analysis was done but without the trial
factor.
The ANOV A on the magnitude data showed a significant interaction between Trial and
Conditioning, F(1,76) = 5.47, p<.05. On the second trial SCRs were larger to the CS+ than to the CS-
(means of 0.24 and 0.17 microsiemens, respectively), while the opposite was true on the first test trial (0.23
and 0.25 for CS+ and CS-, respectively). T-tests showed that the difference between CS+ and CS- was not
significant on the first test trial but was significant on the second trial, t(76) =2.35, p<.05.
The interaction between Group and SOA was also significant, F(1,76) = 4.69, p<.05. In the
groups conditioned to happy faces, the group with an SOA of 500 ms tended to show larger responses than
the group of 30 ms SO A, t(76) = 1.65, p< .10 (means of 0.24 and 0.13 microsiemens, respectively). In the
groups conditioned to angry faces, no significant difference between SO As was observed, but the means
showed the inverse relationship, that is, larger SCRs in the 30 ms SOA group (means of 0.30 and 0.21 for
SOA 30 and SOA 500, respectively).
The ANOV A on probability data showed no significant main effects. The interaction between
SOA and Conditioning was marginally significant, F(1,76) = 3.97, p=.05. In the groups conditioned with
the longer SOA there were more responses to the CS+ than to the CS-, t(76) =1.95, p<.05, while no
significant difference was obtained in the SOA 30 groups, t(76) < 1.
Extinction
A 3 x 2 x 2 x 3 split-plot ANOV A was performed on magnitude data, with Group and SOA as
randomized factors, and Expression and Trial block (three blocks with five trials each) as repeated
measures. The first trial in the extinction phase was excluded by the same reason that in Experiment 1.
Main effects of r o u ~ , Expression, and Trial block were obtained. The groups conditioned to angry CS +
showed larger SCRs than the happy CS+ groups and the sensitization control groups, F(2,114) = 6.18,
18
= 7.99, with responses for
angry faces. The Trial factor, "' 14.75, showed the lllsual decrease in SCRs across extinction trials.
Insert 2 abolllt here
= 5.55, Figure2
shows that SCRs to angry faces were larger than responses to faces only in the grolllps conditioned
to the angry CS+. T-tests revealed reliable differential responses for the two angry CS+ grolllps,
=2.80 aml3.28 for the SOA 30 am! the SOA 500 groups
6
, respectively. Thus, masked training
resulted in reliable differential conditioning only if the CS+ was an angry face, irrespective of whether the
SOA was short or long.
The interaction between Grolllp ami SOA was also significant, F(2,H4) = 4.48, p<.05. Figure 2
shows that, in the groups conditioned to angry faces, larger responses were obtained in the 30 ms SOA
group compared to the 500 ms SOA group, 1(114) =2.05, p<.05. This was reversed in the CS+
groups, with larger SCRs in the 500 ms SOA, t(114) =2.18, p<.05. In the sensitization control groups
there were no differences between SO As.
An ANOV A on probability data showed, as in the magnitude data, significant main effects of
Group, F(2,114) = 6.39, p<.Ol, and Expression, F(1,114) = 8.23, p<.Ol. The interactions of Group with
SOA and! with Expression were significant as they were in the magnitude data. The result oft-tests for the
two angry CS+ groups revealed the same pauem: the difference between the angry CS+ am:l the happy
CS- was significant for both SOA 30, t(H4) =2.56, and SOA 500, t(114) =3.06
7
.
The analysis of the data on an individual subject basis in the groups conditioned to angry faces,
showed that 12 subjects in the SOA 30 group amd H in the SOA 500 group exhibited larger responses to
respectively. In the other four groups the individual scores confirmed the negative result obtained.
The mean of the US was 122 volts. The fact that it was higher than Experiment 1 could
be due to the m o r e ~ " ' ' " ~ ' " " ' inclusion criterion of six UCRs during acquisition. However, the correlation
between the differential and the intensity of the US was again close to 0 (r=.05).
19
Discussion
only in [he group conditioned to an angry CS+. The groups conditioned to a happy CS+ did 110t show
differential responding during e:>rtim:tion. From these results it appears that to masked CSs
can be obse!Ved with fear-relevant stim11li.
The fact that the sensitization control groups, once
would exclude the of a biased sensitization as an explanation for the results obtained in the
PreaJtentive vuuu.m\J""''II
Comparing the two groups conditioned to angry faces, it seems that, once again, the possibility of
recognizing the CSs in the 500 ms SOA group did 1101 result in enhanced conditioning.
awareness was not assessed durillg the experiment, tile exposure times used in the 500 ms SOA allowed
the subjects to consciously perceive the masked CSs. It could be expected that, at least some subjects,
could become aware of tile CS-US contingency. Thus, some differentiation between conditioning in these
two groups should be exreclted if awareness was necessary.
There was no significant main effect of Conditioning during acquisition. However, the trends for
CS+ and CS- were different. The response to CS- decreased flom the first to the second trial, but no such
decrease was seen in the responses to CS+. In fact, on the second trial, SCRs to the masked CS+ were
larger than to tile masked CS-, particularly for the longer SOA (although no significant three-way
interaction with SOA was obtained). Thls suggests that conditioning occurred to the CS+ (including the
mask), although the first trial was presented too early to detect that effect. Thus, it is plausible that a
longer acquisition phase, with several test-trials included, would have detected some differentiation during
acquisition.
The interaction between and SO A, obtained in both the acquisition and the e:>ainction
phases, suggested that the angry and happy CS+ groups differed from the beginning, before the
experiment. However, no such diffenmces were observed during the habituation which that
it was a consequence of the experimental conditions. ThiiS, conditioning to masked angry faces increased
skin conduct:mce while conditioning to masked happy faces reduced SCRs, as compared to
the SOA 500 groups. This could be a case of inhibitory, ami excitatory effects and angry faces,
res.ne,cti,el'v. similar to the one reported by Dimberg (1986). Even in a condition precluding conscious
20
discrimination between the CS+ and the CS-, the general reactivity level could be modulated depending
on the facial expression of the CS+. Thus, it seems that angry CS+ could be effective as a threatening
stimulus even in the masked condition, leading to increased SCRs to both masked faces, while happy faces
only becoine aversive when consciously perceived to be associated with the shock-US.
General Discussion
The main conclusion to be drawn from these experiments is that associative learning appears to
be possible even in conditions where the subject remains unaware of one of the stimuli entering the
association. Thus, these experiments can be considered as establishing a case of implicit associative
learning (cf. Kihlstrom, 1990). However, it is important to stress that this case is not a general one, but
appears restricted to situations involving fear-relevant CSs and aversive USs.
The differential responding revealed by the Preattentive Conditioning groups implies that some
information about the masked CSs was extracted and stored in long-term memory in order to establish
associations between the US and the CSs. This appears not to be in accordance with the results obtained
by Hawley and Johnston (1991). Studying the memory for words that had been presented with different
exposure times and backwardly masked, they concluded that long-term memory (both explicit and
perceptual, implicit memory) only was present for words that had been encoded at a high level of
awareness (Hawley & Johnston, 1991). However, the fact that they used words as stimuli could be an
important difference. Backward masking could conceivably interrupt processing at a preliminary stage
dealing mainly with physical characteristics, an analysis which would be insufficient for the encoding of
written words (cf. Esteves et al., 1992; Ohman, 1992). Thus, instead of assuming a complete analysis of the
backwardly masked stimuli (cf. Marcel, 1983), it could be assumed that only certain stimuli are selected for
further analysis, because of their relevance to the individual, for either phylogenetic or ontogenetic
reasons . If so, the difference between fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli could be that some features
in the fear-relevant stimuli have the capacity to automatically attract attention so as to receive further
analysis. However, this would occur only when these stimuli are considered relevant to the subject, for
example, when they are made relevant by a conditioning procedure.
As usual when conditioning is measured by the SCR it remains unclear whether the results should
be attributed to modifications in orienting or to the acquisition of a new conditioned response, e.g. a
21
defence response (see Ohman, 1983). However, even if the effect of the CS-US contingency is restricted to
changes in orienting, such changes would still qualify as associative effects (Ohman, 1983).
22
The present result goes against the main stream of theory for human Pavlovian conditioning,
which emphasizes awareness of the CS-US contingencies as a prerequisite for conditioning to occur
(Dawson & Schell, 1985; Ohman, 1979; 1983). In fact, a critical role of awareness for Pavlovian
conditioning can be questioned on two grounds on the basis of our results. First, the effect obtained on the
Preattentive groups implies that awareness is not necessary for learning. Second, the Jack of differences
between the Preattentive Conditioning and the Conditioning Control groups, implies that some level of
awareness does not add substantially to differential conditioning. The fact that these failures of awareness
were obtained only with fear-relevant stimuli could perhaps be taken as a starting point for reconciling our
findings with the prevailing theoretical view, which still appears valid for fear-irrelevant stimuli. In
general, awareness might be necessary for human Pavlovian conditioning to arbitrary stimuli but not for
stimuli that have been biologically hazardous for humankind. For this latter type of stimuli, an automatic
analysis of some fear-relevant features could be sufficient to occasion a brief attentional shift making some
learning possible (Ohman, 1992). Thus the perceptual apparatus could be designed to respond
automatically to potential threat at a preattentive level in order to ensure attention to events related to
survival contingencies. Such a statement is supported by the data reported by Hansen and Hansen (1988),
which strongly suggested a preattentive "pop-out effect" as the basis for the ease with which subjects
identified angry faces in happy crowds compared to happy faces in angry crowds. LeDoux (1990) reviewed
neurobiological evidence and found additional support that fear responses may be elicited after only
rudimentary perceptual analyses. His results document a direct link from the thalamus to the amygdala,
bypassing the normal cortical loop in the elicitation of conditioned emotional responses in rats.
This interpretation, based on differences in the way fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli are
processed when access to awareness is prevented, is complicated by the fact that some studies failed to
obtain differentiation between potentially phobic stimuli and fear-irrelevant stimuli at a nonaware level.
Dawson, Schell and Banis (1986), using a masking task in order to prevent awareness of the CS-US
relationship, found that the greater resistance to extinction of SCRs to potentially phobic stimuli was
strongly associated with the level of expectancy of the US. No conditioning effects were obtained among
subjects who were not aware of the stimulus contingencies, or before discovery of the CS-US relationship
in the who eventually became aware. However,
not reponing the correct CS-US
""'""'!6""'-Y could be due to a host of factors other tllannornaw::ueness. '"""''"""'"'"Y' this situation becomes
orne of proving the beca1J!Se they were
generated in a siluation where awareness of the CS-US contingency was <>.nle.rim,? . , 1 : ~
backward "'a""'"e
This differentiation between fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli supports the nr<'n"r"'cln,<<
theory (Seligman, 1970;
input (Seligman & Hager,
The masked
could learn the CS-US contingency when conditioned to angry
faces, in spite of the degradation of inpullt due to backward masking. Thus, although the learning effect was
observed in the extinction phase, which replicates the resistallce-to-eninctioll effect obtained before (see
McNally, 1987; Ohman, 1993, for reviews), it can be more straightforwardly related to U1e manipulation of
the contingency learning during the tminiJrng phase.
Summing up, mu results run contrary to some empirical evideruce suggesting the implausibility of
nonconscious learning (e.g., Hawley & Johnston, 1991 ). Furthermore, they oppose the common wisdom in
Pavlovian conditioning which postullHes awareness of the CS-US contingelllcy as necessary for
conditioning to occur (Dawson & Schell, 1985; Ohman, 1983). However, in recent years some research
evidence has been offered for nonconsdous or implicit learning in other experimental contexts. In a series
of experiments, Reber and co-workers (see Reber, 1989, for a review) showed! that subjects were able to
abstract the rules of a synthetic grammar used! to construct stimuli, and then subsequently to apply this
knowledge impHcHiy, without being able explicitly to verbalize the mles used. Similar data from the
control of complex systems were reported Broadbent, FitzGerald, and Broadbent (1986). Hill, Lewicki,
Czyzewska andl Schuller (1990) exposed subjects 10 a series of faces where the covariation between facial
features ami. described personality characteristics was manipulated. When subsequently asked to judge the
personality of new faces, the subjects were influenced by the previously exposed covarialions, with no
evidence of having explicitly perceived the covariations involved. This type of data led Lewicki (1986) to
propose that there are nonconscious cognitive algorithms based on feature covariations i.llllle
environment. These covariations can be implicitly perceived andl stored in long-term memory and can
23
Another line of evidence of implicit learning comes from studies of neurological patients. For
example, Weiskrantz and Warrington (1979) obtained conditioned eyeblink responses from two amnesic
patients, who, when questioned, were completely unable to report the CS-US contingency. One of the
patients did not even remember that he had been exposed to the US. Similarly, de Haan, Young and
Newcombe (1987) examined learning of discriminations between faces in a prosopagnosic patient who was
unable to recognize familiar faces from visual information. Even though the patient denied any kind of
knowledge of what was going on during the task, his performance nevertheless improved with training.
24
In a reinterpretation of the laboratory studies on the preparedness theory (Seligman, 1970; 1971),
Davey (1992) proposed that the enhanced resistance to extinction obtained with fear-relevant as opposed
to fear-irrelevant CSs could be attributed to a priori differences in expectancies (see Tomarken, Mineka &
Cook, 1989). He presented data suggesting that subjects showed a pre-experimental bias to overestimate
the likelihood of receiving shock after fear-relevant stimuli, and that the Pavlovian contingency introduced
during acquisition training only momentarily modified these pre-existing expectancies. If this
interpretation is correct, than the results obtained in the Preattentive conditioning groups could be
explained by biases in expectancies, without necessarily implying any preceding associative learning.
However, the failure of differentiation between the angry and the happy faces in the nonmasked extinction
phase for the sensitization control groups (Pseudo-conditioning Control on Experiment 1, and
Sensitization Control on Experiment 2), clearly implies that the differential response to angry and happy
faces in the Preattentive Conditioning Groups reflected the masked Pavlovian contingency presented
during acquisition training, rather than a pre-existing bias to expect shock after angry faces.
Because preexposure of the to-become CSs in Pavlovian conditioning results in latent inhibition,
which may interfere with conditioning (e.g., Siddle and Remington, 1987), we chose not to determine
recognition thresholds individually for each subject but decided to use standard masking parameters based
on previous work. However, even though our data strongly suggest that the subjects remained unaware of
the critical CSs, we can not rule out the possibility that they were momentarily aware of these stimuli, for
example as a result of the shock US which closely followed the masking stimuli in time. To exclude this
possibility, of awareness would be necessary (e.g., Booth, Siddle and Bond,
1989). However, even though momentary awareness cannot be ruled out as a factor underlying our
findings, this factor cannot account for the dramatic differences in effectiveness of masked angry and
masked
the
faces as conditioned stimuli. In fact, recognitio11 was better for happy than for angry faces in
Ohman, 1992). Therefore momentary consdow; recognitio111 effects ca111not be a decisive factor i111 the
results.
&
(Esteves & where both forced-choice procedures and more subjective verbal ratings were
used. Based oru those data it call. be claimed that a111 SOA of 30 ms gmm.mtees that the subjects remain
unaware of the masked stimuli. The recognition presemedl here confirmed these results,
that the shock US did not alter recognilio11. If a11ything, recognition of angry faces appeared poorer in this
experiment with shock than in the previous ones without shock.
One limitation of our experiments is that the magnitude of the effects obtained was, in general,
quite small. Although we agree that some caution is necessary, it should be emphasized that both the
magnitude dlata and ti:J.e probalbi!it:y data showed the same pattern of results. Furthermore, the results for
the critical preauentive conditioning condition were very consistent across the experiments reported. Yet
given the theoretical importance of our findings, it is imperative that they be independlemly replicated,
perhaps in an experimental context incorporating continuous measureme111s of awareness.
25
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30
Footnotes
1. More detailed information about the method and results of this pilot study can be obtained by request
from the authors.
2. The exclusion of the first trial did not change the general pattern of results. Analysis of variance with
the first trial included, on both experiments, gave similar results. However, theoretically, a more unbiased
comparison between the different groups can be made if the first trial is excluded.
3. Separate t-tests using each group's MSE and df= 19 were also significant (t=2.18 and 1.76 for the
Preattentive group and the Conditioning Control group, respectively).
4. Separate t-tests with df= 19 showed similar results. In the Preattentive control group, t(19) = 1.82,
p<.05, and in the Conditioning Control group t(19)= 2.63, p<.Ol.
5. To reduce the probability of habituation to the US, a more stringent criterion was used in this
Experiment compared to Experiment 1.
6. Separate t-tests with df=19 and using each group's MSE gave significant differences in the groups
conditioned to angry faces (t=1.86 and t=2.28 in the SOA 30 and the SOA 500 groups, respectively).
7. Separate t-tests with df= 19 gave significant effects in the groups conditioned to angry faces. In the SOA
30 group t= 2.19 and in the SOA500 group t=2.20, p<.05.
31
Table L
Percent happy and angry responses, and confidence ratings (in a scale 1-9) for correct (happy and angry)
and wrong answers, at different SO As, in the Pilot Experimenl.
Forced-choice Confidence
Responses Correct Errors
Expression Angry Angry Happy
SOA
15 45 55 3.6 3.5 3.5
30 48 53 3.5 3.7 3.8
60 60 65 4.4 5.4 4.4
120 65 87 5.4 5.4 3.7
240 73 87 5.7 7.0 4.4
Controltrials 55 45 3.6
32
Figure 1. Mean magnitude mot sldn conductance responses to reinforced
(CS+) amllllo1!11feinforcedl (CS-) stimuli for the three groups in the extinctio111
faces for the six groups in the extinctio111 phase
sldn conductance responses (SCRs) to angry a111d
JbJ>I'"""''"'" 2. Half of the groups had 30 ms
stimulus onset ami the other half a SOA of 500 ms. Witltin each SOA one group was
conditioned to an angry face (angry CS+ ), another to a face CS+ ), and the third was a
sei!Shization control group.
33
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