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Breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) paradigm and face stimuli. (A) Schematic of an example b-CFS trial. An upright or an inverted face was gradually introduced to one eye. To render the face target invisible for the first seconds of each trial through interocular suppression, CFS masks flashing at 10 Hz were presented to the other eye. The contrast of the CFS masks was slowly ramped down over the course of each trial. Participants indicated as quickly and accurately as possible on which side of fixation the target or any part of the target became visible. (B) Example face stimuli. Rows from top to bottom: young Caucasian adults from the race experiment, young Black adults from the race experiment, young Caucasian adults from the age experiment, and old Caucasian adults from the age experiment.
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The detection of a face in a visual scene is the first stage in the face processing hierarchy. Although all subsequent, more elaborate face processing depends on the initial detection of a face, surprisingly little is known about the perceptual mechanisms underlying face detection. Recent evidence suggests that relatively hard-wired face detection...
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... Are faces of our own race, gender or even age group prioritised for awareness? Using bCFS, Stein et al. [113] found shorter suppression times for faces matching the observer's own race or age group, in addition to larger FIEs for own-race and own-age faces compared to other-race and other-age faces, suggesting that experience-based facial information can promote access to awareness. Yuan et al. [114,115] explored this question further by using own-race and other-race faces as CFS-suppressed primes for an affective priming task. ...
Human faces convey essential information for understanding others’ mental states and intentions. The importance of faces in social interaction has prompted suggestions that some relevant facial features such as configural information, emotional expression, and gaze direction may promote preferential access to awareness. This evidence has predominantly come from interocular suppression studies, with the most common method being the Breaking Continuous Flash Suppression (bCFS) procedure, which measures the time it takes different stimuli to overcome interocular suppression. However, the procedures employed in such studies suffer from multiple methodological limitations. For example, they are unable to disentangle detection from identification processes, their results may be confounded by participants’ response bias and decision criteria, they typically use small stimulus sets, and some of their results attributed to detecting high-level facial features (e.g., emotional expression) may be confounded by differences in low-level visual features (e.g., contrast, spatial frequency). In this article, we review the evidence from the bCFS procedure on whether relevant facial features promote access to awareness, discuss the main limitations of this very popular method, and propose strategies to address these issues.
... Are faces of our own race, gender or even age group be prioritised for awareness? Using bCFS, Stein et al [109] found shorter suppression times for faces matching the observer's own race or age group, in addition to larger FIEs for own-race and own-age faces compared to other-race and other-age faces, suggesting that experience-based facial information can be processed unconsciously. Similarly, Yuan et al [110,111] used own-race and other-race faces as CFS-suppressed primes for an affective priming task. ...
Human faces convey essential information for understanding others’ mental states and intentions. The importance of faces in social interaction has prompted suggestions that some relevant facial features such as configural information, emotional expression, and gaze direction may promote a preferential access to awareness. This evidence has predominantly come from interocular suppression studies, with the most common method being the Breaking Continuous Flash Suppression (bCFS) procedure, which measures the time it takes different stimuli to overcome interocular suppression. Stimuli that overcome suppression faster arguably gain access to awareness faster. However, the procedures employed in such studies suffer from multiple methodological limitations. For example, they are unable to disentangle detection from identification processes, their results may be confounded by participants’ response bias and decision criteria, they typically use small stimulus sets, and some of their results attributed to detecting high-level facial features (e.g., emotional expression) may be confounded by differences in low-level visual features (e.g., contrast, spatial frequency). In this article, we review the evidence on whether relevant facial features promote access to awareness using the bCFS procedure, we discuss the main limitations of this very popular method in the field, and we propose strategies to address these issues.
... Such findings suggest that face detection might operate via matching to a template that combines diagnostic colour and shape information. They also raise the question of whether a detection template could also be tuned to represent more specific qualities of faces (Gobbini et al., 2013;Prunty et al., 2020;Stein et al., 2014), such as the features common to one's own ethnic ingroup. Borrowing from perceptual expertise accounts of the ORE (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001;Tanaka et al., 2013), the template used for face detection could be shaped by visual experience to reflect the range of facial appearance that we encounter. ...
... There is some evidence that ethnic group membership can influence speed of processing for faces in dot-probe (e.g., Trawalter et al., 2008), flash-suppression (e.g., Stein et al., 2014), and visual search tasks (e.g., Chiao et al., 2006). For instance, other-race faces displayed amongst own-race faces can be located quicker than own-race faces amongst other-race faces (Levin, 1996(Levin, , 2000Sun et al., 2013), although findings are inconsistent across studies (Chiao et al., 2006;Lipp et al., 2009). ...
Humans show improved recognition for faces from their own social group relative to faces from another social group. Yet before faces can be recognised, they must first be detected in the visual field. Here, we tested whether humans also show an ingroup bias at the earliest stage of face processing – the point at which the presence of a face is first detected. To this end, we measured viewers’ ability to detect ingroup (Black, White) and outgroup faces (Asian, Black, White) in everyday scenes. Ingroup faces were detected with greater speed and accuracy relative to outgroup faces (Experiment 1). Removing face hue impaired detection generally, but the ingroup detection advantage was undiminished (Experiment 2). This same pattern was replicated by a detection algorithm using face templates derived from human data (Experiment 3). These findings demonstrate that the established ingroup bias in face processing can extend to the early process of detection. This effect is ‘colour blind’, in the sense that group membership effects are independent of general effects of image hue. Moreover, it can be captured by tuning visual templates to reflect the statistics of observers’ social experience. We conclude that group bias in face detection is both a visual and a social phenomenon.
... First, in our study, Black face primes were compared with Asian rather than White baseline prime faces. This was done to reduce potential differences in familiarity, which might have led to differential processing (such as an own-race bias, Stein et al., 2014) independent of the actual prime-target relationship. Second, the experiments also included randomly occurring "prime checks" to ensure that participants were paying attention to the primes. ...
In the Weapon Identification Task (WIT), Black faces prime the identification of guns compared with tools. We measured race-induced changes in visual awareness of guns and tools using continuous flash suppression (CFS). Eighty-four participants, primed with Black or Asian faces, indicated the location of a gun or tool target that was temporarily rendered invisible through CFS, which provides a sensitive measure of effects on early visual processing. The same participants also completed a standard (non-CFS) WIT. We replicated the standard race-priming effect in the WIT. In the CFS task, Black and Asian primes did not affect the time guns and tools needed to enter awareness. Thus, race priming does not alter early visual processing but does change the identification of guns and tools. This confirms that race-priming originates from later post-perceptual memory- or response-related processing.
... Stimulus-specific activity can be generated in these regions unconsciously, however. This activity may process perceptual inputs from the low-level features such as orientation or contrast up to higher levels involving object identities and categories or word meanings (Greenwald et al. 1996;Kinoshita and Lupker 2003;Boyer et al. 2005;Dehaene et al. 2006;Van Gaal and Lamme 2012;Stein et al. 2014;Francken et al. 2015;Dijksterhuis and Nordgren 2016;Song and Yao 2016;Hutchinson 2019;Koivisto and Neuvonen 2020;Lucero et al. 2020). Evidence indicating that contents of conscious experience can be processed unconsciously and preconsciously is rich and multifaceted. ...
We present a theoretical view of the cellular foundations for network-level processes involved in producing our conscious experience.Inputs to apical synapses in layer 1 of a large subset of neocortical cells are summed at an integration zone near the top of theirapical trunk. These inputs come from diverse sources and provide a context within which the transmission of information abstractedfrom sensory input to their basal and perisomatic synapses can be amplified when relevant. We argue that apical amplification enablesconscious perceptual experience and makes it more flexible, and thus more adaptive, by being sensitive to context. Apical amplificationprovides a possible mechanism for recurrent processing theory that avoids strong loops. It makes the broadcasting hypothesized byglobal neuronal workspace theories feasible while preserving the distinct contributions of the individual cells receiving the broadcast.It also provides mechanisms that contribute to the holistic aspects of integrated information theory. As apical amplification is highlydependent on cholinergic, aminergic, and other neuromodulators, it relates the specific contents of conscious experience to globalmental states and to fluctuations in arousal when awake. We conclude that apical dendrites provide a cellular mechanism for thecontext-sensitive selective amplification that is a cardinal prerequisite of conscious perception.
... Age also influences the speed with which faces reach conscious awareness. For young Caucasian perceivers, young faces have been found to break into awareness more quickly than old faces (Stein, End, & Sterzer, 2014). For the same perceivers, Caucasian faces have also been found to break into awareness more quickly than Black faces. ...
... Because baby faces have been found to capture attention (Brosch et al., 2007;Hodsoll et al., 2010), we predicted that infant faces would reach awareness more quickly than adult faces. However, given the bias for detecting own-age faces (Stein, End, et al., 2014), we also considered the fact that it would be possible to make the opposite prediction. The infant and adult faces were presented in both upright and inverted orientations, allowing us to control for differences in physical stimulus properties. ...
... Our results fit with those of a previous study demonstrating an own-age bias in face detection in young adults (Stein, End, et al., 2014). This previous study only included a single group of perceivers, and therefore it left open the possibility that the observed effects were due to the youthful appearance of young versus old faces. ...
Past research has found an attentional bias for positive relative to neutral stimuli, with a greater attentional bias for stimuli that are more motivationally relevant. Baby faces are an example of a motivationally relevant stimulus because they elicit caretaking behaviors. Building on previous work demonstrating that baby faces capture attention, the current study used breaking continuous flash suppression (bCFS) to investigate whether infant faces are prioritized for access to awareness. On each trial of the task, a face was shown to one eye and a rapidly changing Mondrian pattern to the other. Participants were asked to report the location of the face as soon as it emerged from suppression. The faces were either infant or adult faces, presented in upright or inverted orientation. Despite evidence suggesting that infant faces might reach awareness more quickly than adult faces, the opposite was found: Adult faces reached awareness more quickly than infant faces. Moreover, a stronger face inversion effect was observed for adult versus infant faces, indicating that the shorter suppression times for adult faces were due to increased expertise with adult faces. A past bCFS study demonstrated an own-age face effect for young adults, but it left open the possibility that this effect was due to the youthful appearance of the young versus old faces. The current results rule out this possibility and provide further support for the idea that experience with faces of one's own social group facilitates the access of those faces to awareness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... Inversion effects in b-CFS have been found to be larger for faces and human bodies than for houses (Zhou, Zhang, Liu, Yang, & Qu, 2010a) or for other animate and inanimate objects (Stein, Sterzer, & Peelen, 2012b). This indicates some face-and body-specific unconscious processing, and most likely reflects an effect of visual experience or expertise, as inversion effects are also larger for faces seen under natural lighting conditions (Stein, Peelen, & Sterzer, 2011b), for faces from one's own race and age group (Stein, End, & Sterzer, 2014), and for objects of expertise (Stein, Reeder, & Peelen, 2016). ...
... Surprisingly, so far very few studies examined how social group membership may modulate people's perceptual awareness of faces. One exception is Stein, End and Sterzer (2014) in which they examined the face-inversion effect in contexts of race and age. Specifically, the face-inversion effect was more evident for participants' own-race and own-age faces as measured by the breaking time from b-CFS, which was explained by people's intensive perceptual experiences with their own-race/age faces that render such faces more potent to emerge from interocular suppression . ...
Information that conveys racial group membership plays a powerful role in influencing people’s information processing including perceptual, memory and evaluative judgments. Yet whether own- and other-race information can differentially impact people’s perceptual awareness at a preconscious level remains unclear. Employing a breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) paradigm, we investigated whether compared with other-race stimuli, participants’ own-race stimuli would be prioritized to gain privileged access to perceptual awareness. Across five experiments (N=136), we firstly found that participants’ own-race faces enjoyed privileged access to perceptual awareness (Experiment. 1). In Experiments 2-5, we employed an associative training task to establish associations between otherwise arbitrary visual stimuli and own- vs. other-racial groups. Although otherwise arbitrary visual stimuli were prioritized to represent one’s own race (vs. other-race) during the training, own- and other-race representing stimuli did not differ in their potency in entering perceptual awareness. This dissociation was further corroborated by Bayesian analyses and an internal meta-analysis. Taken together, our findings suggest that people’s perceptual expertise with their own-race members’ faces plays a determining role in shaping perceptual awareness. In contrast, newly learned race-representing stimuli did not influence early perceptual selection processes as indicated by the time they take to emerge into perceptual awareness.
... Previously, a study has demonstrated that own-race effect can be observed under CFS [23]. In the study, the authors measured the magnitude of face inversion effect (FIE, i.e., upright face versus inverted face) in the b-CFS paradigm, and manipulated Caucasian faces (own-race) and black faces (other-race) with Caucasian participants. ...
... We made two predictions for this experiment. First, if the previous own-race effect observed with Caucasian participants [23] can be generalized to other races, Asian faces should be detected faster than Caucasian faces for Taiwanese participants. Second, if own-race familiarity can modulate the processing of emotional content in facial expressions, b-CFS time differences among different emotional expressions should be larger in own-race faces than other-race faces. ...
... The result of this experiment showed that Taiwanese participants detected own-race faces more quickly than other-race faces. This result was in line with that in Stein et al. [23], providing convergent evidence for the own-race familiarity effect under CFS with the Asian group. ...
Previous studies showed that emotional faces break through interocular suppression more easily compared to neutral faces under the continuous flash suppression (CFS) paradigm. However, there is controversy over whether emotional content or low-level properties contributed to the results. In this study, we directly manipulated the meaningfulness of facial expression to test the role of emotional content in breaking CFS (b-CFS). In addition, an explicit emotion judgment for different facial expressions (happy, neutral, and fearful) used in the b-CFS task was also conducted afterwards to examine the relationship between b-CFS time and emotion judgment. In Experiment 1, face orientation and luminance polarity were manipulated to generate upright-positive and inverted-negative faces. In Experiment 2, Asian and Caucasian faces were presented to Taiwanese participants so that these stimuli served as own-race and other-race faces, respectively. We found robust face familiarity effects in both experiments within the same experimental framework: upright-positive and own-race faces had shorter b-CFS times than inverted-negative and other-race faces, respectively. This indicates potential involvement of high-level processing under interocular suppression. In Experiment 1, different b-CFS times were found between emotional and neutral faces in both upright-positive and inverted-negative conditions. Furthermore, with sufficient duration (1000 ms) participants could still extract emotional content in explicit valence judgment even from inverted-negative faces, though with a smaller degree than upright-positive faces. In Experiment 2, differential b-CFS times were found between emotional and neutral faces with own-race but not other-race faces. Correlation analyses from both experiments showed that the magnitude of emotion judgment was correlated with b-CFS time only for familiar (upright-positive / own-race) but not unfamiliar (inverted-negative / other-race) faces. These results suggest that emotional content can be extracted under interocular suppression with familiar faces, and low-level properties in unfamiliar faces may play a major role in the b-CFS time.
... There is considerable agreement that processing under inter-ocular suppression is unlikely to suffice for a full semantic analysis (Gayet et al., 2014;Lin & He, 2009;Moors, Hesselmann, Wagemans, & van Ee, 2017). However, numerous studies have demonstrated that processing under CFS is modulated by experience: for example, access to awareness is facilitated for familiar faces (Gobbini et al., 2013), own-race faces (Stein, End, & Sterzer, 2014), objects of expertise (Stein, Reeder, & Peelen, 2016), and typically arranged multi-object arrangements . Our results similarly reflect a benefit of extensive experience, induced by life-long exposure to particular object-location conjunctions. ...
