The Influence Of Adult Attachment System On Facial Expression Recognition In The Priming Paradigm

Attachment is the theme of the whole human life, and the adults who are in the romantic relationship also have a similar emotion bond as maternal attachment, called adult attachment. Formed on the basis of one's particular attachment history, the internal working models may direct the cognition, affect and behavior of individuals. As a matter of fact, the priming paradigm provides us effective means to investigate how activated adult attachment system influences the information processing. In this research therefore, we use facial expression pictures as stimuli to explore how adult attachment and affective words priming impact subsequent information processing.One hundred and ninety-eight subjects participated in this research. They were required to complete facial expression recognition tasks after subliminal and supraliminal positive or negative words priming. The result demonstrated that:(1) Positive words priming and negative words priming, whether related to attachment theme or not, led to emotion congruent effect;(2) High attachment avoidance subjects were significantly influenced by subliminal negative attachment-related words priming, by means of recognizing pictures as sad expressions more likely, compared with low attachment avoidance subjects;(3) High attachment anxiety subjects were significantly impacted by supraliminal positive attachment-related words priming in terms of reaction time, compared with low attachment anxiety subjects. Because they made expression recognition much quicker under this condition;(4) No priming words changed the subjects'sensory discriminability (d') of facial expression recognition;(5) All subjects increased their judgement criteria (β) after negative attachment-related words priming, showing as more inclined to identify pictures as sad expressions.