The Effect Of Scene On Affective Priming

In the most studies of affective priming, the researchers focused on the impact of the changes in stimulus and task paradigm, and had little attention to the context. However, in real life, facial expressions are typically embedded in a rich context. So the present study focused on the impact of scene as a context to affective priming. Using combining the emotional scenes and facial expressions, we investigated the impact of scenes on the affective priming and the influence to the facial expression by evaluative categorization task.The present research consists of 3 experiments. Experiments 1 consisted of a 2(prime object:facial expressions vs. emotional scene) ×2(prime valence:positive vs. negative) ×2 (target valence:positive vs. negative) within-subjects design. Results showed that there is no significant difference between facial expressions and emotional scene as the prime object. Experiments 2 consisted of a 2(scene object:scrambled scene vs. natural scene) ×2(scene valence:positive vs. negative) ×2(prime valence:positive vs. negative) ×2 (target valence: positive vs. negative) mixed design. Results showed that affective priming effects elicited by a prime face stimulus were more pronounced when this stimulus was preceded by a scene of the same valence than when it was preceded by a scene of the opposite valence. The facial expression discrimination was improved when the scene was emotionally congruent rather than incongruent with the facial expression without the target valence. Experiments 3 consisted of a 4(SOA conditions:200ms,400ms,600ms,800ms) ×2(scene valence:positive vs. negative) ×2(prime valence:positive vs. negative)×2 (target valence:positive vs. negative) mixed design to test the affective priming influences by scenes in different SOAs(Stimulus Onset Asynchrony, refers to the interval of the showing up between prime and target stimulus). Results showed that the influence of scenes was the most obvious when SOA was 400ms to the affective priming. The impact of scenes was observed even when the affective priming disappeared(SOA= 600ms).The research suggests that the influence of scenes to affective priming is existed which is restricted by SOA conditions.