beauty hinders attention switch in change detection the role of facial attractiveness and distinctiveness美在变化检测阻碍注意开关的角色面部吸引力和特殊性.pdfVIP

Beauty Hinders Attention Switch in Change Detection: The Role of Facial Attractiveness and Distinctiveness 1 2 2 Wenfeng Chen , Chang Hong Liu *, Kazuyo Nakabayashi 1 State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, 2 Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull, England, United Kingdom Abstract Background: Recent research has shown that the presence of a task-irrelevant attractive face can induce a transient diversion of attention from a perceptual task that requires covert deployment of attention to one of the two locations. However, it is not known whether this spontaneous appraisal for facial beauty also modulates attention in change detection among multiple locations, where a slower, and more controlled search process is simultaneously affected by the magnitude of a change and the facial distinctiveness. Using the flicker paradigm, this study examines how spontaneous appraisal for facial beauty affects the detection of identity change among multiple faces. Methodology/Principal Findings: Participants viewed a display consisting of two alternating frames of four faces separated by a blank frame. In half of the trials, one of the faces (target face) changed to a different person. The task of the participant was to indicate whether a change of face identity had occurred. The results showed that (1) observers were less efficient at detecting identity change among multiple attractive faces relative to unattractive faces when the target and distractor faces were not highly distinctive from one another; and (2) it is difficult to detect a change if the new face is similar to the old. Conclusions/Significance: The findings suggest that attra