Abstract: There is evidence that the other-race effect is observed when individuals perceive emotional faces. However, it is not clear how emotional prediction influences the other-race?effect?in face recognition. The current study addressed this issue by employing a facial affective discrimination task. It was found that individuals displayed an inferior recognition performance with Caucasian (other-race) than Chinese (own-race) faces in both the unpredictable positive and negative condition. However, no such inferior recognition performance was observed in the predictable positive condition, although it was found in the predictable negative condition. These findings imply that the prediction of positive emotional faces, but not the prediction of negative emotional faces eliminates the other-race effect in?face recognition. In this respect, top-down emotional prediction might be thought of as an effective strategy of cognitive regulation that improves the inferior recognition performance for the visual stimuli involving relatively more feature-based processing.

Key words: emotional prediction, other-race effect, configural processing, individuating information

摘要： 异族效应(other-race effect) 是一种在面孔加工研究领域中被研究者广为熟之的一种社会性知觉现象。具体而言，就是指个体识别异族面孔的成绩显著低于本族面孔。大量的研究证据表明个体在知觉他人的情绪面孔时，会表现出明显的异族面孔效应。但就目前而言，研究者还不了解自上而下的情绪预期(top-down emotional prediction) 是如何影响面孔识别过程中的异族效应。本研究采用线索-目标范式（cue-target）对该问题进行了考察，实验通过操纵“一致试次”的比率，来区分预期 (75% 的“一致”实验试次) 与非预期实验条件 (50% 的“一致”实验试次)。本实验招募28名健康的大学生被试(12名女性，16名男性)参加正式实验，这些被试无精神疾病、情绪障碍、视力缺陷等疾病。实验后，每一名被试都获得一定的实验报酬。实验结果发现，在正性和负性情绪不预期条件下，个体表现出了对异族面孔的识别劣势，即个体识别异族面孔表情的反应时更长。虽然在负性情绪预期条件下，个体仍然表现出了对异族面孔的识别劣势，但在正性情绪预期条件下，个体对异族面孔的这种识别劣势却消失。这些研究结果表明先前的正性面孔情绪预期有效地消除了异族效应。因此，可以认为自上而下的情绪预期可能是一种促进劣势知觉加工的认知管理策略。

关键词: 情绪预期, 异族效应, 构型加工, 个性化信息