Emotional Cues Reduce the Effects of Anticipation Violation on ERP Responses to Facial Expressions

Individuals frequently expect consequences-in particular emotional consequences-based on nonemotional or emotional information conveyed by environmental cues. However, in an everchanging world, (emotional) consequences are sometimes incongruent with expectations. Past event-related potential (ERP) studies have revealed effects of anticipation violation on facial expression processing when consequence anticipation is based on nonemotional cues (NEC). However, it is unknown whether anticipation violation influences ERP responses to emotional facial expressions when the anticipation is based on emotional cues (EC). To understand this question, anticipatory cues were presented before fearful and happy facial expressions. Most often, the cues correctly suggested the emotional content of the facial expression but sometimes, another emotional category of facial expression was shown. Moreover, in the EC condition, emotional pictures were used as anticipatory cues, while scrambled pictures outlined in different colors were used as cues in the NEC condition. The ERP results showed stronger responses in early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) to facial expressions under the violated condition than under the nonviolated condition in the NEC condition, whereas these effects were absent in the EC condition. The findings might suggest that EC reduces the influences of anticipation violation on attention toward emotional facial expressions.