Emoticons Elicit Similar Patterns of Brain Activity to Those Elicited by Faces: An EEG Study

The present study investigated whether the patterns of brain activity elicited by emoticons are similar to those elicited by faces. In order to test this, participants were subliminally primed using either human faces, emoticons, or non-face control stimuli. Each prime group contained three levels of valence—positive, negative, or neutral. Brain activation was recorded via electroencephalography. Subsequently, three event related potential components of interest were identified, which are closely associated with the processing of faces, i.e., the P100, the N170, and the late positive potential. These ERPs were tested at two electrode sites. For each ERP component, peak amplitudes were calculated and used in repeated-measures ANOVAs. There were significant main effects of prime type across several ERP components, and several interaction effects prime type*prime valence on four out of six components. There was no statistically significant main effect of prime valence on any of the ERP components. While our results uncovered diverse patterns of brain reactivity to the different kinds of primes, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that, at some electrode locations, emoticons elicit similar brain reactions as faces do.