Influence of Emotion Labels on the Processing of Unattended Emotional Faces: Evidence from Visual Mismatch Negativity

Existing literature suggests that emotion labels influence the processing of emotional faces. However, it remains unclear whether this influence persists in the absence of explicit judgment of faces. This study examined the impact of emotion labels on the processing of task-irrelevant, unattended emotional faces, by measuring the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) ERP component, which is considered a prediction error signal. In a passive oddball task, the participants responded to labels that read “Anger,” “Happiness,” or “Shape,” while standard (50% angry : 50% happy morphed face; 80% of trials) or deviant (angry or happy face; 10% each) stimuli were presented in the background. The results showed increased vMMN amplitudes across early (140–180 ms), middle (180–320 ms), and late (320–500 ms) time windows when the label and the face were incongruent. This suggests that prediction error increases when the prediction elicited by the label conflicts with the sensory input of a deviant face. In contrast, when the label and the face were congruent, no changes were observed in the vMMN amplitudes. These findings indicate that emotion labels can influence the processing of emotional faces independently of explicit judgment and support the theoretical view that language and emotion interact via predictive processing.