Perceptual process for the early detection of humans remains intact even under a heavy attentional load: An ERP study

It has been proposed that human beings have an enhanced ability to detect other people in visual scenes. We examined the ability of humans to detect other humans under situations when human images were presented as task-irrelevant stimuli. We measured the anterior N2 elicited by the onset of photographs with and without human images as an indicator of early processing for the detection of humans. We also manipulated attentional loads (low and...