Little research has examined what happens to attention and memory as a whole when humans see someone attractive. Hence, we investigated whether attractive stimuli gather more attention and are better remembered than unattractive stimuli. Participants took part in an attention task - in which matrices containing attractive and unattractive male naturalistic photographs were presented to 54 females, and measures of eye-gaze location and fixation duration using an eye-tracker were taken - followed by a recognition task. Eye-gaze was higher for the attractive stimuli compared to unattractive stimuli. Also, attractive photographs produced more hits and false recognitions than unattractive photographs which may indicate that regardless of attention allocation, attractive photographs produce more correct but also more false recognitions. We present an evolutionary explanation for this, as attending to more attractive faces but not always remembering them accurately and differentially compared with unseen attractive faces, may help females secure mates with higher reproductive value.

Emotion regulation strategies affect the experience and processing of emotions and emotional stimuli. Chronotype has also been shown to influence the processing of emotional stimuli, with late chronotypes showing a bias towards better processing of negative stimuli. Additionally, greater eveningness has been associated with increased difficulties in emotion regulation and preferential use of expressive suppression strategies. Therefore, the present study aimed to understand the interplay between chronotype and emotion regulation on the recognition of dynamic facial expressions of emotion. To that end, 287 participants answered self-report measures and performed an online facial emotion recognition task from short video clips where a neutral face gradually morphed into a full-emotion expression (one of the six basic emotions). Participants should press the spacebar to stop each video as soon as they could recognize the emotional expression, and then identify it from six provided labels/emotions. Greater eveningness was associated with shorter response times (RT) in the identification of sadness, disgust and happiness. Higher scores of expressive suppression were associated with longer RT in identifying sadness, disgust, anger and surprise. Expressive suppression significantly moderated the relationship between chronotype and the recognition of sadness and anger, with chronotype being a significant predictor of emotion recognition times only at higher levels of expressive suppression. No significant effects were observed for cognitive reappraisal. These results are consistent with a negative bias in emotion processing in late chronotypes and increased difficulty in anger and sadness recognition for expressive suppressor morning-types.

Sleep has a major impact on a variety of human biological and cognitive functions. In particular, its impact on memory has attracted extensive research and has been amply demonstrated. However, it is still unclear whether sleep, or lack thereof, affects the ability to recognize faces. To clarify this, we conducted a scoping review on studies that included a face recognition memory task and any kind of sleep manipulation in adults without any sleep pathology. A systematic search and synthesis of peer-reviewed journal articles identified through the electronic databases Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO, and PubMed was performed. A final sample of 18 articles, corresponding to 19 studies, met the eligibility criteria. The results of 13 articles suggested that sleep benefited face recognition ability, whereas two articles indicated a detrimental effect of sleep on performance, and four articles found no significant effects. This review highlights the high methodological variability between studies, in terms of sleep manipulation, retention interval, tasks used to probe face recognition, and other variables. In sum, although around one third of the studies show a beneficial effect of sleep on memory for faces, we suggest that future research should invest in replicating these findings with a stricter control of potentially confounding variables to allow stronger conclusions to be drawn.

(1) Background: The popularity of motion-sensing computer-based games, like virtual reality (VR) exergames, is increasing among adolescents. However, their efficacy compared to conventional physical training methods remains unclear. This study investigated whether VR exergames produce effects on reaction time (RT) comparable to traditional tennis training in school-aged adolescents. (2) Methods: In total, 130 adolescents (mean age: 15.6 ± 2.0 years; 67 boys: 15.5 ± 2.2 years; 63 girls: 15.7 ± 1.8 years) were recruited in schools and assigned to one of three groups: VR exergame (G1, n = 39), tennis training (G2, n = 25), or control (G3, n = 66). Participants’ RTs were evaluated before and after the interventions. G1 engaged in VR exergames for 8 min, G2 underwent traditional tennis training for 30 min, and G3 did not participate in any physical activity. (3) Results: Our results indicated that in G3, girls exhibited slower RTs compared to boys (p < 0.0). No differences were observed in RTs when comparing G1 and G2. (4) Conclusions: Sex appeared to influence RT, with girls showing slower RTs than boys in G3. The findings suggest that VR exergames and traditional tennis training have similar impacts on RT. This indicates the potential of VR exergames as an alternative to conventional physical training for improving RT in adolescents.

Face recognition is a pervasive and important ability in daily life. Although familiar face recognition is seemingly easy and efficient, recognition of unfamiliar faces is difficult and highly error prone, and can be affected by various situational and individual variables. Our objective was to explore whether chronobiological variables can influence face recognition. The present study sought to understand if chronotype (individual preference for the morning or evening period) and the time-of-day when the task was performed (in synchrony or asynchrony with the preferred time) influence performance and early ERP correlates of face processing.Thirty-two participants (16 evening-types, 16 morning-types, assessed with the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire) performed the tasks twice, at their peak and off-peak times (7:30am and 7:30pm), with a one-week interval between sessions, while their EEG was recorded. One task was a modified version of the Glasgow Face Matching Task (GFMT), consisting on the presentation of 80 sequential pairs of faces, and participants were required to indicate whether the second face of each pair was the same or different from the first face. The other task was a Famous Face Recognition Task, where participants saw 96 randomly presented facial photographs (half famous, half non-famous, with ovals covering hair and external face features) and were asked to indicate whether each photo was of a famous or a non-famous individual. Time-of-first session and the order of the tasks were counterbalanced between participants. All stimuli were different between sessions. Although no significant chronotype or time-of-day effects were observed on behavioural performance in either task, results showed a significant time-of-day x chronotype interaction on the P100 component amplitude for both tasks. Morning-types registered higher amplitudes in the evening session, compared to the morning session, regardless of type of stimuli. Response accuracy was strongly and positively correlated with P100 amplitudes for both morning and evening sessions. No interaction between time-of-day and chronotype was found for the N170 component in either task. These results suggest an early visual attentional asynchrony effect only for morning-types. On the other hand, no (a)synchrony effects were evident on more face-specific processing stages.