biostudies-literatureUnknown3(3)Plate RCDetecting regularities and extracting patterns is a vital skill to organize complex information in our environments. Statistical learning, a process where we detect regularities by attending to relationships between cues in our environment, contributes to knowledge acquisition across myriad domains. However, less is known about how emotional cues-specifically facial configurations of emotion-influence statistical learning. Here, we tested two pre-registered aims to advance knowledge about emotional signals and statistical learning: (1) we examined statistical learning in the context of emotional compared to non-emotional information, and (2) we assessed how emotional congruency (i.e., whether facial stimuli conveyed the same, or different emotions) influenced regularity extraction. We demoAffective science662-672https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC9537398biostudies-literatureEmotional Faces Facilitate Statistical Learning.PMC9537398Waller RSchapiro ACPlate RCfalseEmotional Faces Facilitate Statistical Learning.Detecting regularities and extracting patterns is a vital skill to organize complex information in our environments. Statistical learning, a process where we detect regularities by attending to relationships between cues in our environment, contributes to knowledge acquisition across myriad domains. However, less is known about how emotional cues-specifically facial configurations of emotion-influence statistical learning. Here, we tested two pre-registered aims to advance knowledge about emotional signals and statistical learning: (1) we examined statistical learning in the context of emotional compared to non-emotional information, and (2) we assessed how emotional congruency (i.e., whether facial stimuli conveyed the same, or different emotions) influenced regularity extraction. We demo2022-01-01T00:00:00Z2022 Sep2025-04-25T20:19:44.881Z2025-04-06T08:20:46.316ZS-EPMC95373983638590610.1007/s42761-022-00130-9