Music Recognition using Facial Expressions

Abstract

In daily communication, the identification of fundamental emotions involves interpretating different visual and auditory aspects. The ability to identify emotions is not clearly determined as their presentation is generally very short (micro expressions), whereas identifying itself does not have to be a conscious process. Humans presumptively chose to recognize emotions expressed through music rather than those expressed through facial expressions. We carried out a study with many elementary school pupils and many high school students in order to compare the success rate in recognizing emotions portrayed as facial expressions or in classical music works. Participants were to match eight faces in images representing various emotions with eight classical music compositions representing the same eight feelings. Compared to recognizing emotional facial expressions, the ability to identify emotions portrayed through classical music compositions was noticeably less successful. Girls performed better than boys in the ability to identify facial emotions, with high school students dramatically outperforming primary school pupils in this area. Higher arithmetic grades were related to the success rate in identifying emotions from musical pieces. Because reading facial expressions is one of the first forms of communication in human culture, basic emotions are far easier to discern when portrayed on human faces rather than in music. The need for females to communicate with neonates throughout their early development led to the selection of their advantage in emotion perception. There are certainly some general cognitive abilities like motivation, concentration, and memory that math competency and the ability to recognize the emotional content of music share. Facial expressions and music are processed in the brain in distinct ways, and as a result, they are likely assessed differently as emotional cues.