Toward an Emotional Individual Motor Signature.

Juliette Lozano-Goupil,Benoît G Bardy,Ludovic Marin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647704

Juliette Lozano-Goupil, Benoît G Bardy + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647704

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Abstract

Bodily expression of felt emotion has been documented in the literature. However, it is often associated with high motor variability between individuals. This study aimed to identify individual motor signature (IMS) of emotions. IMS is a new method of motion analysis and visualization able to capture the subtle differences in the way each of us moves, seen as a kinematic fingerprint. We hypothesized that the individual motor signature would be different depending on the induced emotional state and that an emotional motor signature of joy and sadness common to all participants would emerge. For that purpose, we elicited these emotions (joy, sadness, and a neutral control emotion) in 26 individuals using an autobiographical memory paradigm, before they performed a motor improvization task (e.g., the mirror game). We extracted the individual motor signature under each emotional condition. Participants completed a self-report emotion before and after each trial. Comparing the similarity indexes of intra- and inter-emotional condition signatures, we confirmed our hypothesis and showed the existence of a specific motor signature for joy and sadness, allowing us to introduce the notion of emotional individual motor signature (EIMS). Our study indicates that EIMS can reinforce emotion discrimination and constitutes the first step in modeling emotional behavior during individual task performances or social interactions.

Highlights

Emotions produce transient changes at cognitive, physiologic, and behavioral levels for individuals who experience it (Scherer, 2001)
Our results indicate that participants felt the target emotions in the corresponding condition with more intensity than in the other conditions during the recall procedure
We successfully induced in 26 participants joy, sadness, and a neutral emotion and asked them to create movements in one dimension

Summary

Introduction

Emotions produce transient changes at cognitive, physiologic, and behavioral levels for individuals who experience it (Scherer, 2001). Behavioral responses include changes in facial expressions, voice tonality, posture, and gestures. Emotions are recognized from facial expressions and from whole body posture, gestures, and movements, even in the absence of a facial expression (de Meijer, 1989). Numerous studies demonstrated that participants successfully identified emotions from watching other people’s movement, especially from professional actors and dancers (de Meijer, 1989; Montepare et al, 1999; Sawada et al, 2003). Affective states can be extracted from recordings reach and grasp actions (Pollick et al, 2001). These studies allow us to build an understanding of specific motor features corresponding to emotion types. Movements performed with sadness have been characterized as having a collapsed upper body, low dynamics (Wallbott, 1998), and very smooth, loose, slow, and soft moves (Montepare et al, 1999)

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