Facial Expressions Of Basic Emotions Research Articles

How does visual context influence recognition of facial emotion in people with traumatic brain injury?

ABSTRACTObjective: The current study assessed recognition of facial emotional stimuli following traumatic brain injury (TBI) and examined whether performance may be influenced by emotional visual scenes.Methods: Thirty-five patients with moderate-to-severe TBI and 55 matched controls completed the novel Angers Facial Expression in Context Task (AFECT), designed to examine recognition of facial expressions of basic emotions in both congruent and incongruent emotional visual contexts.Results: In comparison with non-brain damaged adults, patients with TBI performed more poorly and slowly on both contextual conditions (congruent vs. incongruent) of the AFECT.Conclusion: Taken together, these results raise the possibility that adults with TBI may not fully benefit from supportive contextual cues. Also, they stress the importance of using emotional stimuli that better capture affect processing in real-world contexts and open up new avenues to better understand negative social outcomes in patients with TBI.

Распознавание эмоций в условиях ступенчатой стробоскопической экспозиции выражений лица

We studied the perception of human facial emotional expressions during step-function stroboscopic presentation of changing mimics. Consecutive stages of each of the six basic facial expressions were pre sented to the participants: neutral face (300 ms) — expression of medium intensity (10—40 ms) — intense expression (30—120 ms) — expression of medium intensity (10—40 ms) — neutral face (100 ms). Alternative forced choice task was used to categorize the facial expressions. The results were compared to previous studies (Barabanschikov, Korolkova, Lobodinskaya, 2015; 2016), conducted using the same paradigm but with boxcar-function change of the expression: neutral face — intense expression — neutral face. We found that the dynamics of facial expression recognition, as well as errors and recognition time are almost identical in conditions of boxcar- and step-function presentation. One factor influencing the recognition rate is the proportion of presentation time of static (neutral) and changing (facial expression) aspects of the stimulus. In suboptimal conditions of facial expression perception (minimal presentation time of 10+30+10 ms and reduced intensity of expressions) we revealed stroboscopic sensibilization — a previously described phenomenon of enhanced recognition rate of low-attractive expressions (disgust, sadness, fear and anger), which has been previously found in conditions of boxcar-function presentation of expressions. We confirmed the similarity of influence of real and apparent motion on the recognition of basic facial emotional expressions.

Seven- to 11-Year-Olds' Developing Ability to Recognize Natural Facial Expressions of Basic Emotions.

Being able to recognize facial expressions of basic emotions is of great importance to social development. However, we still know surprisingly little about children's developing ability to interpret emotions that are expressed dynamically, naturally, and subtly, despite real-life expressions having such appearance in the vast majority of cases. The current research employs a new technique of capturing dynamic, subtly expressed natural emotional displays (happy, sad, angry, shocked, and disgusted). Children aged 7, 9, and 11 years (and adults) were systematically able to discriminate each emotional display from alternatives in a five-way choice. Children were most accurate in identifying the expression of happiness and were also relatively accurate in identifying the expression of sadness; they were far less accurate than adults in identifying shocked and disgusted. Children who performed well academically also tended to be the most accurate in recognizing expressions, and this relationship maintained independently of chronological age. Generally, the findings testify to a well-developed ability to recognize very subtle naturally occurring expressions of emotions.

Dynamic Changes in Amygdala Psychophysiological Connectivity Reveal Distinct Neural Networks for Facial Expressions of Basic Emotions

The quest to characterize the neural signature distinctive of different basic emotions has recently come under renewed scrutiny. Here we investigated whether facial expressions of different basic emotions modulate the functional connectivity of the amygdala with the rest of the brain. To this end, we presented seventeen healthy participants (8 females) with facial expressions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and emotional neutrality and analyzed amygdala’s psychophysiological interaction (PPI). In fact, PPI can reveal how inter-regional amygdala communications change dynamically depending on perception of various emotional expressions to recruit different brain networks, compared to the functional interactions it entertains during perception of neutral expressions. We found that for each emotion the amygdala recruited a distinctive and spatially distributed set of structures to interact with. These changes in amygdala connectional patters characterize the dynamic signature prototypical of individual emotion processing, and seemingly represent a neural mechanism that serves to implement the distinctive influence that each emotion exerts on perceptual, cognitive, and motor responses. Besides these differences, all emotions enhanced amygdala functional integration with premotor cortices compared to neutral faces. The present findings thus concur to reconceptualise the structure-function relation between brain-emotion from the traditional one-to-one mapping toward a network-based and dynamic perspective.

Cultural similarities and differences in perceiving and recognizing facial expressions of basic emotions.

The ability to recognize facial expressions of basic emotions is often considered a universal human ability. However, recent studies have suggested that this commonality has been overestimated and that people from different cultures use different facial signals to represent expressions (Jack, Blais, Scheepers, Schyns, & Caldara, 2009; Jack, Caldara, & Schyns, 2012). We investigated this possibility by examining similarities and differences in the perception and categorization of facial expressions between Chinese and white British participants using whole-face and partial-face images. Our results showed no cultural difference in the patterns of perceptual similarity of expressions from whole-face images. When categorizing the same expressions, however, both British and Chinese participants were slightly more accurate with whole-face images of their own ethnic group. To further investigate potential strategy differences, we repeated the perceptual similarity and categorization tasks with presentation of only the upper or lower half of each face. Again, the perceptual similarity of facial expressions was similar between Chinese and British participants for both the upper and lower face regions. However, participants were slightly better at categorizing facial expressions of their own ethnic group for the lower face regions, indicating that the way in which culture shapes the categorization of facial expressions is largely driven by differences in information decoding from this part of the face.

More emotional facial expressions during episodic than during semantic autobiographical retrieval.

There is a substantial body of research on the relationship between emotion and autobiographical memory. Using facial analysis software, our study addressed this relationship by investigating basic emotional facial expressions that may be detected during autobiographical recall. Participants were asked to retrieve 3 autobiographical memories, each of which was triggered by one of the following cue words: happy, sad, and city. The autobiographical recall was analyzed by a software for facial analysis that detects and classifies basic emotional expressions. Analyses showed that emotional cues triggered the corresponding basic facial expressions (i.e., happy facial expression for memories cued by happy). Furthermore, we dissociated episodic and semantic retrieval, observing more emotional facial expressions during episodic than during semantic retrieval, regardless of the emotional valence of cues. Our study provides insight into facial expressions that are associated with emotional autobiographical memory. It also highlights an ecological tool to reveal physiological changes that are associated with emotion and memory.

Neural Network Allied With Recognition of Facial Expressions of Basic Emotions

Neural Network Allied With Recognition of Facial Expressions of Basic Emotions

Cultural similarities and differences in processing facial expressions of basic emotions

The ability to recognize facial expressions of basic emotions is often considered a universal human ability. However, recent studies have suggested that the commonality of recognition mechanisms across cultures has been overestimated and that people from different cultures (Western and Chinese) use information from different regions of face to internally represent expressions (Jack et al., 2009; Jack et al., 2012). We investigated this possibility by systematically examining cultural similarities and differences in the perception and categorization of facial expressions between participants from Chinese and British cultures. The perceptual task involved rating the degree of similarity between pictures of facial expressions of same or different emotions, and the categorization task involved forced-choice recognition of emotion from the same images. Our results showed no difference in perception of images of whole faces between British and Chinese participants, but both groups of participants were slightly more accurate overall at categorizing expressions shown on faces of their own ethnic group. To further investigate potential strategy differences we repeated the tasks but with presentation of only the upper (eyes and forehead) or lower (mouth and chin) half of each face. Again, perception of facial expressions was similar between the Chinese and British groups, and this held for upper and lower face regions. However, participants were better at categorizing facial expressions shown by members of their own ethnic group when only the lower halves of the faces were visible to them, indicating that the way culture shapes the categorization of facial expressions is largely driven by differences in information decoding from this part of the face. These findings clarify the way in which culture can influence the interpretation of facial expressions. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015

The impact of postpartum depression and anxiety disorders on children's processing of facial emotional expressions at pre-school age.

To enhance understanding of impaired socio-emotional development in children of postpartum depressed or anxious mothers, this longitudinal study addressed the question of whether maternal postpartum depression and anxiety disorders result in deficits in children's processing of facial emotional expressions (FEEs) at pre-school age. Thirty-two mothers who had fulfilled Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV) criteria for postpartum depression and/or anxiety disorder and their pre-school aged children were tested for FEE processing abilities and compared to a healthy control group (n = 29). Child assessments included separate tasks for emotion recognition and emotion labelling. Mothers completed an emotion recognition test as well as the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders I (SCID-I). Children of postpartum depressed and/or anxious mothers performed significantly worse than control children at labelling, but not at recognizing facial expressions of basic emotions. Emotion labelling at pre-school age was predicted by child age and maternal postpartum mental health, but neither current maternal mental health nor current maternal emotion recognition was associated with child FEE processing. Results point to a specific importance of early social experiences for the development of FEE labelling skills. However, further studies involving sensitive measures of emotion recognition are needed to determine if there might also exist subtle effects on FEE recognition.

Reconstructing dynamic mental models of facial expressions in prosopagnosia reveals distinct representations for identity and expression

The human face transmits a wealth of signals that readily provide crucial information for social interactions, such as facial identity and emotional expression. Yet, a fundamental question remains unresolved: does the face information for identity and emotional expression categorization tap into common or distinct representational systems? To address this question we tested PS, a pure case of acquired prosopagnosia with bilateral occipitotemporal lesions anatomically sparing the regions that are assumed to contribute to facial expression (de)coding (i.e., the amygdala, the insula and the posterior superior temporal sulcus – pSTS). We previously demonstrated that PS does not use information from the eye region to identify faces, but relies on the suboptimal mouth region. PS's abnormal information use for identity, coupled with her neural dissociation, provides a unique opportunity to probe the existence of a dichotomy in the face representational system. To reconstruct the mental models of the six basic facial expressions of emotion in PS and age-matched healthy observers, we used a novel reverse correlation technique tracking information use on dynamic faces. PS was comparable to controls, using all facial features to (de)code facial expressions with the exception of fear. PS's normal (de)coding of dynamic facial expressions suggests that the face system relies either on distinct representational systems for identity and expression, or dissociable cortical pathways to access them. Interestingly, PS showed a selective impairment for categorizing many static facial expressions, which could be accounted for by her lesion in the right inferior occipital gyrus. PS's advantage for dynamic facial expressions might instead relate to a functionally distinct and sufficient cortical pathway directly connecting the early visual cortex to the spared pSTS. Altogether, our data provide critical insights on the healthy and impaired face systems, question evidence of deficits obtained from patients by using static images of facial expressions, and offer novel routes for patient rehabilitation.

Perceiving facial expression from varying face orientations: an eye-tracking study

We frequently encounter expressive faces from different viewing angles; invariant expression perception would be to our advantage in social interactions. Previous research is inconsistent about how face orientation affects expression categorization. It is also unknown how gaze behaviour accommodates this variable given diagnostic cues from local facial features for decoding expressions tend to vary with orientation. Here we manipulated orientation of faces (frontal, three-quarter and profile view) displaying six basic facial expressions of emotion, and measured participants’ expression categorization accuracy, perceived expression intensity and associated gaze patterns. The analysis of pooled data from all expressions showed that profile faces led to lower categorization accuracy and attracted fewer but longer fixations. The detailed gaze distribution at eyes, nose and mouth regions were also manipulated by face orientation, in line with the amount of available cues from a given feature at a given orientation. Further comparison between individual expressions revealed these orientation-induced perceptual and gaze behavioural changes were expressionspecific. The perceived expression intensity was affected by face orientation, even for those expressions with invariant categorization accuracy. The results suggest face orientation-invariant expression perception is categorical and is restricted to those expressions displaying expressive cues dominantly through eyes and/or mouth region.

Predicting advertising effectiveness by facial expressions in response to amusing persuasive stimuli.

We present a psychophysiological study of facial expressions of happiness (FEH) produced by advertisements using the FaceReader system (Noldus, 2013) for automatic analysis of facial expressions of basic emotions (FEBE; Ekman, 1972). FaceReader scores were associated with self-reports of the advertisement’s effectiveness. Building on work describing the role of emotions in marketing research, we examined the relationship between the patterns of the FEBE and the perceived amusement of the advertisements, attitude toward the advertisement (AAD) and attitude toward the brand (AB). Differences were observed between FEH scores in response to high-, medium-, and low-amusing video advertisements (AVAs). Positive correlations were found between FEH and AAD and FEH and AB in high- and medium- but not in low-AVAs. As hypothesized, other basic emotions (sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust) did not predict advertisement amusement or advertisements’ effectiveness. FaceReader enabled a detailed analysis of more than 120,000 frames of video-recordings contributing to an identification of global patterns of facial reactions to amusing persuasive stimuli. For amusing commercials, context-specific FEH features were found to be the major indicators of advertisement effectiveness. The study used video-recordings of participants in their natural environments obtained through a crowd-sourcing platform. The naturalistic design of the study strengthened its ecological validity and demonstrated the robustness of the software algorithms even under austere conditions. Our findings provide first evidence for the applicability of FaceReader methodology in the basic consumer science research.

Confusion of fear and surprise: A test of the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis with eye movement monitoring

Of the basic emotional facial expressions, fear is typically less accurately recognised as a result of being confused with surprise. According to the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis, the difficulty in recognising fear could be attributed to the similar visual configuration with surprise. In effect, they share more muscle movements than they possess distinctive ones. The main goal of the current study was to test the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis in the recognition of fear and surprise using eye movement recording and by manipulating the distinctiveness between expressions. Results revealed that when the brow lowerer is the only distinctive feature between expressions, accuracy is lower, participants spend more time looking at stimuli and they make more comparisons between expressions than when stimuli include the lip stretcher. These results not only support the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis but extend its definition by suggesting that it is not solely the number of distinctive features that is important but also their qualitative value.

Dynamic signaling of facial expressions transmit social information in a hierarchical manner over time

Designed by both biological (Susskind et al., 2008; Andrew, 1963) and social evolutionary pressures (Darwin, 1999/1872), facial expressions transmit specific sequences of information across time to achieve an optimal system of social signaling and decoding (Darwin, 1999/1872; Schyns et al., 2009). Here, we show for the first time that this dynamic signaling transmits social information over time in a hierarchical manner that fits evolutionary pressures. We proceeded in two steps. First, we used 4-dimensional (3-dimensional face over time) reverse correlation to reconstruct the dynamic mental models of the 6 basic facial expressions of emotion, for 60 Western Caucasian observers individually (Yu et al., 2012; Jack et al., 2012. See Figure S1, Panel A). Second, from the distribution of mental models, we constructed a 6-choice Bayesian classifier (see Bayesian Classifiers in Supplementary Material) that accrues Action Unit (AUs; Ekman et al., 1972) signals over time, as a function of their availability. Analyses revealed that early facial signalling leads to systematic confusions (p<.01. See Figure S1, Panel B, pink boxes) between fear and surprise (and also disgust and anger), due to specific shared AUs (eye lid raiser and nose wrinkler, respectively. See Figure S1, Panel C, pink boxes). Accurate discrimination of each one of the six basic emotions is delayed by the later availability of diagnostic AUs (e.g., eye brow raiser and upper lip raiser, respectively. See Figure S1, Panel C, green boxes). We conclude that the face transmits social signals in a hierarchical manner that fits evolutionary pressures: Initially, the eye lid raiser and the nose wrinkler signal two types of danger (Susskind et al., 2008; Lee et al., in press; Chapman et al., 2009), which, with the addition of diagnostic AUs, are distinguished further into the six basic emotions (e.g., surprise) and their subtypes (e.g., positive vs. negative surprise).

Cerebellar contribution to anger recognition deficits in Huntington's disease.

Although there is increasing evidence that cerebellar loss of grey matter volume (GMV) is associated with affective deficits, this has not been tested for patients suffering from Huntington's disease (HD), who show a pronounced impairment in the recognition of anger. We assessed GMV in 18 symptomatic HD patients and 18 healthy controls using voxel-based morphometry. The GMV of cerebellar subregions was correlated with participants' intensity and accuracy ratings for facial expressions of basic emotions from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (Lundqvist et al. 1998). The patients gave lower and less accurate anger ratings for angry faces than controls. This anger recognition deficit was correlated with atrophy of selected hemispheric and vermal regions of the cerebellum. Furthermore, cerebellar volume reductions of the HD patients were associated with longer disease duration and greater functional impairment. The data imply that anger recognition deficits could potentially serve as indicators of disease onset and progression in HD. Furthermore, the patients might profit from specific affect trainings.

Children's recognition of disgust in others.

Disgust has been theorized to be a basic emotion with a facial signal that is easily, universally, automatically, and perhaps innately recognized by observers from an early age. This article questions one key part of that theory: the hypothesis that children recognize disgust from its purported facial signal. Over the first 5 years, children experience disgust, produce facial expressions of disgust, develop a concept of disgust, understand and produce the word disgust or a synonym, know about disgust's causes and consequences, and infer disgust in others from a situation or a behavior. Yet, only gradually do these children come to "recognize" disgust specifically from the "disgust face" found in standardized sets of the facial expressions of basic emotions. Improvement is gradual, with more than half of children matching the standard disgust face to disgust only at around 9 years of age and with subsequent improvement continuing gradually until the late teens or early adulthood. Up to age 8, a majority of children studied believe that the standard disgust face indicates anger. Rather than relying on an already known signal value, children may be actively learning to interpret the expression.

Size-Invariant Facial Expression Categorization and Associated Gaze Allocation within Social Interaction Space

As faces often appear under very different viewing conditions (eg brightness, viewing angle, or viewing distance), invariant facial information recognition is a key to our social interactions. Although we would clearly benefit from differentiating different facial expressions (eg angry vs happy) at a distance, there is surprisingly little research examining how expression categorization and associated gaze allocation are affected by viewing distance within the range of typical social space. In this study I systematically varied the size of faces displaying six basic facial expressions of emotion with varying intensities to mimic viewing distances ranging from arms length to 5 m, and employed a self-paced expression categorization task to measure participants' categorization performance and associated gaze patterns. Irrespective of the displayed expression and its intensity, the participants showed indistinguishable categorization accuracy and reaction time across the tested face sizes. Reducing face size decreased the number of fixations directed at the faces but increased individual fixation durations, and shifted gaze distribution from scanning all key internal facial features to fixating at mainly the central face region. The results suggest size-invariant facial expression categorization behaviour within social interaction distance which could be linked to a holistic gaze strategy for extracting expressive facial cues.

Holistic Gaze Strategy to Categorize Facial Expression of Varying Intensities

Using faces representing exaggerated emotional expressions, recent behaviour and eye-tracking studies have suggested a dominant role of individual facial features in transmitting diagnostic cues for decoding facial expressions. Considering that in everyday life we frequently view low-intensity expressive faces in which local facial cues are more ambiguous, we probably need to combine expressive cues from more than one facial feature to reliably decode naturalistic facial affects. In this study we applied a morphing technique to systematically vary intensities of six basic facial expressions of emotion, and employed a self-paced expression categorization task to measure participants' categorization performance and associated gaze patterns. The analysis of pooled data from all expressions showed that increasing expression intensity would improve categorization accuracy, shorten reaction time and reduce number of fixations directed at faces. The proportion of fixations and viewing time directed at internal facial features (eyes, nose and mouth region), however, was not affected by varying levels of intensity. Further comparison between individual facial expressions revealed that although proportional gaze allocation at individual facial features was quantitatively modulated by the viewed expressions, the overall gaze distribution in face viewing was qualitatively similar across different facial expressions and different intensities. It seems that we adopt a holistic viewing strategy to extract expressive cues from all internal facial features in processing of naturalistic facial expressions.

Cognitive aging explains age-related differences in face-based recognition of basic emotions except for anger and disgust

ABSTRACT This study aimed at a detailed understanding of the possible dissociable influences of cognitive aging on the recognition of facial expressions of basic emotions (happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness). The participants were 36 older and 36 young adults. They viewed 96 pictures of facial expressions and were asked to choose one emotion that best described each. Four cognitive tasks measuring the speed of processing and fluid intelligence were also administered, the scores of which were used to compute a composite measure of general cognitive ability. A series of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that age-related deficits in identifying happiness, surprise, fear, and sadness were statistically explained by general cognitive ability, while the differences in anger and disgust were not. This provides clear evidence that age-related cognitive impairment remarkably and differentially affects the recognition of basic emotions, contrary to the common view that cognitive aging has a uniformly minor effect.

Facial expressions of emotion are not culturally universal

Since Darwin’s seminal works, the universality of facial expressions of emotion has remained one of the longest standing debates in the biological and social sciences. Briefly stated, the universality hypothesis claims that all humans communicate six basic internal emotional states (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad) using the same facial movements by virtue of their biological and evolutionary origins [Susskind JM, et al. (2008) Nat Neurosci 11:843–850]. Here, we refute this assumed universality. Using a unique computer graphics platform that combines generative grammars [Chomsky N (1965) MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] with visual perception, we accessed the mind’s eye of 30 Western and Eastern culture individuals and reconstructed their mental representations of the six basic facial expressions of emotion. Cross-cultural comparisons of the mental representations challenge universality on two separate counts. First, whereas Westerners represent each of the six basic emotions with a distinct set of facial movements common to the group, Easterners do not. Second, Easterners represent emotional intensity with distinctive dynamic eye activity. By refuting the long-standing universality hypothesis, our data highlight the powerful influence of culture on shaping basic behaviors once considered biologically hardwired. Consequently, our data open a unique nature–nurture debate across broad fields from evolutionary psychology and social neuroscience to social networking via digital avatars.