Important Role In Social Interactions Research Articles

Perceived gaze direction affects concreteness effects in words memory: an event-related potentials study.

Previous studies have revealed that word concreteness effects could be influenced by contextual cues such as emotional context. However, it is unclear whether concreteness effects might be influenced by social context such as perception of gaze direction, which plays an important role in social interaction. This study uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether perceived gaze direction could affect concreteness effects in words memory. Concrete and abstract words were presented on direct- or averted-gaze faces, and participants were asked to memorize the words. Behavioral results verified the direct-gaze memory advantage, showing that memory performance was better for words presented with direct gaze than with averted gaze. ERP results showed that concrete words were associated with a larger N400 and a smaller late positive component (LPC) than abstract words. ERP results also revealed a significant interaction between gaze direction and word concreteness on the LPC component: specifically, the LPC concreteness effect occurred only in the direct-gaze condition. Our results suggested that the gaze direction could be interpreted as a complex social context that differs from pure emotional cues in its influence on mental imagery in concreteness effects. This study provides a new perspective for investigating word concreteness effects with contextual cues.

Abnormal negative feedback processing in individuals with autistic traits in the Iowa gambling task: Evidence from behavior and event-related potentials

Value-based decision making plays an important role in social interaction. Previous studies have reported that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit deficits in terms of decision making. However, it is still unknown clearly whether individuals with high autistic traits within nonclinical populations employ abnormal neural substrates in value-based decision-making. To explore this issue, we investigated value-based decision making and its neural substrates in individuals with high and low autistic traits within a typically developing population who completed the revised Iowa gambling task (IGT) based on measurements of event-related potentials (ERPs). The IGT net scores were significantly lower in the group with high autistic traits than the group with low autistic traits in the fifth and sixth blocks. The ERP results showed that the feedback-related negativity (FRN) amplitude in individuals with high autistic traits allowed slight discrimination between positive and negative feedback in the low-risk option. The event-related spectral perturbations (ERSPs) and inter-trial coherence (ITC) of the theta-band frequency were also lower in the group with high autistic traits than the group with low autistic traits in the loss low-risk option. The results obtained in this study indicate that individuals with high autistic traits exhibit an unusual negative feedback process and relevant neural substrate. The FRN amplitude and theta-band oscillation may comprise a neural index of abnormal decision-making processes in individuals with high autistic traits. This study of a small sample may be considered an important step toward a more comprehensive understanding of the autism “spectrum” within a nonclinical population based on cognitive neuroscience.

The effect of eye gaze direction on emotional mimicry: A multimodal study with electromyography and electroencephalography

Emotional mimicry plays an important role in social interaction and is influenced by social context, especially eye gaze direction. However, the neural mechanism underlying the effect of eye gaze direction on emotional mimicry is unclear. Here, we explored how eye gaze direction influenced emotional mimicry with a combination of electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography (EEG) techniques, which may provide a more comprehensive measure. To do this, we recorded facial EMG and scalp EEG signals simultaneously while participants observed emotional faces (happy vs. angry) with direct or averted gaze. Then, we split the EEG trials into two mimicry intensity categories (high mimicry intensity, HMI vs. low mimicry intensity, LMI) according to EMG activity. The ERP difference between HMI and LMI EEG trials revealed four ERP components (P50, P150, N200 and P300), and the effect of eye gaze direction on emotional mimicry was prominent on P300 at P7 and P8. Moreover, we also observed differences in the effect of eye gaze direction on mimicry of happy faces and angry faces, which were found on P300 at P7, as well as P150 at P7 and N200 at P7 and Pz. In short, the present study isolated the neural signals of emotional mimicry with a new multimodal method, and provided empirical neural evidence that eye gaze direction affected emotional mimicry.

In the Blink of an Eye: Reading Mental States From Briefly Presented Eye Regions.

Faces provide not only cues to an individual’s identity, age, gender, and ethnicity but also insight into their mental states. The aim was to investigate the temporal aspects of processing of facial expressions of complex mental states for very short presentation times ranging from 12.5 to 100 ms in a four-alternative forced choice paradigm based on Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. Results show that participants are able to recognise very subtle differences between facial expressions; performance is better than chance, even for the shortest presentation time. Importantly, we show for the first time that observers can recognise these expressions based on information contained in the eye region only. These results support the hypothesis that the eye region plays a particularly important role in social interactions and that the expressions in the eyes are a rich source of information about other peoples’ mental states. When asked to what extent the observers guessed during the task, they significantly underestimated their ability to make correct decisions, yet perform better than chance, even for very brief presentation times. These results are particularly relevant in the light of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the associated wearing of face coverings.

Why do you attract me but not others? Retrieval of person knowledge and its generalization bring diverse judgments of facial attractiveness

ABSTRACT Judgments of facial attractiveness play an important role in social interactions. However, it still remains unclear why these judgments are malleable. The present study aimed to understand whether the retrieval of person knowledge leads to different judgments of attractiveness of the same face. Event-related potentials and learning-recognition tasks were used to investigate the effects of person knowledge on facial attractiveness. The results showed that compared with familiar faces that were matched with negative person knowledge, those matched with positive person knowledge were evaluated as more attractive and evoked a larger early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive complex (LPC). Additionally, positive similar faces had the same behavioral results and evoked large LPC, while unfamiliar faces did not have any significant effects. These results indicate that the effect of person knowledge on facial attractiveness occurs from early to late stage of facial attractiveness processing, and this effect could be generalized based on the similarity of the face structure, which occurred at the late stage. This mechanism may explain why individuals form different judgments of facial attractiveness.

Feasibility Analysis of Deep Learning-Based Reality Assessment of Human Back-View Images

Realistic personalized avatars can play an important role in social interactions in virtual reality, increasing body ownership, presence, and dominance. A simple way to obtain the texture of an avatar is to use a single front-view image of a human and to generate the hidden back-view image. The realism of the generated image is crucial in improving the overall texture quality, and subjective image quality assessment methods can play an important role in the evaluation. The subjective methods, however, require dozens of human assessors, a controlled environment, and time. This paper proposes a deep learning-based image reality assessment method, which is fully automatic and has a short testing time of nearly a quarter second per image. We train various discriminators to predict whether an image is real or generated. The trained discriminators are then used to give a mean opinion score for the reality of an image. Through experiments on human back-view images, we show that our learning-based mean opinion scores are close to their subjective counterparts in terms of the root mean square error between them.

Modelling Social Embodiment in Social Robotic Companions: using Tamagotchi & NAO

Social interactions with robots and agents have become increasingly popular as a way for humans to interact. To be able to provide these social interactions, the embodiment in particular social embodiment for the social agents are considered to be an important factor. In this paper, we introduce an experiment to measure the impor- tance of modelling of social embodiment in social agents. For which we decided to use Tamagotchi architecture in two different configurations as a virtual agent (Graphical user interface) and a physical robot (NAO robot). We then surveyed on interactions with these two different embodiment configurations using a questionnaire and a short interview. Which we then discussed in our results section, showing how modelling of social embodiment in social agents plays an important role in social interactions between humans and robots.

Facial expression recognition using modified Viola-John’s algorithm and KNN classifier

In the way of communication, facial expression act as non-verbal communication and play an important role in social interaction by providing some contextual information. Facial expressions also express human’s inner emotional state, which is very effective for communication with the actual emotions. In this paper, an algorithm has been proposed to detect the face and facial parts more accurate to the Viola – John’s algorithm, and a fast-tracking algorithm for face tracking in real-time scenarios. The fusion of the facial features is used for feature extraction and comparative work on the several classifiers has been presented. In this approach, the images were acquired and seven significant facial parts from the image were cropped, then extract and store the features of several facial expressions. Finally, the expressions in the images were recognized using the classifiers. The algorithm was tested on four kinds of database and achieved accurate performance through the designed system.

The significance of non-invasive methods of document examination in evidentiary proceedings

Due to a document’s important role in social interaction it is frequently forged or counterfeited, which has its impact on penal, civil and administrative legal proceedings. In the interest of evidential proceedings it is paramount that a document suffers minimum damage during an examination. Moreover, due to the need to implement various examination methods and the limitations of their effectiveness, the results of document examination sometimes fall short of expectations, which is reflected in the ambiguity of final conclusions. This article discusses effective use of non-invasive methods in forensic examination of documents. The presented case involved several non-invasive methods, including colorimetry. Confronting a few methods implemented in a particular case of document examination increases the accuracy and objectivity of its results and improves chances for formulating correct final conclusions

Researches on empathy: Methodologies and characteristics from a psychophysiological perspective

Empathy is an essential skill in our social lives, allowing us to understand and share others’ feelings. In the last decade, empathy has been a hot topic in cognitive neuroscience for its important role in social interaction. To date, there are a variety of definitions of the term “empathy”, such as “a reaction to the observed experiences of another” and “the ability to experience and understand what others feel without confusion between oneself and others”. Based on different definitions of empathy, different methodologies have been developed and adopted in the field of empathy research. Valid empathy questionnaires are developed to provide ones’ subjective evaluation about their empathy ability (i.e., trait empathy); behavioral paradigms are designed to measure individuals’ empathy levels under a specific context (i.e., state empathy); physiological techniques and brain imaging techniques are useful in detecting objective physiological signals related to empathy. However, some findings on empathy are mixed and inconsistent, which might be due to the different definitions and methodologies adopted by each study. To deepen our understanding of empathy and its psychological mechanisms, it is necessary to integrate different methodologies and interpret results from different aspects. To this end, this review first summarized how empathy is typically measured and quantified at different measurement levels with an emphasis on emotional empathy and cognitive empathy, given that existing studies on empathy mainly focus on the two categories and their combination. Specifically, methodologies in empathy research were introduced as followed: (1) Widely-used empathy questionnaires, including the detailed definitions and measurement dimensions; (2) classic experimental materials and behavioral paradigms for measuring emotional empathy and/or cognitive empathy; (3) empathy-related physiological signals detected by facial electromyography, electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Next, we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology and pointed out the difficulties in compiling findings from studies using different methodologies. For example, different empathy questionnaires applied to the same group may yield contradictory results and the quality of experimental stimulus in the same kind of empathy paradigms potentially influences participants’ brain activities. More importantly, the physiological signals (e.g. event-related potential components) recorded in empathy experiments are not “specific” but only “related” to empathy. Then, we suggested that researchers should carefully select appropriate methodologies according to their research needs. For instance, EEG is suitable for exploring empathic processing in the time domain, while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is conducive to pinpoint the specific functions (e.g. self-other discrimination) of empathy-related brain regions. Finally, we proposed that the conceptual framework of empathy should be unified and more naturalistic paradigms should be developed to reveal the interactions among different empathic subprocesses in the future. In conclusion, this review highlights the importance of comparing and combining different methodologies in order to reveal the underlying mechanisms of empathy, which yields new insights into social interaction.

Nurturing infants with music

Primary caregivers throughout the world provide infants with life-sustaining care such as nutrition and protection from harm as well as life-enhancing care such as affection, contingent responsiveness and mentoring of various kinds. They nurture infants musically by means of one-on-one (i.e. infant-directed) singing accompanied by movement in some cultures and by visual gestures in others. Such singing, which is acoustically and visually distinct from solitary (i.e. self-directed) singing, is effective in engaging infants and regulating their mood and arousal. The repetition and stereotypy of caregivers’ performances contribute to their memorability and dyadic significance. Caregivers’ singing also influences infants’ social engagement more generally. Once infants become singers, their songs play an important role in social interaction and emotional self-regulation. Although caregivers sing to infants with playful or soothing intentions, their performances highlight the temporal and melodic structure of the music. In sum, caregivers lay the foundation for a lifelong musical journey.

Preferences for Continence Care Experienced at End of Life: A Qualitative Study

ContextFunctional dependence at end of life often leaves individuals requiring help for personal care, including maintaining continence. Current continence guidelines offer little direction for end of life continence care, and little is known of the perspectives of people receiving palliative care. ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to examine the continence care preferences of people receiving palliative care to understand what approaches to care and what goals of care are important to them. MethodsThis is a qualitative descriptive exploratory study with data gathered in individual interviews using a semi-structured interview guide. Participants were receiving bladder and/or bowel care on either tertiary or hospice palliative care units. ResultsFourteen Canadian patients (seven female, seven male), six from tertiary and eight from hospice palliative care units, were recruited. From the analysis, three themes were identified: loss of control, finding a way to manage, and caregivers can help and can hinder. Dignity was often lost as a result of having to receive continence care, with most participants following staff recommendations for management approaches as the easiest way. Patients did not recall being asked about their bladder and bowel preferences. ConclusionsAs patients approached end of life they were willing to give up dignity if it was required to address symptoms causing them more distress, like pain. Health care professionals and family have an important role in social interactions around continence care. Health care professionals should incorporate patient preferences as best they can and explain the options when treating incontinence at end of life.

Influence of verbal and nonverbal signals on an interlocutor’s electroencephalogram

A technique and a hardware–software complex have been developed for simultaneously recording the electrical activity of the brains of two people. It is shown that statistically significant differences appear between the various regimes and interaction conditions of the interlocutors in all frequency ranges except for the alpha range if the interlocutors are placed back-to-back. It is shown that mimicry plays a very important role in social interaction. Under definite conditions, mimicry can appear both in the role of noise, smoothing out the differences between the various interaction regimes, and on the other hand, emphasizing and amplifying these differences.

Eye contact modulates facial mimicry in 4-month-old infants: An EMG and fNIRS study

Mimicry, the tendency to spontaneously and unconsciously copy others' behaviour, plays an important role in social interactions. It facilitates rapport between strangers, and is flexibly modulated by social signals, such as eye contact. However, little is known about the development of this phenomenon in infancy, and it is unknown whether mimicry is modulated by social signals from early in life. Here we addressed this question by presenting 4-month-old infants with videos of models performing facial actions (e.g., mouth opening, eyebrow raising) and hand actions (e.g., hand opening and closing, finger actions) accompanied by direct or averted gaze, while we measured their facial and hand muscle responses using electromyography to obtain an index of mimicry (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2 the infants observed the same stimuli while we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate the brain regions involved in modulating mimicry by eye contact. We found that 4-month-olds only showed evidence of mimicry when they observed facial actions accompanied by direct gaze. Experiment 2 suggests that this selective facial mimicry may have been associated with activation over posterior superior temporal sulcus. These findings provide the first demonstration of modulation of mimicry by social signals in young human infants, and suggest that mimicry plays an important role in social interactions from early in life.

The Other and Me: Effects of oxytocin on self-other distinction.

Distinguishing self- from other-related representations plays an important role in social interactions. The neuropeptide oxytocin has been shown to modulate social behavior as well as underlying social cognitions and emotions. However, how exactly oxytocin modulates representations of self and other is still unclear. The present study therefore aimed to assess effects of oxytocin on self-other distinction on two different processing levels (i.e., lower-level imitation-inhibition and higher-level perspective taking) in a male sample (n = 56) by performing a double-blind, placebo-controlled oxytocin administration study. Oxytocin improved visual perspective-taking and thus affected self-other distinction on the cognitive level, but had no effects on self-other distinction on the perceptual-motor level nor on a control task measuring attention reorientation. Thus, our findings suggest that oxytocin reduces ambiguity during perspective-taking in social interactions, which in turn may encourage social approach motivation and affiliative behavior.

Maxillary labial frenum morphology and midline diastema among 3 to 12-year-old schoolgoing children in Sri Ganganagar city: A cross-sectional study.

Dentofacial aesthetics plays an important role in social interaction and psychological well-being because it affects how people perceive themselves and how they are perceived by society. The maxillary labial frenum is a fold of tissue, usually triangular in shape, extending from the maxillary midline area of the gingiva into the vestibule and mid portion of the upper lip. Maxillary anterior spacing or diastema is a common aesthetic complaint of patients and is frequently seen in children especially in the mixed dentition stage. 1. To estimate the prevalence of different morphologic types of maxillary labial frenum among children of age 3 - 12 years. 2. To find out the relationship between the level of insertion of the frenum and age of the child.3. To evaluate the correlation between frenum morphology, insertion and midline diastema in children. The direct visual method under natural light was used and the upper lip was lifted with the index finger and thumb of both hands which allowed for the observation and classification of the labial frenum morphology according to Sewerin's typology and its attachment according to Placek et al. The midline diastema was determined by measuring the distance between the midpoints of the mesial surfaces of both central incisors with the help of divider and ruler. The values were recorded in the prepared schedule. The presence of an abnormal frenum can be a cause in persistent midline diastemas. Tooth movement usually is deferred until eruption of the permanent canines but can begin early in certain cases with very large diastemas.

Tooth Color as a Predictor of Oral Health-Related Quality of Life in Young Adults.

Smiling plays an important role in social interaction. The purpose of this research was to explore the extent to which objective parameters of color of one's own teeth affected the social and emotional dimensions of young adults' lives. The sample included 134 subjects-students of the University of Rijeka, Croatia (65% female) aged 19 to 28 years (median 21). All subjects had six intact maxillary anterior teeth without restorations or severe malocclusions and healthy gingiva with no signs of inflammation. Tooth color was assessed intraorally using a spectrophotometer. Lightness, chroma, and translucency of the right maxillary central incisors (the reference teeth) were calculated and used for analysis. Subjects reported dimensions of their oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) using the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP), Orofacial Esthetic Scale (OES), and the Psychosocial Impact of Dental Aesthetics Questionnaire (PIDAQ). Linear relationships between elements of tooth color and OHRQoL were explored using Pearson correlations. Multiple linear regression, while controlling for the influence of age and gender, was also calculated. ANOVA with a Tukey post hoc test was employed to test whether nonlinear relationships existed between OHRQoL and categories of color elements. Dental self-confidence, esthetic concerns, orofacial appearance, social impact and psychological impact were not related to lightness, chroma, or translucency of the subjects' teeth. Neither linear nor nonlinear relationships were detected between those aspects. Satisfaction with smile esthetics was only related to translucency where subjects with moderate translucency were least likely to be satisfied (p = 0.033). Women tended to report greater psychosocial impacts than men (p < 0.05), regardless of their tooth color. According to the results of this study objective, measurable, quantitative parameters of tooth color did not accurately predict psychosocial dimensions of OHRQoL in dentate young adults.

Empathy, Pain and Attention: Cues that Predict Pain Stimulation to the Partner and the Self Capture Visual Attention.

Empathy motivates helping and cooperative behaviors and plays an important role in social interactions and personal communication. The present research examined the hypothesis that a state of empathy guides attention towards stimuli significant to others in a similar way as to stimuli relevant to the self. Sixteen couples in romantic partnerships were examined in a pain-related empathy paradigm including an anticipation phase and a stimulation phase. visual symbols (i.e., arrows and flashes) signaled the delivery of a Pain or Nopain stimulus to the partner or the self while dense sensor event-related potentials (ERPs) were simultaneously recorded from both persons. During the anticipation phase, stimuli predicting Pain compared to Nopain stimuli to the partner elicited a larger early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP), which were similar in topography and latency to the EPN and LPP modulations elicited by stimuli signaling pain for the self. Noteworthy, using abstract cue symbols to cue Pain and Nopain stimuli suggests that these effects are not driven by perceptual features. The findings demonstrate that symbolic stimuli relevant for the partner capture attention, which implies a state of empathy to the pain of the partner. From a broader perspective, states of empathy appear to regulate attention processing according to the perceived needs and goals of the partner.

Reasons for requests

Reasons play an important role in social interaction. We study reasons-giving in the context of request sequences in Russian. By contrasting request sequences with and without reasons, we are able to shed light on the interactional work people do when they provide reasons or ask for them. In a systematic collection of request sequences in everyday conversation ( N = 158), we find reasons in a variety of sequential positions, showing the various points at which participants may orient to the need for a reason. Reasons may be left implicit (as in many minimal requests that are readily complied with), or they can be made explicit. Participants may make reasons explicit either as part of the initial formulation of a request or in an interactionally contingent way. Across sequential positions, we show that reasons for requests recurrently deal with three possible issues: (1) providing information when a request is underspecified, (2) managing relationships between the requester and requestee and (3) explicating ancillary actions implemented by a request. By spelling out information normally left to presuppositions and implicatures, reasons make requests more understandable and help participants to navigate the social landscape of asking assistance from others.

Adaptation to human locomotion speed

Visual judgments of human movement play an important role in social interactions, but relatively little is known about how retinal motion signals are used to estimate human movement speed. We report a new effect which demonstrates that these judgments are subject to modification by exposure to dynamic images. Participants viewed videos of real scenes depicting either groups of figures walking along a High Street or contestants running in the London Marathon. When video playback was speeded up or slowed down slightly relative to natural speed, participants could readily report whether the figures in each video appeared to be moving unnaturally quickly or slowly. However after adapting to slowed-down walking, natural walking speed appeared too fast, and after adapting to speeded-up walking, natural walking speed appeared too slow. Corresponding effects were found for running videos. Adaptation to natural-speed playback had no effect on apparent locomotion speed. These effects are quite different in a number of respects from those previously reported in studies of retinal velocity adaptation using simple patterns such as gratings. Unlike the stimuli used in most previous studies our videos contained a range of speeds and directions due to the unpredictability of natural scenes. Walkers and runners moved in different directions at different speeds, and at varying distances from the camera. Participants also engaged in free viewing rather than fixation. Furthermore over the range of retinal velocities our stimuli contained, adaptation to simple moving patterns causes a significant reduction in apparent velocity at all test velocities, including at the adapting velocity. Our data are consistent with the operation of a qualitatively different process in judgements of locomotion speed in natural scenes.