Smile Expression Research Articles

Smiling Faces Rated More Feminine than Serious Faces in Japan

It has been reported that women and girls smile more frequently and more effectively than men and boys. It is expected that this correlation between femaleness and smiling affects the processing of faces, and consequently, smiling faces may be perceived to be more feminine. Participants viewed 30 photographs featuring smiling and serious facial expressions of both male and female subjects and rated them for femininity or masculinity. The result indicated that smiling faces significantly more frequently gave the impression of being more feminine. The interaction between the sex of the faces and their expression was not significant.

Effects of normal and perturbed social play on the duration and amplitude of different types of infant smiles.

Different types of smiling varying in amplitude of lip corner retraction were investigated during 2 mother-infant games--peekaboo and tickle--at 6 and 12 months and during normally occurring and perturbed games. Using Facial Action Coding System (FACS), infant smiles were coded as simple (lip corner retraction only), Duchenne (simple plus cheek raising), play (simple plus jaw drop), and duplay (Duchenne plus jaw drop). In addition, again using FACS, the amplitude of lip corner retraction was coded on a 5-point scale. Rather than a single smile expression that differs only in amplitude, the authors found a complex family of different smile expressions differing in their duration and amplitude as a function of game, setup versus climax of the game, and perturbation. Both type of smiling and amplitude of smiling appear to be controlled independently by the infant in relation to the context. These findings reveal systematic and context-specific nuances in infant smiles in the 2nd half of the first year.

The Death of Buddha: A Medical Enquiry

The death of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) has been depicted widely in Buddhist iconography. The Buddha is generally shown with a serene or smiling expression, lying on his right side and resting his head on his right hand. The dates of Buddha's life traditionally are given as 566-486 BC. Buddha died from an illness, the nature of which remains unsettled. The present paper examines a variety of sources and concludes that it was tainted pork that led to his demise. He succumbed to the disease pig-bel, a necrotizing enteritis caused by the toxins of Clostridium perfringens infection.

A common neural basis for receptive and expressive communication of pleasant facial affect

There is accumulating evidence suggesting that the visual representation of facial affect is closely linked to its motor representation. To examine whether perception of pleasant facial affect involves neural circuitries associated with its production, we performed an fMRI experiment with ‘compressed image acquisition' where subjects smiled and observed movies depicting other people smiling within scan-free time intervals between the acquisition of each image volume. Overlaps between the brain activation during observation and execution of smile expressions were located in the right premotor cortex and pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus, right parietal operculum (SII) and left anterior insula. Observation of smile expressions further yielded signal increases within the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS), fusiform gyrus and ventral amygdala. The results show that perceiving and expressing pleasant facial affect share a common neural basis in areas concerned with motor as well as somato- and limbic-sensory processing. In concert with temporal regions serving the visual analysis of facial expressive features, a mapping of the observed expressions onto neural circuitries associated with the production of these expressions and its somatosensory consequences could provide a description of what the expression would feel like if produced in the observer. Such a mechanism is suggested to be important for empathic understanding of others' feelings.

Predicting the willingness to disclose childhood sexual abuse from measures of repressive coping and dissociative tendencies.

Although it is generally agreed that the verbal disclosure of past childhood sexual abuse (CSA) experiences can be beneficial, CSA survivors are often reluctant to reveal such experiences. Bonanno et al. found that women with documented CSA histories who did not disclose abuse when provided an opportunity to do so were more likely to show nonverbal expressions of shame and polite smiling, relative to disclosing CSA survivors or nonabused controls. Disclosing CSA survivors, in contrast, showed greater facial expressions of disgust. The current study extended this paradigm by showing that among the same participants, CSA disclosure was associated with chronic dissociative experiences, whereas nondisclosure was associated with repressive coping. Further, repressive coping and dissociative experiences were inversely related and showed opposite patterns of facial expressions and adjustment. Repressors expressed greater negative and positive emotion and were relatively better adjusted, whereas dissociators expressed little emotion and had relatively poorer adjustment.

Encoding and Decoding of Facial Expression

Differences in judgment ratings on the development of smiling and neutral expressions over time were demonstrated with the use of line-drawn representations of facial expressions as stimuli. There was a greater variation in ratings for the different stages of smiling than for the equivalent stages of the neutral expression. Furthermore, the judges' ratings on the degree of smiling varied for the individual encoders or “models,” indicating that the judges were able to perceive differences in the encoding abilities of the individuals. Significant gender differences existed in the decoding (or rating) skills of the judges: The women used the extremes of the rating scale more often than the men to judge an expression as a smile, especially when the smiling expression was reaching its peak. For the judgment of neutral expressions, the women used the lower end of the rating scale more often than the men. Finally, the configuration of those features that represent activity of the mouth were significantly more important than others in contributing to the mean score of the judges.

She is not a beauty even when she smiles: Possible evolutionary basis for a relationship between facial attractiveness and hemispheric specialization

The asymmetrical status of facial beauty has rarely been investigated. We studied positive facial characteristics, attractiveness and smiling, through the use of left-left and right-right composites of unfamiliar faces of women and men with natural expressions. Results showed that women's right-right composites were judged significantly more attractive than left-left composities while there was no left-right difference in men's composites (Experiment 1). On the other hand, left-left composites were judged to have more pronounced smiling expressions than right-right composites in both women's and men's faces (Experiment 2). The results confirm previous findings for leftward facial expressiveness and show for the first time asymmetry in facial attractiveness and a difference in its manifestation in women's and men's faces. The findings have biological implications for the relationship between the appearance of the sides of the face and hemispheric specialization. The organization of beauty in the human face may have been shaped by evolutionary pressures on facial asymmetries, especially as they pertain to mate selection.

The quantification of smiling using a microcomputer-based approach

This study examines the relationship between the ratings made of a set of smiling and neutral expressions and the facial features which influence these ratings. Judges were shown forty real face photographs of smile and neutral expressions and forty line drawings derived from these photographs and were asked to rate the degree of smiling behavior of each expression. The line drawings of the face were generated by a microcomputer which utilizes a mathematical model to quantify facial expression. Twelve facial measures were generated by the computer. Significant differences were found between the ratings of smile and neutral expressions. The Mode of Presentation did not contribute significantly to the ratings. Using the facial measures as separate covariates, five mouth measures and one eye measure were found to discriminate significantly between the ratings made on smile and neutral expressions. When entered as simultaneous covariates, only four mouth measures contributed to the differences found in the expression ratings. Future research projects which may utilise the computer model are discussed

"Smile" reconstruction in facial paralysis.

Reanimation of the face following facial nerve paralysis, especially the socially important smile, presents a complex surgical challenge requiring an individualized approach. Both neural and non-neural operative procedures have been used in an attempt to achieve the goal of a symmetrical synchronous smiling expression. A retrospective review of the results of both neural and nonneural methods was made to determine the relative efficacy of various methods. Of the neural techniques, early direct nerve repair primarily consistently achieved the best functional recovery. Double nerve grafts were found to be superior to a single nerve graft in nerve severance with a nerve gap at the facial nerve trunk bifurcation in delayed cases. In long-standing cases, ipsilateral or cross-face nerve grafting followed by functioning muscle transfer gives the most acceptable synchronous smile. Although cross-face nerve graft only, hypoglossal facial transfer, or non-neural techniques such as temporal muscle transfer achieved restoration of the smile, their inconsistent results and asynchronous action still limited the patient's confidence in social interactions.

The Perception of Smiling and Its Experiential Correlates in Three-Month-Old Infants

We studied individual differences in 3-month-olds' perceptions of smiling and the experiential correlates of those differences. In the laboratory, infants saw a graduated series of smiles that grew in intensity of expression. As a group, 3-month-olds preferred increasingly intense expressions of smiling, but individually they showed different growth rates of preference across the smiling series. Further, infants' preferences related to their home experiences: Infants who showed greater sensitivity to smiling had mothers who more frequently encouraged attention to themselves when they were smiling and their infants were looking at them. Infant discrimination within and between categories of facial expression and the relative strengths of association between different kinds of naturally occurring experiences and infant perceptual sensitivity are discussed.

Do Infants See Emotional Expressions in Static Faces?

To determine whether young infants discriminate photographs of different emotions on an affect-relevant basis or on the basis of isolated features unrelated to emotion, groups of 17-, 23-, and 29-week-olds were habituated to slides of 8 women posing either Toothy Angry, Nontoothy Angry, or Nontoothy Smiling facial expressions and were then shown 2 new women in the familiarized expression and in a novel Toothy Smiling expression. At all 3 ages, recovery to the novel Toothy Smiling faces occurred only after habituation to Nontoothy faces (whether smiling or angry), not after habituation to Toothy Angry faces, indicating that infants had been responsive to nonspecific features of the photographs (presence or absence of bared teeth) rather than to affectively relevant configurations of features. In a second experiment, 2 older age groups (35 and 41 weeks) also proved to be insensitive to affect-related aspects of still faces, though more so for angry than for happy expressions. It is suggested that the young infant's difficulty in extracting emotional information from static stimuli may be attributable to the absence of the critical invariants (dynamic, multimodally specified) that characterize naturalistic expressions of emotion.

The young infant's ability to produce discrete emotion expressions.

University of Delaware A series of five studies investigated the young infant's ability to produce identifiable emotion expressions as defined in differential emotions theory. Trained judges applied emotion-specific criteria in selecting expression stimuli from videotape recordings of 54 1- to 9-month-old infants' responses to a variety of incentive events, ranging from playful interactions to the pain of inoculations. Four samples of untrained subjects from two different populations confirmed the social validity of infants' emotion expressions by reliably identifying expressions of interest, joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, andjeaj;. Brief training resulted in significant increa'sesTin the accuracy of discriminatio n of infants' negative emotion expressions for low-accuracy subjects. Construct validity for the eight emotion expressions identified by untrained subjects and for a consistent pattern of facial responses to unanticipated pain was provided by expression identifications derived from an objective, theoretically structured, anatomically based facial movement coding system. There has been little systematic investigation of the infant's ability to encode or produce facial expressions of emotion, except for smiling and laughing (Emde, Gaensbauer, & Harmon, 1976; Spitz & Wolf, 1946; Sroufe & Wunsch, 1972). Investigations of the newborn (Emde et al., 1976; Peiper, 1963) and the born blind (Dumas, 1932; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1972; Goodenough, 1932; Thompson, 1941) have suggested that the expressions of startle, neonatal smiling, disgust, and distress are present at birth. Darwin's (1872, 1877) observational studies,

Maternal physiological response to infant signals.

ABSTRACTThe present study reports the use of maternal physiologic responses as an index of maternal attention to infant signals. Thirty‐two women, each of whom had a 3‐month‐old infant, were shown 10‐sec silent images on a videotape monitor of a 3‐month‐old infant, en face, exhibiting either a smiling or a crying facial expression. Heart rate and skin conductance were recorded continuously while each woman viewed a sequence of 6 identical episodes of one expression followed by 6 episodes of the other expression. Both cardiac and skin conductance responses to the smile expression decreased following repeated presentations of the cry stimulus. Cardiac deceleration to the cry was prolonged following the viewing of the smiling infant. Mothers' perception of their own infants' temperament assessed by the Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire (1970) was systematically related to maternal heart rate response. Mothers who described their infants as more difficult were physiologically less sensitive to changes in infant expressions. Results are discussed in terms of the impact of infant signals upon developing mother‐infant reciprocity.