Facial Expression Recognition Task Research Articles

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Facial Affect Recognition in Children and Adolescents

To examine further the role of the amygdala in the recognition of facial expression in adolescents. Twelve healthy adolescents were studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging technology during a task of facial affect recognition and a visual control task. All subjects demonstrated a significant increase in signal intensity in the amygdala for the facial expression recognition task. The data are consistent with previous work in healthy adult subjects implicating the amygdala as essential for the recognition of fearful facial expression.

Movement, face processing and schizophrenia: Evidence of a differential deficit in expression analysis

Three dynamic face-processing tasks based on the Bruce & Young (1986) functional model of face processing were presented to 10 schizophrenic and 10 depressed inpatients and to 10 non-patient subjects. Familiar face recognition, facial expression recognition and unfamiliar face matching were examined. Schizophrenic patients' performance was significantly poorer than that of depressed patients and non-patient controls. Significantly lower scores were obtained on the facial expression recognition task than on the familiar face recognition task. There was a differential pattern of group performance on each of the three tasks: schizophrenic and depressed patients were as accurate as non-patient controls on the familiar face recognition task, but significantly less accurate than non-patient controls on the unfamiliar face-matching task. Schizophrenic patients were significantly less accurate than depressed patients and non-patient controls on the facial expression recognition task. The results are contrasted with an analogous static face-processing study.

Conflict behaviors of maltreated and nonmaltreated children

Maltreated and nonmaltreated children (ages 3–7 years) were paired for brief play sessions involving a single desirable object. Facial, verbal, and physical actions used while negotiating access to the object were examined. Results showed that the maltreated-nonmaltreated pairs were able to engage in a negotiation process resulting in approximately equal sharing of the object. The differences found between maltreated and nonmaltreated children primarily suggested that maltreated children were somewhat hesitant to engage their partners. Results also showed that children's scores on a facial expression recognition task predicted greater responsiveness to their partners' indication of reluctance to relinquish the object.

Electrodermal responses in patients with unilateral brain damage.

Skin conductance responses (SCR) to emotional and to nonemotional stimuli were measured in 16 right and 16 left unilateral brain-damaged patients. Replicating findings by Morrow, Vrtunski, Kim and Boller (1981), those patients with a lesion in the left hemisphere showed higher SCR's to emotional than to nonemotional stimuli while those with a right lesion showed no difference between them. This pattern of results remained when variance in performance on a Facial Expression Recognition task was partialled out, suggesting that the absence of differentiated arousal in right-brain-damaged patients is unrelated to their impairment in perceptual analysis.