Search

Facial expressions of emotion involve a physical component of morphological changes in a face and an affective component conveying information about the expresser’s internal feelings. It remains unresolved how much recognition and discrimination of expressions rely on the perception of morphological patterns or the processing of affective content. This review of research on the role of visual and emotional factors in expression recognition reached three major conclusions. First, behavioral, neurophysiological, and computational measures indicate that basic expressions are reliably recognized and discriminated from one another, albeit the effect may be inflated by the use of prototypical expression stimuli and forced-choice responses. Second, affective content along the dimensions of valence and arousal is extracted early from facial expressions, although this coarse affective representation contributes minimally to categorical recognition of specific expressions. Third, the physical configuration and visual saliency of facial features contribute significantly to expression recognition, with “emotionless” computational models being able to reproduce some of the basic phenomena demonstrated in human observers. We conclude that facial expression recognition, as it has been investigated in conventional laboratory tasks, depends to a greater extent on perceptual than affective information and mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated whether social anxiety facilitates the discrimination between genuine and ambiguous smiles. Socially anxious (N=20) and nonanxious (N=20) participants categorized as “happy” or “not happy” faces with either (1) a truly happy expression (i.e., happy eyes and a smile), (2) truly nonhappy expressions (e.g., angry eyes and an angry mouth), or (3) blended expressions with a smiling mouth and nonhappy (e.g., angry, sad, etc.) eyes. Results indicated that, relative to nonanxious participants, those high in social anxiety weremore likelyto judge as “not happy” any blended expression with nonhappy eyes, and they werefasterin judging as “not happy” the blended expressions with angry, fearful, or disgusted eyes (but not those with sad, surprised, or neutral eyes). These results suggest, respectively, that social anxiety inhibits a benign interpretation ofallthe ambiguous expressions with a smile, and speeds up the detection ofthreateningeyes in such expressions. Importantly, no differences appeared as a function of social anxiety for truly happy or nonhappy faces. This rules out a response-bias explanation, and also reveals that social anxiety does not affect sensitivity in the recognition of prototypical expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The present study aimed to identify the brain processes—and their time course—underlying the typical behavioral recognition advantage of happy facial expressions. To this end, we recorded EEG activity during an expression categorization task for happy, angry, fearful, sad, and neutral faces, and the correlation between event-related-potential (ERP) patterns and recognition performance was assessed. N170 (150–180ms) was enhanced for angry, fearful and sad faces; N2 was reduced and early posterior negativity (EPN; both, 200–320ms) was enhanced for happy and angry faces; P3b (350–450ms) was reduced for happy and neutral faces; and slow positive wave (SPW; 700–800ms) was reduced for happy faces. This reveals (a) an early processing (N170) of negative affective valence (i.e., angry, fearful, and sad), (b) discrimination (N2 and EPN) of affective intensity or arousal (i.e., angry and happy), and (c) facilitated categorization (P3b) and decision (SPW) due to expressive distinctiveness (i.e., happy). In addition, N2, EPN, P3b, and SPW were related to categorization accuracy and speed. This suggests that conscious expression recognition and the typical happy face advantage depend on encoding of expressive intensity and, especially, on later response selection, rather than on the early processing of affective valence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded to assess the processing time course of ambiguous facial expressions with a smiling mouth but neutral, fearful, or angry eyes, in comparison with genuinely happy faces (a smile and happy eyes) and non-happy faces (neutral, fearful, or angry mouth and eyes). Participants judged whether the faces looked truly happy or not. Electroencephalographic recordings were made from 64 scalp electrodes to generate ERPs. The neural activation patterns showed early P200 sensitivity (differences between negative and positive or neutral expressions) and EPN sensitivity (differences between positive and neutral expressions) to emotional valence. In contrast, sensitivity to ambiguity (differences between genuine and ambiguous expressions) emerged only in later LPP components. Discrimination of emotional vs. neutral affect occurs between 180 and 430ms from stimulus onset, whereas the detection and resolution of ambiguity takes place between 470 and 720ms. In addition, while blended expressions involving a smile with angry eyes can be identified as not happy in the P200 (175–240ms) component, smiles with fearful or neutral eyes produce the same ERP pattern as genuinely happy faces, thus revealing poor discrimination. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Why is a face with a smile but non-happy eyes likely to be interpreted as happy? We used blended expressions in which a smiling mouth was incongruent with the eyes (e.g., angry eyes), as well as genuine expressions with congruent eyes and mouth (e.g., both happy or angry). Tasks involved detection of a smiling mouth (perceptual), categorization of the expression (semantic), and valence evaluation (affective). The face stimulus display duration and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were varied to assess the time course of each process. Results indicated that (a) a smiling mouth was visually more salient than the eyes both in truly happy and blended expressions; (b) a smile led viewers to categorize blended expressions as happy similarly for upright and inverted faces; (c) truly happy, but not blended, expressions primed the affective evaluation of probe scenes 550ms following face onset; (d) both truly happy and blended expressions primed the detection of a smile in a probe scene by 170ms post-stimulus; and (e) smile detection and expression categorization had similar processing thresholds and preceded affective evaluation. We conclude that the saliency of single physical features such as the mouth shape makes the smile quickly accessible to the visual system, which initially speeds up expression categorization regardless of congruence with the eyes. Only when the eye expression is later configurally integrated with the mouth, will affective discrimination begin. The present research provides support for serial models of facial expression processing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In two experiments, prime face stimuli with an emotional or a neutral expression were presented individually for 25 to 125 ms, either in foveal or parafoveal vision; following a mask, a probe face or a word label appeared for recognition. Accurate detection and sensitivity (A′) were higher for angry, happy, and sad faces than for nonemotional (neutral) or novel (scheming) faces at short exposure times (25-75 ms), in both the foveal and the parafoveal field, and with both the probe face and the probe word. These results indicate that there is a low perceptual threshold for unambiguous emotional faces, which are especially likely to be detected both within and outside the focus of attention; and that this facilitated detection involves processing of the affective meaning of faces, not only discrimination of formal visual features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low and high trait anxiety undergraduates were presented with physical-threat, ego-threat, positive, and neutral words. Following an orienting task promoting lexical--but not semantic--processing, unexpected free recall or recognition tests were presented. High anxiety participants showed increased correct recall of both types of threat-related words, but also increased incorrect recall (intrusions) and incorrect recognition (false alarms) of these words. Furthermore, participants high in anxiety had reduced sensitivity ( d ′) for ego-threat words, and reduced cautiousness ( β ) for physical-threat words. This tendency to report threat-related information regardless of prior presentation suggests that there is a response bias rather than a memory bias in anxiety. In addition, this bias is likely to be mediated by depression insofar as physical-threat information is concerned, although the bias can be attributed to trait anxiety insofar as ego-threat information is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrepancies between (a) self-reported psychosomatic symptoms and (b) actual fitness under non-stress (Study 1), as a function of trait anxiety, were examined, as well as discrepancies between (a) self-reported cognitive and somatic state anxiety and (b) objective measures of behavioural reactivity, physiological arousal, and performance under social-evaluative stress (Study 2). Results indicated that persons high in trait anxiety exaggerated distress in both conditions: They showed disproportionately greater selfreported concerns than actual problems. In contrast, those low in anxiety minimized distress (lower self-reported than actual problems). These discrepancy phenomena are explained in terms of biases in the processing of internal sources of information. Dans le premier travail on etudie, en prenant en compte le degre d'anxiete, les ecarts entre (a) les symptomes psychosomatiques percus subjectivement et (b) les indicateurs objectifs de sante. Dans le second travail on examine les ecarts entre (a) l'etat d'anxiete subjectif et (b) les mesures objectives de reactivation comportemental, de stimulation physiologique et de rendement dans des conditions de stress d'evaluation. Les resultats montrent que les personnes manifestant un niveau eleve d'anxiete exagerent leur etat subjectif de trouble dans les deux cas: ils ont affirme qu'ils souffraient de problemes emotionnels et de sante plus importants que ceux qui ont ete reellement observes. En revanche, les sujets ayant un faible niveau d'anxiete ont minimise leur experience (plus de problemes reels que subjectifs). Ces phenomenes d'ecart s'expliquent par les differentes tendances dans le traitement des stimuli internes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In experiment 1, the attentional demands of two fine (finger movements) and two gross (arm movements) motor tasks were empirically determined. In experiment 2, the effects of test condition (stress) and anxiety trait on motor performance were analyzed. A significant interactive effect appeared: the performance of high-trait-anxious subjects was impaired under evaluative conditions in fine and/or attentionally demanding tasks, but not in gross and attentionally simple tasks. As test conditions and anxiety trait have proved to arouse physiological alterations and aversive cognitive representations, the selective performance impairment found can be attributed to interferences on finger effectors or proprioceptors and to attentional overload, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research using static facial stimuli (photographs) has identified diagnostic face regions (i.e., functional for recognition) of emotional expressions. In the current study, we aimed to determine attentional orienting, engagement, and time course of fixation on diagnostic regions. To this end, we assessed the eye movements of observers inspecting dynamic expressions that changed from a neutral to an emotional face. A new stimulus set (KDEF-dyn) was developed, which comprises 240 video-clips of 40 human models portraying six basic emotions (happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, and surprised). For validation purposes, 72 observers categorized the expressions while gaze behavior was measured (probability of first fixation, entry time, gaze duration, and number of fixations). Specific visual scanpath profiles characterized each emotional expression: The eye region was looked at earlier and longer for angry and sad faces; the mouth region, for happy faces; and the nose/cheek region, for disgusted faces; the eye and the mouth regions attracted attention in a more balanced manner for surprise and fear. These profiles reflected enhanced selective attention to expression-specific diagnostic face regions. The KDEF-dyn stimuli and the validation data will be available to the scientific community as a useful tool for research on emotional facial expression processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]