Facial Emotion Recognition and Expression in Parkinson's Disease: An Emotional Mirror Mechanism?

PubMed

Ricciardi, Lucia; Visco-Comandini, Federica; Erro, Roberto; Morgante, Francesca; Bologna, Matteo; Fasano, Alfonso; Ricciardi, Diego; Edwards, Mark J; Kilner, James

2017-01-01

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have impairment of facial expressivity (hypomimia) and difficulties in interpreting the emotional facial expressions produced by others, especially for aversive emotions. We aimed to evaluate the ability to produce facial emotional expressions and to recognize facial emotional expressions produced by others in a group of PD patients and a group of healthy participants in order to explore the relationship between these two abilities and any differences between the two groups of participants. Twenty non-demented, non-depressed PD patients and twenty healthy participants (HC) matched for demographic characteristics were studied. The ability of recognizing emotional facial expressions was assessed with the Ekman 60-faces test (Emotion recognition task). Participants were video-recorded while posing facial expressions of 6 primary emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear and anger). The most expressive pictures for each emotion were derived from the videos. Ten healthy raters were asked to look at the pictures displayed on a computer-screen in pseudo-random fashion and to identify the emotional label in a six-forced-choice response format (Emotion expressivity task). Reaction time (RT) and accuracy of responses were recorded. At the end of each trial the participant was asked to rate his/her confidence in his/her perceived accuracy of response. For emotion recognition, PD reported lower score than HC for Ekman total score (p<0.001), and for single emotions sub-scores happiness, fear, anger, sadness (p<0.01) and surprise (p = 0.02). In the facial emotion expressivity task, PD and HC significantly differed in the total score (p = 0.05) and in the sub-scores for happiness, sadness, anger (all p<0.001). RT and the level of confidence showed significant differences between PD and HC for the same emotions. There was a significant positive correlation between the emotion facial recognition and expressivity in both groups; the correlation was even stronger when ranking emotions from the best recognized to the worst (R = 0.75, p = 0.004). PD patients showed difficulties in recognizing emotional facial expressions produced by others and in posing facial emotional expressions compared to healthy subjects. The linear correlation between recognition and expression in both experimental groups suggests that the two mechanisms share a common system, which could be deteriorated in patients with PD. These results open new clinical and rehabilitation perspectives.

Patterns of Emotion Experiences as Predictors of Facial Expressions of Emotion.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blumberg, Samuel H.; Izard, Carroll E.

1991-01-01

Examined the relations between emotion and facial expressions of emotion in 8- to 12-year-old male psychiatric patients. Results indicated that patterns or combinations of emotion experiences had an impact on facial expressions of emotion. (Author/BB)

Pleasure Experience and Emotion Expression in Patients with Schizophrenia

PubMed Central

CHU, Min-yi; LI, Xu; LV, Qin-yu; Yl, Zheng-hui; CHEUNG, Eric F. C.; CHAN, Raymond C. K.

2017-01-01

Background Impairments in emotional experience and expression have been observed in patients with schizophrenia. However, most previous studies have been limited to either emotional experience (especially anhedonia) or expression. Few studies have examined both the experience and expression of emotion in schizophrenia patients at the same time. Aims The present study aimed to examine pleasure experience and emotion expression in patients with schizophrenia. In particular, we specifically examined the relationship between emotion impairments (both pleasure experience and expression) and negative symptoms. Methods One hundred and fifty patients completed the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale and Emotional Expressivity Scale. Results Schizophrenia patients exhibited deficits in experiencing pleasure, but showed intact reported emotion expression. Patients with prominent negative symptoms showed reduced anticipatory pleasure, especially in abstract anticipatory pleasure. Conclusion The present findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have deficits in pleasure experience, while their abilities to express emotion appear intact. Such deficits are more severe in patients with prominent negative symptoms. PMID:29276350

Deriving meaning from others’ emotions: attribution, appraisal, and the use of emotions as social information

PubMed Central

van Doorn, Evert A.; van Kleef, Gerben A.; van der Pligt, Joop

2015-01-01

Emotional expressions constitute a rich source of information. Integrating theorizing on attribution, appraisal processes, and the use of emotions as social information, we examined how emotional expressions influence attributions of agency and responsibility under conditions of ambiguity. Three vignette studies involving different scenarios indicate that participants used information about others’ emotional expressions to make sense of ambiguous social situations. Expressions of regret fueled inferences that the expresser was responsible for an adverse situation, whereas expressions of anger fueled inferences that someone else was responsible. Also, expressions of anger were interpreted as a sign of injustice, and expressions of disappointment increased prosocial intentions (i.e., to help the expresser). The results show that emotional expressions can help people understand ambiguous social situations by informing attributions that correspond with each emotion’s associated appraisal structures. The findings advance understanding of the ways in which emotional expressions help individuals understand and coordinate social life. PMID:26284001

Context shapes social judgments of positive emotion suppression and expression.

PubMed

Kalokerinos, Elise K; Greenaway, Katharine H; Casey, James P

2017-02-01

It is generally considered socially undesirable to suppress the expression of positive emotion. However, previous research has not considered the role that social context plays in governing appropriate emotion regulation. We investigated a context in which it may be more appropriate to suppress than express positive emotion, hypothesizing that positive emotion expressions would be considered inappropriate when the valence of the expressed emotion (i.e., positive) did not match the valence of the context (i.e., negative). Six experiments (N = 1,621) supported this hypothesis: when there was a positive emotion-context mismatch, participants rated targets who suppressed positive emotion as more appropriate, and evaluated them more positively than targets who expressed positive emotion. This effect occurred even when participants were explicitly made aware that suppressing targets were experiencing mismatched emotion for the context (e.g., feeling positive in a negative context), suggesting that appropriate emotional expression is key to these effects. These studies are among the first to provide empirical evidence that social costs to suppression are not inevitable, but instead are dependent on context. Expressive suppression can be a socially useful emotion regulation strategy in situations that call for it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

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

PubMed

El Haj, Mohamad; Antoine, Pascal; Nandrino, Jean Louis

2016-04-01

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.

Sex differences in facial emotion recognition across varying expression intensity levels from videos.

PubMed

Wingenbach, Tanja S H; Ashwin, Chris; Brosnan, Mark

2018-01-01

There has been much research on sex differences in the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotions, with results generally showing a female advantage in reading emotional expressions from the face. However, most of the research to date has used static images and/or 'extreme' examples of facial expressions. Therefore, little is known about how expression intensity and dynamic stimuli might affect the commonly reported female advantage in facial emotion recognition. The current study investigated sex differences in accuracy of response (Hu; unbiased hit rates) and response latencies for emotion recognition using short video stimuli (1sec) of 10 different facial emotion expressions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, happiness, contempt, pride, embarrassment, neutral) across three variations in the intensity of the emotional expression (low, intermediate, high) in an adolescent and adult sample (N = 111; 51 male, 60 female) aged between 16 and 45 (M = 22.2, SD = 5.7). Overall, females showed more accurate facial emotion recognition compared to males and were faster in correctly recognising facial emotions. The female advantage in reading expressions from the faces of others was unaffected by expression intensity levels and emotion categories used in the study. The effects were specific to recognition of emotions, as males and females did not differ in the recognition of neutral faces. Together, the results showed a robust sex difference favouring females in facial emotion recognition using video stimuli of a wide range of emotions and expression intensity variations.

Sex differences in facial emotion recognition across varying expression intensity levels from videos

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

There has been much research on sex differences in the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotions, with results generally showing a female advantage in reading emotional expressions from the face. However, most of the research to date has used static images and/or ‘extreme’ examples of facial expressions. Therefore, little is known about how expression intensity and dynamic stimuli might affect the commonly reported female advantage in facial emotion recognition. The current study investigated sex differences in accuracy of response (Hu; unbiased hit rates) and response latencies for emotion recognition using short video stimuli (1sec) of 10 different facial emotion expressions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, happiness, contempt, pride, embarrassment, neutral) across three variations in the intensity of the emotional expression (low, intermediate, high) in an adolescent and adult sample (N = 111; 51 male, 60 female) aged between 16 and 45 (M = 22.2, SD = 5.7). Overall, females showed more accurate facial emotion recognition compared to males and were faster in correctly recognising facial emotions. The female advantage in reading expressions from the faces of others was unaffected by expression intensity levels and emotion categories used in the study. The effects were specific to recognition of emotions, as males and females did not differ in the recognition of neutral faces. Together, the results showed a robust sex difference favouring females in facial emotion recognition using video stimuli of a wide range of emotions and expression intensity variations. PMID:29293674

Effects of Cultural Tightness-Looseness and Social Network Density on Expression of Positive and Negative Emotions: A Large-Scale Study of Impression Management by Facebook Users.

PubMed

Liu, Pan; Chan, David; Qiu, Lin; Tov, William; Tong, Victor Joo Chuan

2018-05-01

Using data from 13,789 Facebook users across U.S. states, this study examined the main effects of societal-level cultural tightness-looseness and its interaction effects with individuals' social network density on impression management (IM) in terms of online emotional expression. Results showed that individuals from culturally tight (vs. loose) states were more likely to express positive emotions and less likely to express negative emotions. Meanwhile, for positive emotional expression, there was a tightness-looseness by social network density interaction effect. In culturally tight states, individuals with dense (vs. sparse) networks were more likely to express positive emotions, while in culturally loose states this pattern was reversed. For negative emotional expression, however, no such interaction was observed. Our findings highlight the influence of cultural norms and social network structure on emotional expressions as IM strategies.

Contextual interference processing during fast categorisations of facial expressions.

PubMed

Frühholz, Sascha; Trautmann-Lengsfeld, Sina A; Herrmann, Manfred

2011-09-01

We examined interference effects of emotionally associated background colours during fast valence categorisations of negative, neutral and positive expressions. According to implicitly learned colour-emotion associations, facial expressions were presented with colours that either matched the valence of these expressions or not. Experiment 1 included infrequent non-matching trials and Experiment 2 a balanced ratio of matching and non-matching trials. Besides general modulatory effects of contextual features on the processing of facial expressions, we found differential effects depending on the valance of target facial expressions. Whereas performance accuracy was mainly affected for neutral expressions, performance speed was specifically modulated by emotional expressions indicating some susceptibility of emotional expressions to contextual features. Experiment 3 used two further colour-emotion combinations, but revealed only marginal interference effects most likely due to missing colour-emotion associations. The results are discussed with respect to inherent processing demands of emotional and neutral expressions and their susceptibility to contextual interference.

Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: different channels, same code?

PubMed

Juslin, Patrik N; Laukka, Petri

2003-09-01

Many authors have speculated about a close relationship between vocal expression of emotions and musical expression of emotions. but evidence bearing on this relationship has unfortunately been lacking. This review of 104 studies of vocal expression and 41 studies of music performance reveals similarities between the 2 channels concerning (a) the accuracy with which discrete emotions were communicated to listeners and (b) the emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues used to communicate each emotion. The patterns are generally consistent with K. R. Scherer's (1986) theoretical predictions. The results can explain why music is perceived as expressive of emotion, and they are consistent with an evolutionary perspective on vocal expression of emotions. Discussion focuses on theoretical accounts and directions for future research.

Laterality of facial expressions of emotion: Universal and culture-specific influences.

PubMed

Mandal, Manas K; Ambady, Nalini

2004-01-01

Recent research indicates that (a) the perception and expression of facial emotion are lateralized to a great extent in the right hemisphere, and, (b) whereas facial expressions of emotion embody universal signals, culture-specific learning moderates the expression and interpretation of these emotions. In the present article, we review the literature on laterality and universality, and propose that, although some components of facial expressions of emotion are governed biologically, others are culturally influenced. We suggest that the left side of the face is more expressive of emotions, is more uninhibited, and displays culture-specific emotional norms. The right side of face, on the other hand, is less susceptible to cultural display norms and exhibits more universal emotional signals. Copyright 2004 IOS Press

Do Emotions Expressed Online Correlate with Actual Changes in Decision-Making?: The Case of Stock Day Traders.

PubMed

Liu, Bin; Govindan, Ramesh; Uzzi, Brian

2016-01-01

Emotions are increasingly inferred linguistically from online data with a goal of predicting off-line behavior. Yet, it is unknown whether emotions inferred linguistically from online communications correlate with actual changes in off-line activity. We analyzed all 886,000 trading decisions and 1,234,822 instant messages of 30 professional day traders over a continuous 2 year period. Linguistically inferring the traders' emotional states from instant messages, we find that emotions expressed in online communications reflect the same distributions of emotions found in controlled experiments done on traders. Further, we find that expressed online emotions predict the profitability of actual trading behavior. Relative to their baselines, traders who expressed little emotion or traders that expressed high levels of emotion made relatively unprofitable trades. Conversely, traders expressing moderate levels of emotional activation made relatively profitable trades.

Measuring facial expression of emotion.

PubMed

Wolf, Karsten

2015-12-01

Research into emotions has increased in recent decades, especially on the subject of recognition of emotions. However, studies of the facial expressions of emotion were compromised by technical problems with visible video analysis and electromyography in experimental settings. These have only recently been overcome. There have been new developments in the field of automated computerized facial recognition; allowing real-time identification of facial expression in social environments. This review addresses three approaches to measuring facial expression of emotion and describes their specific contributions to understanding emotion in the healthy population and in persons with mental illness. Despite recent progress, studies on human emotions have been hindered by the lack of consensus on an emotion theory suited to examining the dynamic aspects of emotion and its expression. Studying expression of emotion in patients with mental health conditions for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes will profit from theoretical and methodological progress.

Do Emotions Expressed Online Correlate with Actual Changes in Decision-Making?: The Case of Stock Day Traders

PubMed Central

Liu, Bin; Govindan, Ramesh; Uzzi, Brian

2016-01-01

Emotions are increasingly inferred linguistically from online data with a goal of predicting off-line behavior. Yet, it is unknown whether emotions inferred linguistically from online communications correlate with actual changes in off-line activity. We analyzed all 886,000 trading decisions and 1,234,822 instant messages of 30 professional day traders over a continuous 2 year period. Linguistically inferring the traders’ emotional states from instant messages, we find that emotions expressed in online communications reflect the same distributions of emotions found in controlled experiments done on traders. Further, we find that expressed online emotions predict the profitability of actual trading behavior. Relative to their baselines, traders who expressed little emotion or traders that expressed high levels of emotion made relatively unprofitable trades. Conversely, traders expressing moderate levels of emotional activation made relatively profitable trades. PMID:26765539

Are Women More Emotionally Skilled When It Comes to Expression of Emotions in the Foreign Language? Gender, Emotional Intelligence and Personality Traits in Relation to Emotional Expression in the L2

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozanska-Ponikwia, Katarzyna

2017-01-01

The present study investigates the link between gender, emotional intelligence (EI), personality traits and self-reported emotional expression in the second language (L2). Data analysis suggests that gender might not influence self-perceived emotional expression in the L2, as the results of the t-test show that both males and females declare…

Joint recognition-expression impairment of facial emotions in Huntington's disease despite intact understanding of feelings.

PubMed

Trinkler, Iris; Cleret de Langavant, Laurent; Bachoud-Lévi, Anne-Catherine

2013-02-01

Patients with Huntington's disease (HD), a neurodegenerative disorder that causes major motor impairments, also show cognitive and emotional deficits. While their deficit in recognising emotions has been explored in depth, little is known about their ability to express emotions and understand their feelings. If these faculties were impaired, patients might not only mis-read emotion expressions in others but their own emotions might be mis-interpreted by others as well, or thirdly, they might have difficulties understanding and describing their feelings. We compared the performance of recognition and expression of facial emotions in 13 HD patients with mild motor impairments but without significant bucco-facial abnormalities, and 13 controls matched for age and education. Emotion recognition was investigated in a forced-choice recognition test (FCR), and emotion expression by filming participants while they mimed the six basic emotional facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness and joy) to the experimenter. The films were then segmented into 60 stimuli per participant and four external raters performed a FCR on this material. Further, we tested understanding of feelings in self (alexithymia) and others (empathy) using questionnaires. Both recognition and expression were impaired across different emotions in HD compared to controls and recognition and expression scores were correlated. By contrast, alexithymia and empathy scores were very similar in HD and controls. This might suggest that emotion deficits in HD might be tied to the expression itself. Because similar emotion recognition-expression deficits are also found in Parkinson's Disease and vascular lesions of the striatum, our results further confirm the importance of the striatum for emotion recognition and expression, while access to the meaning of feelings relies on a different brain network, and is spared in HD. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The MPI Emotional Body Expressions Database for Narrative Scenarios

PubMed Central

Volkova, Ekaterina; de la Rosa, Stephan; Bülthoff, Heinrich H.; Mohler, Betty

2014-01-01

Emotion expression in human-human interaction takes place via various types of information, including body motion. Research on the perceptual-cognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of natural emotional body language can benefit greatly from datasets of natural emotional body expressions that facilitate stimulus manipulation and analysis. The existing databases have so far focused on few emotion categories which display predominantly prototypical, exaggerated emotion expressions. Moreover, many of these databases consist of video recordings which limit the ability to manipulate and analyse the physical properties of these stimuli. We present a new database consisting of a large set (over 1400) of natural emotional body expressions typical of monologues. To achieve close-to-natural emotional body expressions, amateur actors were narrating coherent stories while their body movements were recorded with motion capture technology. The resulting 3-dimensional motion data recorded at a high frame rate (120 frames per second) provides fine-grained information about body movements and allows the manipulation of movement on a body joint basis. For each expression it gives the positions and orientations in space of 23 body joints for every frame. We report the results of physical motion properties analysis and of an emotion categorisation study. The reactions of observers from the emotion categorisation study are included in the database. Moreover, we recorded the intended emotion expression for each motion sequence from the actor to allow for investigations regarding the link between intended and perceived emotions. The motion sequences along with the accompanying information are made available in a searchable MPI Emotional Body Expression Database. We hope that this database will enable researchers to study expression and perception of naturally occurring emotional body expressions in greater depth. PMID:25461382

Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia

PubMed Central

Daini, Roberta; Comparetti, Chiara M.; Ricciardelli, Paola

2014-01-01

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have shown that facial recognition and emotional expressions are dissociable. However, it is unknown if a single system supports the processing of emotional and non-emotional facial expressions. We aimed to understand if individuals with impairment in face recognition from birth (congenital prosopagnosia, CP) can use non-emotional facial expressions to recognize a face as an already seen one, and thus, process this facial dimension independently from features (which are impaired in CP), and basic emotional expressions. To this end, we carried out a behavioral study in which we compared the performance of 6 CP individuals to that of typical development individuals, using upright and inverted faces. Four avatar faces with a neutral expression were presented in the initial phase. The target faces presented in the recognition phase, in which a recognition task was requested (2AFC paradigm), could be identical (neutral) to those of the initial phase or present biologically plausible changes to features, non-emotional expressions, or emotional expressions. After this task, a second task was performed, in which the participants had to detect whether or not the recognized face exactly matched the study face or showed any difference. The results confirmed the CPs' impairment in the configural processing of the invariant aspects of the face, but also showed a spared configural processing of non-emotional facial expression (task 1). Interestingly and unlike the non-emotional expressions, the configural processing of emotional expressions was compromised in CPs and did not improve their change detection ability (task 2). These new results have theoretical implications for face perception models since they suggest that, at least in CPs, non-emotional expressions are processed configurally, can be dissociated from other facial dimensions, and may serve as a compensatory strategy to achieve face recognition. PMID:25520643

Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Daini, Roberta; Comparetti, Chiara M; Ricciardelli, Paola

2014-01-01

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have shown that facial recognition and emotional expressions are dissociable. However, it is unknown if a single system supports the processing of emotional and non-emotional facial expressions. We aimed to understand if individuals with impairment in face recognition from birth (congenital prosopagnosia, CP) can use non-emotional facial expressions to recognize a face as an already seen one, and thus, process this facial dimension independently from features (which are impaired in CP), and basic emotional expressions. To this end, we carried out a behavioral study in which we compared the performance of 6 CP individuals to that of typical development individuals, using upright and inverted faces. Four avatar faces with a neutral expression were presented in the initial phase. The target faces presented in the recognition phase, in which a recognition task was requested (2AFC paradigm), could be identical (neutral) to those of the initial phase or present biologically plausible changes to features, non-emotional expressions, or emotional expressions. After this task, a second task was performed, in which the participants had to detect whether or not the recognized face exactly matched the study face or showed any difference. The results confirmed the CPs' impairment in the configural processing of the invariant aspects of the face, but also showed a spared configural processing of non-emotional facial expression (task 1). Interestingly and unlike the non-emotional expressions, the configural processing of emotional expressions was compromised in CPs and did not improve their change detection ability (task 2). These new results have theoretical implications for face perception models since they suggest that, at least in CPs, non-emotional expressions are processed configurally, can be dissociated from other facial dimensions, and may serve as a compensatory strategy to achieve face recognition.

Emotion elicitor or emotion messenger? Subliminal priming reveals two faces of facial expressions.

PubMed

Ruys, Kirsten I; Stapel, Diederik A

2008-06-01

Facial emotional expressions can serve both as emotional stimuli and as communicative signals. The research reported here was conducted to illustrate how responses to both roles of facial emotional expressions unfold over time. As an emotion elicitor, a facial emotional expression (e.g., a disgusted face) activates a response that is similar to responses to other emotional stimuli of the same valence (e.g., a dirty, nonflushed toilet). As an emotion messenger, the same facial expression (e.g., a disgusted face) serves as a communicative signal by also activating the knowledge that the sender is experiencing a specific emotion (e.g., the sender feels disgusted). By varying the duration of exposure to disgusted, fearful, angry, and neutral faces in two subliminal-priming studies, we demonstrated that responses to faces as emotion elicitors occur prior to responses to faces as emotion messengers, and that both types of responses may unfold unconsciously.

Facial Emotion Recognition and Expression in Parkinson’s Disease: An Emotional Mirror Mechanism?

PubMed Central

Ricciardi, Lucia; Visco-Comandini, Federica; Erro, Roberto; Morgante, Francesca; Bologna, Matteo; Fasano, Alfonso; Ricciardi, Diego; Edwards, Mark J.; Kilner, James

2017-01-01

Background and aim Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients have impairment of facial expressivity (hypomimia) and difficulties in interpreting the emotional facial expressions produced by others, especially for aversive emotions. We aimed to evaluate the ability to produce facial emotional expressions and to recognize facial emotional expressions produced by others in a group of PD patients and a group of healthy participants in order to explore the relationship between these two abilities and any differences between the two groups of participants. Methods Twenty non-demented, non-depressed PD patients and twenty healthy participants (HC) matched for demographic characteristics were studied. The ability of recognizing emotional facial expressions was assessed with the Ekman 60-faces test (Emotion recognition task). Participants were video-recorded while posing facial expressions of 6 primary emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear and anger). The most expressive pictures for each emotion were derived from the videos. Ten healthy raters were asked to look at the pictures displayed on a computer-screen in pseudo-random fashion and to identify the emotional label in a six-forced-choice response format (Emotion expressivity task). Reaction time (RT) and accuracy of responses were recorded. At the end of each trial the participant was asked to rate his/her confidence in his/her perceived accuracy of response. Results For emotion recognition, PD reported lower score than HC for Ekman total score (p<0.001), and for single emotions sub-scores happiness, fear, anger, sadness (p<0.01) and surprise (p = 0.02). In the facial emotion expressivity task, PD and HC significantly differed in the total score (p = 0.05) and in the sub-scores for happiness, sadness, anger (all p<0.001). RT and the level of confidence showed significant differences between PD and HC for the same emotions. There was a significant positive correlation between the emotion facial recognition and expressivity in both groups; the correlation was even stronger when ranking emotions from the best recognized to the worst (R = 0.75, p = 0.004). Conclusions PD patients showed difficulties in recognizing emotional facial expressions produced by others and in posing facial emotional expressions compared to healthy subjects. The linear correlation between recognition and expression in both experimental groups suggests that the two mechanisms share a common system, which could be deteriorated in patients with PD. These results open new clinical and rehabilitation perspectives. PMID:28068393

Emotional Expressivity and Emotion Regulation: Relation to Academic Functioning among Elementary School Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kwon, Kyongboon; Hanrahan, Amanda R.; Kupzyk, Kevin A.

2017-01-01

We examined emotional expressivity (i.e., happiness, sadness, and anger) and emotion regulation (regulation of exuberance, sadness, and anger) as they relate to academic functioning (motivation, engagement, and achievement). Also, we tested the premise that emotional expressivity and emotion regulation are indirectly associated with achievement…

Enhanced subliminal emotional responses to dynamic facial expressions.

PubMed

Sato, Wataru; Kubota, Yasutaka; Toichi, Motomi

2014-01-01

Emotional processing without conscious awareness plays an important role in human social interaction. Several behavioral studies reported that subliminal presentation of photographs of emotional facial expressions induces unconscious emotional processing. However, it was difficult to elicit strong and robust effects using this method. We hypothesized that dynamic presentations of facial expressions would enhance subliminal emotional effects and tested this hypothesis with two experiments. Fearful or happy facial expressions were presented dynamically or statically in either the left or the right visual field for 20 (Experiment 1) and 30 (Experiment 2) ms. Nonsense target ideographs were then presented, and participants reported their preference for them. The results consistently showed that dynamic presentations of emotional facial expressions induced more evident emotional biases toward subsequent targets than did static ones. These results indicate that dynamic presentations of emotional facial expressions induce more evident unconscious emotional processing.

The production and perception of emotionally expressive walking sounds: similarities between musical performance and everyday motor activity.

PubMed

Giordano, Bruno L; Egermann, Hauke; Bresin, Roberto

2014-01-01

Several studies have investigated the encoding and perception of emotional expressivity in music performance. A relevant question concerns how the ability to communicate emotions in music performance is acquired. In accordance with recent theories on the embodiment of emotion, we suggest here that both the expression and recognition of emotion in music might at least in part rely on knowledge about the sounds of expressive body movements. We test this hypothesis by drawing parallels between musical expression of emotions and expression of emotions in sounds associated with a non-musical motor activity: walking. In a combined production-perception design, two experiments were conducted, and expressive acoustical features were compared across modalities. An initial performance experiment tested for similar feature use in walking sounds and music performance, and revealed that strong similarities exist. Features related to sound intensity, tempo and tempo regularity were identified as been used similarly in both domains. Participants in a subsequent perception experiment were able to recognize both non-emotional and emotional properties of the sound-generating walkers. An analysis of the acoustical correlates of behavioral data revealed that variations in sound intensity, tempo, and tempo regularity were likely used to recognize expressed emotions. Taken together, these results lend support the motor origin hypothesis for the musical expression of emotions.

The part-whole perception of emotion.

PubMed

Glazer, Trip

2018-02-01

A clever argument purports to show that we can directly perceive the emotions of others: (1) some emotional expressions are parts of the emotions they express; (2) in perceiving a part of something, one can perceive the whole; (3) therefore, in perceiving some emotional expressions, one can perceive the emotions they express. My aim in this paper is to assess the extent to which contemporary theories of emotion support the first premise of this argument. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Age Differences in the Complexity of Emotion Perception.

PubMed

Kim, Seungyoun; Geren, Jennifer L; Knight, Bob G

2015-01-01

The current study examined age differences in the number of emotion components used in the judgment of emotion from facial expressions. Fifty-eight younger and 58 older adults were compared on the complexity of perception of emotion from standardized facial expressions that were either clear or ambiguous exemplars of emotion. Using an intra-individual factor analytic approach, results showed that older adults used more emotion components in perceiving emotion in faces than younger adults. Both age groups reported greater emotional complexity for the clear and prototypical emotional stimuli. Age differences in emotional complexity were more pronounced for the ambiguous expressions compared with the clear expressions. These findings demonstrate that older adults showed increased elaboration of emotion, particularly when emotion cues were subtle and provide support for greater emotion differentiation in older adulthood.

Expressing and amplifying positive emotions facilitate goal attainment in workplace interactions.

PubMed

Wong, Elena; Tschan, Franziska; Messerli, Laurence; Semmer, Norbert K

2013-01-01

Expressing emotions has social functions; it provides information, affects social interactions, and shapes relationships with others. Expressing positive emotions could be a strategic tool for improving goal attainment during social interactions at work. Such effects have been found in research on social contagion, impression management, and emotion work. However, expressing emotions one does not feel entails the risk of being perceived as inauthentic. This risk may well be worth taking when the emotions felt are negative, as expressing negative emotions usually has negative effects. When experiencing positive emotions, however, expressing them authentically promises benefits, and the advantage of amplifying them is not so obvious. We postulated that expressing, and amplifying, positive emotions would foster goal attainment in social interactions at work, particularly when dealing with superiors. Analyses are based on 494 interactions involving the pursuit of a goal by 113 employes. Multilevel analyses, including polynomial analyses, show that authentic display of positive emotions supported goal attainment throughout. However, amplifying felt positive emotions promoted goal attainment only in interactions with superiors, but not with colleagues. Results are discussed with regard to the importance of hierarchy for detecting, and interpreting, signs of strategic display of positive emotions.

Expressing and Amplifying Positive Emotions Facilitate Goal Attainment in Workplace Interactions

PubMed Central

Wong, Elena; Tschan, Franziska; Messerli, Laurence; Semmer, Norbert K.

2013-01-01

Expressing emotions has social functions; it provides information, affects social interactions, and shapes relationships with others. Expressing positive emotions could be a strategic tool for improving goal attainment during social interactions at work. Such effects have been found in research on social contagion, impression management, and emotion work. However, expressing emotions one does not feel entails the risk of being perceived as inauthentic. This risk may well be worth taking when the emotions felt are negative, as expressing negative emotions usually has negative effects. When experiencing positive emotions, however, expressing them authentically promises benefits, and the advantage of amplifying them is not so obvious. We postulated that expressing, and amplifying, positive emotions would foster goal attainment in social interactions at work, particularly when dealing with superiors. Analyses are based on 494 interactions involving the pursuit of a goal by 113 employes. Multilevel analyses, including polynomial analyses, show that authentic display of positive emotions supported goal attainment throughout. However, amplifying felt positive emotions promoted goal attainment only in interactions with superiors, but not with colleagues. Results are discussed with regard to the importance of hierarchy for detecting, and interpreting, signs of strategic display of positive emotions. PMID:23675358

Younger and older adults' beliefs about the experience and expression of emotions across the life span.

PubMed

Montepare, Joann M; Dobish, Heidi

2014-11-01

Although theorists acknowledge that beliefs about emotions may play a role in age-related emotion behavior, no research has explored these beliefs. This research examined beliefs about the experience and expression of emotions across the life span, especially across the adult years. Younger and older adults rated the extent to which infants, children, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults were likely to experience and express a range of emotions. Younger and older adults held similar beliefs about the course of emotions across the life span. Moreover, these beliefs differed across emotion categories. In particular, although older adults were believed to experience and express fewer highly charged, negative emotions, they were expected to be more likely to experience and express positive, low arousal emotions, as well as negative, low arousal emotions. The experience and expression of positive, high arousal emotions were seen as more characteristic of very young age groups as opposed to older age groups. These findings beg questions about if and how beliefs about emotion may affect age-related emotion regulation strategies and other everyday emotion-focused behaviors, as well as social reactions to older adults observed experiencing and expressing particular types of emotions. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Facial EMG responses to emotional expressions are related to emotion perception ability.

PubMed

Künecke, Janina; Hildebrandt, Andrea; Recio, Guillermo; Sommer, Werner; Wilhelm, Oliver

2014-01-01

Although most people can identify facial expressions of emotions well, they still differ in this ability. According to embodied simulation theories understanding emotions of others is fostered by involuntarily mimicking the perceived expressions, causing a "reactivation" of the corresponding mental state. Some studies suggest automatic facial mimicry during expression viewing; however, findings on the relationship between mimicry and emotion perception abilities are equivocal. The present study investigated individual differences in emotion perception and its relationship to facial muscle responses - recorded with electromyogram (EMG)--in response to emotional facial expressions. N° = °269 participants completed multiple tasks measuring face and emotion perception. EMG recordings were taken from a subsample (N° = °110) in an independent emotion classification task of short videos displaying six emotions. Confirmatory factor analyses of the m. corrugator supercilii in response to angry, happy, sad, and neutral expressions showed that individual differences in corrugator activity can be separated into a general response to all faces and an emotion-related response. Structural equation modeling revealed a substantial relationship between the emotion-related response and emotion perception ability, providing evidence for the role of facial muscle activation in emotion perception from an individual differences perspective.

Facial EMG Responses to Emotional Expressions Are Related to Emotion Perception Ability

PubMed Central

Künecke, Janina; Hildebrandt, Andrea; Recio, Guillermo; Sommer, Werner; Wilhelm, Oliver

2014-01-01

Although most people can identify facial expressions of emotions well, they still differ in this ability. According to embodied simulation theories understanding emotions of others is fostered by involuntarily mimicking the perceived expressions, causing a “reactivation” of the corresponding mental state. Some studies suggest automatic facial mimicry during expression viewing; however, findings on the relationship between mimicry and emotion perception abilities are equivocal. The present study investigated individual differences in emotion perception and its relationship to facial muscle responses - recorded with electromyogram (EMG) - in response to emotional facial expressions. N° = °269 participants completed multiple tasks measuring face and emotion perception. EMG recordings were taken from a subsample (N° = °110) in an independent emotion classification task of short videos displaying six emotions. Confirmatory factor analyses of the m. corrugator supercilii in response to angry, happy, sad, and neutral expressions showed that individual differences in corrugator activity can be separated into a general response to all faces and an emotion-related response. Structural equation modeling revealed a substantial relationship between the emotion-related response and emotion perception ability, providing evidence for the role of facial muscle activation in emotion perception from an individual differences perspective. PMID:24489647

Emotion processing in chimeric faces: hemispheric asymmetries in expression and recognition of emotions.

PubMed

Indersmitten, Tim; Gur, Ruben C

2003-05-01

Since the discovery of facial asymmetries in emotional expressions of humans and other primates, hypotheses have related the greater left-hemiface intensity to right-hemispheric dominance in emotion processing. However, the difficulty of creating true frontal views of facial expressions in two-dimensional photographs has confounded efforts to better understand the phenomenon. We have recently described a method for obtaining three-dimensional photographs of posed and evoked emotional expressions and used these stimuli to investigate both intensity of expression and accuracy of recognizing emotion in chimeric faces constructed from only left- or right-side composites. The participant population included 38 (19 male, 19 female) African-American, Caucasian, and Asian adults. They were presented with chimeric composites generated from faces of eight actors and eight actresses showing four emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear, each in posed and evoked conditions. We replicated the finding that emotions are expressed more intensely in the left hemiface for all emotions and conditions, with the exception of evoked anger, which was expressed more intensely in the right hemiface. In contrast, the results indicated that emotional expressions are recognized more efficiently in the right hemiface, indicating that the right hemiface expresses emotions more accurately. The double dissociation between the laterality of expression intensity and that of recognition efficiency supports the notion that the two kinds of processes may have distinct neural substrates. Evoked anger is uniquely expressed more intensely and accurately on the side of the face that projects to the viewer's right hemisphere, dominant in emotion recognition.

It depends: Approach and avoidance reactions to emotional expressions are influenced by the contrast emotions presented in the task.

PubMed

Paulus, Andrea; Wentura, Dirk

2016-02-01

Studies examining approach and avoidance reactions to emotional expressions have yielded conflicting results. For example, expressions of anger have been reported to elicit approach reactions in some studies but avoidance reactions in others. Nonetheless, the results were often explained by the same general underlying process, namely the influence that the social message signaled by the expression has on motivational responses. It is therefore unclear which reaction is triggered by which emotional expression, and which underlying process is responsible for these reactions. In order to address this issue, we examined the role of a potential moderator on approach and avoidance reactions to emotional expressions, namely the contrast emotion used in the task. We believe that different approach and avoidance reactions occur depending on the congruency or incongruency of the evaluation of the 2 emotions presented in the task. The results from a series of experiments supported these assumptions: Negative emotional expressions (anger, fear, sadness) elicited avoidance reactions if contrasted with expressions of happiness. However, if contrasted with a different negative emotional expression, anger and sadness triggered approach reactions and fear activated avoidance reactions. Importantly, these results also emerged if the emotional expression was not task-relevant. We propose that approach and avoidance reactions to emotional expressions are triggered by their evaluation if the 2 emotions presented in a task differ in evaluative connotation. If they have the same evaluative connotation, however, reactions are determined by their social message. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Threatening joy: approach and avoidance reactions to emotions are influenced by the group membership of the expresser.

PubMed

Paulus, Andrea; Wentura, Dirk

2014-01-01

It has been repeatedly stated that approach and avoidance reactions to emotional faces are triggered by the intention signalled by the emotion. This line of thought suggests that each emotion signals a specific intention triggering a specific behavioural reaction. However, empirical results examining this assumption are inconsistent, suggesting that it might be too short-sighted. We hypothesise that the same emotional expression can signal different social messages and, therefore, trigger different reactions; which social message is signalled by an emotional expression should be influenced by moderating variables, such as the group membership of the expresser. In two experiments, we show that group membership influences approach and avoidance reactions to emotional expressions: Emotions (fear and happiness) expressed by in-group members elicited concordant behaviour, whereas emotions expressed by out-group members activated the reverse pattern. A third experiment, in which participants directly evaluated smiling and fearful individuals resembling in-group and out-group members supported this result.

Recognition of facial expressions and prosodic cues with graded emotional intensities in adults with Asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Doi, Hirokazu; Fujisawa, Takashi X; Kanai, Chieko; Ohta, Haruhisa; Yokoi, Hideki; Iwanami, Akira; Kato, Nobumasa; Shinohara, Kazuyuki

2013-09-01

This study investigated the ability of adults with Asperger syndrome to recognize emotional categories of facial expressions and emotional prosodies with graded emotional intensities. The individuals with Asperger syndrome showed poorer recognition performance for angry and sad expressions from both facial and vocal information. The group difference in facial expression recognition was prominent for stimuli with low or intermediate emotional intensities. In contrast to this, the individuals with Asperger syndrome exhibited lower recognition accuracy than typically-developed controls mainly for emotional prosody with high emotional intensity. In facial expression recognition, Asperger and control groups showed an inversion effect for all categories. The magnitude of this effect was less in the Asperger group for angry and sad expressions, presumably attributable to reduced recruitment of the configural mode of face processing. The individuals with Asperger syndrome outperformed the control participants in recognizing inverted sad expressions, indicating enhanced processing of local facial information representing sad emotion. These results suggest that the adults with Asperger syndrome rely on modality-specific strategies in emotion recognition from facial expression and prosodic information.

Affective divergence: automatic responses to others' emotions depend on group membership.

PubMed

Weisbuch, Max; Ambady, Nalini

2008-11-01

Extant research suggests that targets' emotion expressions automatically evoke similar affect in perceivers. The authors hypothesized that the automatic impact of emotion expressions depends on group membership. In Experiments 1 and 2, an affective priming paradigm was used to measure immediate and preconscious affective responses to same-race or other-race emotion expressions. In Experiment 3, spontaneous vocal affect was measured as participants described the emotions of an ingroup or outgroup sports team fan. In these experiments, immediate and spontaneous affective responses depended on whether the emotional target was ingroup or outgroup. Positive responses to fear expressions and negative responses to joy expressions were observed in outgroup perceivers, relative to ingroup perceivers. In Experiments 4 and 5, discrete emotional responses were examined. In a lexical decision task (Experiment 4), facial expressions of joy elicited fear in outgroup perceivers, relative to ingroup perceivers. In contrast, facial expressions of fear elicited less fear in outgroup than in ingroup perceivers. In Experiment 5, felt dominance mediated emotional responses to ingroup and outgroup vocal emotion. These data support a signal-value model in which emotion expressions signal environmental conditions. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.

The communication of emotion during conflict in married couples.

PubMed

Sanford, Keith

2012-06-01

This study investigated emotion during interpersonal conflicts between mates. It addressed questions about how clearly couples express emotion (encoding), how accurately they recognize each other's emotion (decoding), and how well they distinguish between types of negative emotion. It was theorized that couples express and perceive both: (a) event-specific emotions, which are unique to particular people on particular occasions, and (b) contextual-couple emotions, which reflect the additive effect of emotions across different events and across both partners. Eighty-three married couples engaged in a series of two conflict conversations. Self-report ratings, observer ratings, and partner ratings were used to assess two types of negative emotion: hard emotion (e.g., angry or annoyed) and soft emotion (e.g., sad or hurt). Couples were reasonably accurate in encoding, decoding, and in distinguishing between types of emotion. Emotion expression was strongly associated with general levels of contextual-couple emotion summed across two conversations, whereas emotion perception was more closely tied to specific events. Hard emotion was readily perceived when it was overtly expressed, and soft emotion could sometimes be recognized even when it was not expressed clearly. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

The persuasive power of emotions: Effects of emotional expressions on attitude formation and change.

PubMed

Van Kleef, Gerben A; van den Berg, Helma; Heerdink, Marc W

2015-07-01

Despite a long-standing interest in the intrapersonal role of affect in persuasion, the interpersonal effects of emotions on persuasion remain poorly understood-how do one person's emotional expressions shape others' attitudes? Drawing on emotions as social information (EASI) theory (Van Kleef, 2009), we hypothesized that people use the emotional expressions of others to inform their own attitudes, but only when they are sufficiently motivated and able to process those expressions. Five experiments support these ideas. Participants reported more positive attitudes about various topics after seeing a source's sad (rather than happy) expressions when topics were negatively framed (e.g., abandoning bobsleighing from the Olympics). Conversely, participants reported more positive attitudes after seeing happy (rather than sad) expressions when topics were positively framed (e.g., introducing kite surfing at the Olympics). This suggests that participants used the source's emotional expressions as information when forming their own attitudes. Supporting this interpretation, effects were mitigated when participants' information processing was undermined by cognitive load or was chronically low. Moreover, a source's anger expressions engendered negative attitude change when directed at the attitude object and positive change when directed at the recipient's attitude. Effects occurred regardless of whether emotional expressions were manipulated through written words, pictures of facial expressions, film clips containing both facial and vocal emotional expressions, or emoticons. The findings support EASI theory and indicate that emotional expressions are a powerful source of social influence. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Recruitment of Language-, Emotion- and Speech-Timing Associated Brain Regions for Expressing Emotional Prosody: Investigation of Functional Neuroanatomy with fMRI

PubMed Central

Mitchell, Rachel L. C.; Jazdzyk, Agnieszka; Stets, Manuela; Kotz, Sonja A.

2016-01-01

We aimed to progress understanding of prosodic emotion expression by establishing brain regions active when expressing specific emotions, those activated irrespective of the target emotion, and those whose activation intensity varied depending on individual performance. BOLD contrast data were acquired whilst participants spoke non-sense words in happy, angry or neutral tones, or performed jaw-movements. Emotion-specific analyses demonstrated that when expressing angry prosody, activated brain regions included the inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri, the insula, and the basal ganglia. When expressing happy prosody, the activated brain regions also included the superior temporal gyrus, insula, and basal ganglia, with additional activation in the anterior cingulate. Conjunction analysis confirmed that the superior temporal gyrus and basal ganglia were activated regardless of the specific emotion concerned. Nevertheless, disjunctive comparisons between the expression of angry and happy prosody established that anterior cingulate activity was significantly higher for angry prosody than for happy prosody production. Degree of inferior frontal gyrus activity correlated with the ability to express the target emotion through prosody. We conclude that expressing prosodic emotions (vs. neutral intonation) requires generic brain regions involved in comprehending numerous aspects of language, emotion-related processes such as experiencing emotions, and in the time-critical integration of speech information. PMID:27803656

Skilful communication: Emotional facial expressions recognition in very old adults.

PubMed

María Sarabia-Cobo, Carmen; Navas, María José; Ellgring, Heiner; García-Rodríguez, Beatriz

2016-02-01

The main objective of this study was to assess the changes associated with ageing in the ability to identify emotional facial expressions and to what extent such age-related changes depend on the intensity with which each basic emotion is manifested. A randomised controlled trial carried out on 107 subjects who performed a six alternative forced-choice emotional expressions identification task. The stimuli consisted of 270 virtual emotional faces expressing the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger and disgust) at three different levels of intensity (low, pronounced and maximum). The virtual faces were generated by facial surface changes, as described in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). A progressive age-related decline in the ability to identify emotional facial expressions was detected. The ability to recognise the intensity of expressions was one of the most strongly impaired variables associated with age, although the valence of emotion was also poorly identified, particularly in terms of recognising negative emotions. Nurses should be mindful of how ageing affects communication with older patients. In this study, very old adults displayed more difficulties in identifying emotional facial expressions, especially low intensity expressions and those associated with difficult emotions like disgust or fear. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Production and Perception of Emotionally Expressive Walking Sounds: Similarities between Musical Performance and Everyday Motor Activity

PubMed Central

Giordano, Bruno L.; Egermann, Hauke; Bresin, Roberto

2014-01-01

Several studies have investigated the encoding and perception of emotional expressivity in music performance. A relevant question concerns how the ability to communicate emotions in music performance is acquired. In accordance with recent theories on the embodiment of emotion, we suggest here that both the expression and recognition of emotion in music might at least in part rely on knowledge about the sounds of expressive body movements. We test this hypothesis by drawing parallels between musical expression of emotions and expression of emotions in sounds associated with a non-musical motor activity: walking. In a combined production-perception design, two experiments were conducted, and expressive acoustical features were compared across modalities. An initial performance experiment tested for similar feature use in walking sounds and music performance, and revealed that strong similarities exist. Features related to sound intensity, tempo and tempo regularity were identified as been used similarly in both domains. Participants in a subsequent perception experiment were able to recognize both non-emotional and emotional properties of the sound-generating walkers. An analysis of the acoustical correlates of behavioral data revealed that variations in sound intensity, tempo, and tempo regularity were likely used to recognize expressed emotions. Taken together, these results lend support the motor origin hypothesis for the musical expression of emotions. PMID:25551392

Social anxiety and romantic relationships: the costs and benefits of negative emotion expression are context-dependent.

PubMed

Kashdan, Todd B; Volkmann, Jeffrey R; Breen, William E; Han, Susan

2007-01-01

In general, expressing emotions is beneficial and withholding emotions has personal and social costs. Yet, to serve social functions there are situations when emotions are withheld strategically. We examined whether social anxiety influenced when and how emotion expressiveness influences interpersonal closeness in existing romantic relationships. For people with greater social anxiety, withholding the expression of negative emotions was proposed to preserve romantic relationships and their benefits. We examined whether social anxiety and emotion expressiveness interacted to predict prospective changes in romantic relationship closeness over a 12-week period. For people with less social anxiety, relationship closeness was enhanced over time when negative emotions were openly expressed whereas relationship deterioration was found for those more likely to withhold emotions. The reverse pattern was found for people with greater social anxiety such that relationship closeness was enhanced over time for those more likely to withhold negative emotions. Related social anxiety findings were found for discrepancies between desired and actual feelings of closeness over time. Findings were not attributable to depressive symptoms. These results suggest that the costs and benefits of emotion expression are influenced by a person's degree of social anxiety.

Computerised analysis of facial emotion expression in eating disorders.

PubMed

Leppanen, Jenni; Dapelo, Marcela Marin; Davies, Helen; Lang, Katie; Treasure, Janet; Tchanturia, Kate

2017-01-01

Problems with social-emotional processing are known to be an important contributor to the development and maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). Diminished facial communication of emotion has been frequently reported in individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN). Less is known about facial expressivity in bulimia nervosa (BN) and in people who have recovered from AN (RecAN). This study aimed to pilot the use of computerised facial expression analysis software to investigate emotion expression across the ED spectrum and recovery in a large sample of participants. 297 participants with AN, BN, RecAN, and healthy controls were recruited. Participants watched film clips designed to elicit happy or sad emotions, and facial expressions were then analysed using FaceReader. The finding mirrored those from previous work showing that healthy control and RecAN participants expressed significantly more positive emotions during the positive clip compared to the AN group. There were no differences in emotion expression during the sad film clip. These findings support the use of computerised methods to analyse emotion expression in EDs. The findings also demonstrate that reduced positive emotion expression is likely to be associated with the acute stage of AN illness, with individuals with BN showing an intermediate profile.

Maternal Personality: Longitudinal Associations to Parenting Behavior and Maternal Emotional Expressions toward Toddlers

PubMed Central

Smith, Cynthia L.; Spinrad, Tracy L.; Eisenberg, Nancy; Gaertner, Bridget M.; Popp, Tierney K.; Maxon, Elizabeth

2007-01-01

SYNOPSIS Objective Longitudinal associations among maternal personality, emotional expressions, and parenting were examined. Design Maternal parenting (sensitivity and intrusiveness) and positive emotional expressions were observed during a free-play session with toddlers at 18 (T1, n = 246) and 30 (T3, n = 216) months. Mothers completed a personality measure at T1 and a questionnaire measuring their emotional expressiveness (positive and negative) when toddlers were 24 months old (T2, n = 213). Results Dimensions of maternal personality and maternal emotional expressiveness were related to individual differences in maternal parenting behaviors, in particular to maternal sensitivity. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness at T1 were positively associated with observed positive emotional expressions at T1. Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and Extraversion at T1 also were positively related to positive emotional expressions reported by mothers at T2. Maternal positive emotional expressions (T1 and T2), in turn, were associated with more sensitive behavior observed with toddlers at T3. Conclusion In addition to direct effects of maternal personality on maternal parenting, mothers’ emotional expressiveness was found to be a possible pathway for explaining relations of maternal personality and parenting. PMID:18174914

Children's developing ability to depict emotions in their drawings.

PubMed

Bonoti, F; Misailidi, P

2006-10-01

55 children aged 5 to 9 years were asked to draw pictures depicting happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, and fear as well as pictures that did not express any emotion. These pictures were then scored by nonexpert adults for their overall emotional expressiveness, that is, how well they depicted the intended emotion. The results showed that drawings were generally regarded by adults as emotionally expressive. Happiness was the emotion most easily recognized in children's drawings, closely followed by sadness. The results also showed a linear increase in ratings of emotional expressiveness with age.

Validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set – Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV): A Set of Videos Expressing Low, Intermediate, and High Intensity Emotions

PubMed Central

Wingenbach, Tanja S. H.

2016-01-01

Most of the existing sets of facial expressions of emotion contain static photographs. While increasing demand for stimuli with enhanced ecological validity in facial emotion recognition research has led to the development of video stimuli, these typically involve full-blown (apex) expressions. However, variations of intensity in emotional facial expressions occur in real life social interactions, with low intensity expressions of emotions frequently occurring. The current study therefore developed and validated a set of video stimuli portraying three levels of intensity of emotional expressions, from low to high intensity. The videos were adapted from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES) and termed the Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV). A healthy sample of 92 people recruited from the University of Bath community (41 male, 51 female) completed a facial emotion recognition task including expressions of 6 basic emotions (anger, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness) and 3 complex emotions (contempt, embarrassment, pride) that were expressed at three different intensities of expression and neutral. Accuracy scores (raw and unbiased (Hu) hit rates) were calculated, as well as response times. Accuracy rates above chance level of responding were found for all emotion categories, producing an overall raw hit rate of 69% for the ADFES-BIV. The three intensity levels were validated as distinct categories, with higher accuracies and faster responses to high intensity expressions than intermediate intensity expressions, which had higher accuracies and faster responses than low intensity expressions. To further validate the intensities, a second study with standardised display times was conducted replicating this pattern. The ADFES-BIV has greater ecological validity than many other emotion stimulus sets and allows for versatile applications in emotion research. It can be retrieved free of charge for research purposes from the corresponding author. PMID:26784347

Validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set--Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV): A Set of Videos Expressing Low, Intermediate, and High Intensity Emotions.

PubMed

Wingenbach, Tanja S H; Ashwin, Chris; Brosnan, Mark

2016-01-01

Most of the existing sets of facial expressions of emotion contain static photographs. While increasing demand for stimuli with enhanced ecological validity in facial emotion recognition research has led to the development of video stimuli, these typically involve full-blown (apex) expressions. However, variations of intensity in emotional facial expressions occur in real life social interactions, with low intensity expressions of emotions frequently occurring. The current study therefore developed and validated a set of video stimuli portraying three levels of intensity of emotional expressions, from low to high intensity. The videos were adapted from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES) and termed the Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV). A healthy sample of 92 people recruited from the University of Bath community (41 male, 51 female) completed a facial emotion recognition task including expressions of 6 basic emotions (anger, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness) and 3 complex emotions (contempt, embarrassment, pride) that were expressed at three different intensities of expression and neutral. Accuracy scores (raw and unbiased (Hu) hit rates) were calculated, as well as response times. Accuracy rates above chance level of responding were found for all emotion categories, producing an overall raw hit rate of 69% for the ADFES-BIV. The three intensity levels were validated as distinct categories, with higher accuracies and faster responses to high intensity expressions than intermediate intensity expressions, which had higher accuracies and faster responses than low intensity expressions. To further validate the intensities, a second study with standardised display times was conducted replicating this pattern. The ADFES-BIV has greater ecological validity than many other emotion stimulus sets and allows for versatile applications in emotion research. It can be retrieved free of charge for research purposes from the corresponding author.

Comparison of emotion recognition from facial expression and music.

PubMed

Gaspar, Tina; Labor, Marina; Jurić, Iva; Dumancić, Dijana; Ilakovac, Vesna; Heffer, Marija

2011-01-01

The recognition of basic emotions in everyday communication involves interpretation of different visual and auditory clues. The ability to recognize emotions is not clearly determined as their presentation is usually very short (micro expressions), whereas the recognition itself does not have to be a conscious process. We assumed that the recognition from facial expressions is selected over the recognition of emotions communicated through music. In order to compare the success rate in recognizing emotions presented as facial expressions or in classical music works we conducted a survey which included 90 elementary school and 87 high school students from Osijek (Croatia). The participants had to match 8 photographs of different emotions expressed on the face and 8 pieces of classical music works with 8 offered emotions. The recognition of emotions expressed through classical music pieces was significantly less successful than the recognition of emotional facial expressions. The high school students were significantly better at recognizing facial emotions than the elementary school students, whereas girls were better than boys. The success rate in recognizing emotions from music pieces was associated with higher grades in mathematics. Basic emotions are far better recognized if presented on human faces than in music, possibly because the understanding of facial emotions is one of the oldest communication skills in human society. Female advantage in emotion recognition was selected due to the necessity of their communication with the newborns during early development. The proficiency in recognizing emotional content of music and mathematical skills probably share some general cognitive skills like attention, memory and motivation. Music pieces were differently processed in brain than facial expressions and consequently, probably differently evaluated as relevant emotional clues.

Meta-analysis of the effects of intranasal oxytocin on interpretation and expression of emotions.

PubMed

Leppanen, Jenni; Ng, Kah Wee; Tchanturia, Kate; Treasure, Janet

2017-07-01

Accurate interpretation and appropriate expression of emotions are key aspects of social-cognition. Several mental disorders are characterised by transdiagnostic difficulties in these areas and, recently, there has been increasing interest in exploring the effects of oxytocin on social-emotional functioning. This review consists of 33 studies. Fifteen of the studies included people with autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, frontotemporal dementia, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and opioid and alcohol dependence. We conducted ten meta-analyses examining the effects of intranasal oxytocin on expression of emotions, emotional theory of mind, sensitivity to recognise basic emotions, and recognition of basic emotions. A single dose of intranasal oxytocin significantly improved the recognition of basic emotions, particularly fear, and increased the expression of positive emotions among the healthy individuals. Oxytocin did not significantly influence theory of mind or the expression of negative emotions among the healthy individuals. Finally, intranasal oxytocin did not significantly influence interpretation or expression of emotions among the clinical populations. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

EMOTION RECOGNITION OF VIRTUAL AGENTS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS: THE EFFECTS OF AGE AND EMOTION INTENSITY

PubMed Central

Beer, Jenay M.; Fisk, Arthur D.; Rogers, Wendy A.

2014-01-01

People make determinations about the social characteristics of an agent (e.g., robot or virtual agent) by interpreting social cues displayed by the agent, such as facial expressions. Although a considerable amount of research has been conducted investigating age-related differences in emotion recognition of human faces (e.g., Sullivan, & Ruffman, 2004), the effect of age on emotion identification of virtual agent facial expressions has been largely unexplored. Age-related differences in emotion recognition of facial expressions are an important factor to consider in the design of agents that may assist older adults in a recreational or healthcare setting. The purpose of the current research was to investigate whether age-related differences in facial emotion recognition can extend to emotion-expressive virtual agents. Younger and older adults performed a recognition task with a virtual agent expressing six basic emotions. Larger age-related differences were expected for virtual agents displaying negative emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear. In fact, the results indicated that older adults showed a decrease in emotion recognition accuracy for a virtual agent's emotions of anger, fear, and happiness. PMID:25552896

Somatosensory Representations Link the Perception of Emotional Expressions and Sensory Experience.

PubMed

Kragel, Philip A; LaBar, Kevin S

2016-01-01

Studies of human emotion perception have linked a distributed set of brain regions to the recognition of emotion in facial, vocal, and body expressions. In particular, lesions to somatosensory cortex in the right hemisphere have been shown to impair recognition of facial and vocal expressions of emotion. Although these findings suggest that somatosensory cortex represents body states associated with distinct emotions, such as a furrowed brow or gaping jaw, functional evidence directly linking somatosensory activity and subjective experience during emotion perception is critically lacking. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate decoding techniques, we show that perceiving vocal and facial expressions of emotion yields hemodynamic activity in right somatosensory cortex that discriminates among emotion categories, exhibits somatotopic organization, and tracks self-reported sensory experience. The findings both support embodied accounts of emotion and provide mechanistic insight into how emotional expressions are capable of biasing subjective experience in those who perceive them.

Somatosensory Representations Link the Perception of Emotional Expressions and Sensory Experience123

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Abstract Studies of human emotion perception have linked a distributed set of brain regions to the recognition of emotion in facial, vocal, and body expressions. In particular, lesions to somatosensory cortex in the right hemisphere have been shown to impair recognition of facial and vocal expressions of emotion. Although these findings suggest that somatosensory cortex represents body states associated with distinct emotions, such as a furrowed brow or gaping jaw, functional evidence directly linking somatosensory activity and subjective experience during emotion perception is critically lacking. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate decoding techniques, we show that perceiving vocal and facial expressions of emotion yields hemodynamic activity in right somatosensory cortex that discriminates among emotion categories, exhibits somatotopic organization, and tracks self-reported sensory experience. The findings both support embodied accounts of emotion and provide mechanistic insight into how emotional expressions are capable of biasing subjective experience in those who perceive them. PMID:27280154

Vocal Emotion Expressions Effects on Cooperation Behavior

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Caballero Meneses, Jonathan Azael; Menez Díaz, Judith Marina

2017-01-01

Emotional expressions have been proposed to be important for regulating social interaction as they can serve as cues for behavioral intentions. The issue has been mainly addressed analyzing the effects of facial emotional expressions in cooperation behavior, but there are contradictory results regarding the impact of emotional expressions on that…

Perception of face and body expressions using electromyography, pupillometry and gaze measures.

PubMed

Kret, Mariska E; Stekelenburg, Jeroen J; Roelofs, Karin; de Gelder, Beatrice

2013-01-01

Traditional emotion theories stress the importance of the face in the expression of emotions but bodily expressions are becoming increasingly important as well. In these experiments we tested the hypothesis that similar physiological responses can be evoked by observing emotional face and body signals and that the reaction to angry signals is amplified in anxious individuals. We designed three experiments in which participants categorized emotional expressions from isolated facial and bodily expressions and emotionally congruent and incongruent face-body compounds. Participants' fixations were measured and their pupil size recorded with eye-tracking equipment and their facial reactions measured with electromyography. The results support our prediction that the recognition of a facial expression is improved in the context of a matching posture and importantly, vice versa as well. From their facial expressions, it appeared that observers acted with signs of negative emotionality (increased corrugator activity) to angry and fearful facial expressions and with positive emotionality (increased zygomaticus) to happy facial expressions. What we predicted and found, was that angry and fearful cues from the face or the body, attracted more attention than happy cues. We further observed that responses evoked by angry cues were amplified in individuals with high anxiety scores. In sum, we show that people process bodily expressions of emotion in a similar fashion as facial expressions and that the congruency between the emotional signals from the face and body facilitates the recognition of the emotion.

Perception of Face and Body Expressions Using Electromyography, Pupillometry and Gaze Measures

PubMed Central

Kret, Mariska E.; Stekelenburg, Jeroen J.; Roelofs, Karin; de Gelder, Beatrice

2013-01-01

Traditional emotion theories stress the importance of the face in the expression of emotions but bodily expressions are becoming increasingly important as well. In these experiments we tested the hypothesis that similar physiological responses can be evoked by observing emotional face and body signals and that the reaction to angry signals is amplified in anxious individuals. We designed three experiments in which participants categorized emotional expressions from isolated facial and bodily expressions and emotionally congruent and incongruent face-body compounds. Participants’ fixations were measured and their pupil size recorded with eye-tracking equipment and their facial reactions measured with electromyography. The results support our prediction that the recognition of a facial expression is improved in the context of a matching posture and importantly, vice versa as well. From their facial expressions, it appeared that observers acted with signs of negative emotionality (increased corrugator activity) to angry and fearful facial expressions and with positive emotionality (increased zygomaticus) to happy facial expressions. What we predicted and found, was that angry and fearful cues from the face or the body, attracted more attention than happy cues. We further observed that responses evoked by angry cues were amplified in individuals with high anxiety scores. In sum, we show that people process bodily expressions of emotion in a similar fashion as facial expressions and that the congruency between the emotional signals from the face and body facilitates the recognition of the emotion. PMID:23403886

Brief report: Representational momentum for dynamic facial expressions in pervasive developmental disorder.

PubMed

Uono, Shota; Sato, Wataru; Toichi, Motomi

2010-03-01

Individuals with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) have difficulty with social communication via emotional facial expressions, but behavioral studies involving static images have reported inconsistent findings about emotion recognition. We investigated whether dynamic presentation of facial expression would enhance subjective perception of expressed emotion in 13 individuals with PDD and 13 typically developing controls. We presented dynamic and static emotional (fearful and happy) expressions. Participants were asked to match a changeable emotional face display with the last presented image. The results showed that both groups perceived the last image of dynamic facial expression to be more emotionally exaggerated than the static facial expression. This finding suggests that individuals with PDD have an intact perceptual mechanism for processing dynamic information in another individual's face.

Can Neurotypical Individuals Read Autistic Facial Expressions? Atypical Production of Emotional Facial Expressions in Autism Spectrum Disorders

PubMed Central

Biotti, Federica; Catmur, Caroline; Press, Clare; Happé, Francesca; Cook, Richard; Bird, Geoffrey

2015-01-01

The difficulties encountered by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when interacting with neurotypical (NT, i.e. nonautistic) individuals are usually attributed to failure to recognize the emotions and mental states of their NT interaction partner. It is also possible, however, that at least some of the difficulty is due to a failure of NT individuals to read the mental and emotional states of ASD interaction partners. Previous research has frequently observed deficits of typical facial emotion recognition in individuals with ASD, suggesting atypical representations of emotional expressions. Relatively little research, however, has investigated the ability of individuals with ASD to produce recognizable emotional expressions, and thus, whether NT individuals can recognize autistic emotional expressions. The few studies which have investigated this have used only NT observers, making it impossible to determine whether atypical representations are shared among individuals with ASD, or idiosyncratic. This study investigated NT and ASD participants’ ability to recognize emotional expressions produced by NT and ASD posers. Three posing conditions were included, to determine whether potential group differences are due to atypical cognitive representations of emotion, impaired understanding of the communicative value of expressions, or poor proprioceptive feedback. Results indicated that ASD expressions were recognized less well than NT expressions, and that this is likely due to a genuine deficit in the representation of typical emotional expressions in this population. Further, ASD expressions were equally poorly recognized by NT individuals and those with ASD, implicating idiosyncratic, rather than common, atypical representations of emotional expressions in ASD. Autism Res 2016, 9: 262–271. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. PMID:26053037

Frontal electroencephalographic correlates of individual differences in emotion expression in infants: a brain systems perspective on emotion.

PubMed

Dawson, G

1994-01-01

Emotion expressions can be characterized by both the type of emotion displayed and the intensity with which the emotion is expressed. Individual differences in these two aspects of emotion appear to vary independently and may perhaps account for distinct dimensions of temperament, personality, and vulnerability to psychopathology. We reviewed several sets of data gathered in our laboratory that indicate that these two dimensions of emotion expression are associated with distinct and independent patterns of frontal EEG activity in infants. Specifically, whereas the type of emotion expression was found to be associated with asymmetries in frontal EEG activity, the intensity of emotion expression was found to be associated with generalized activation of both the right and the left frontal regions. Moreover, we reviewed and provided evidence that measures of asymmetrical frontal activity are better predictors of individual differences in the tendency to express certain emotions, such as distress and sadness, whereas measures of generalized frontal activity are better predictors of individual differences in emotional reactivity and emotion intensity. The neuroanatomical bases of emotion were discussed with special reference to the role of the frontal lobe in emotion regulation. It was hypothesized that the frontal activation asymmetries that have been found to accompany emotion expressions reflect specific regulation strategies. The left frontal region is specialized for regulation strategies involving action schemes that serve to maintain continuity and stability of the organism-environment relation and of ongoing motor schemes, such as those involved in language and the expression of happiness and interest. In contrast, the right frontal region appears to be specialized for regulation strategies that involve processing novel stimuli that disrupt ongoing activity, such as might occur during the expression of fear, disgust, and distress. Furthermore, it was proposed that individual differences in patterns of frontal EEG asymmetries during emotion may be related to socialization influences rather than solely innate factors. It was speculated that the pattern of generalized frontal lobe activation that accompanies the experience of intense emotions may reflect, in part, the relatively diffuse influence of subcortical structures on the cortex and may serve to increase the infant's general readiness to receive and respond to significant external stimuli.

Is fear in your head? A comparison of instructed and real-life expressions of emotion in the face and body.

PubMed

Abramson, Lior; Marom, Inbal; Petranker, Rotem; Aviezer, Hillel

2017-04-01

The majority of emotion perception studies utilize instructed and stereotypical expressions of faces or bodies. While such stimuli are highly standardized and well-recognized, their resemblance to real-life expressions of emotion remains unknown. Here we examined facial and body expressions of fear and anger during real-life situations and compared their recognition to that of instructed expressions of the same emotions. In order to examine the source of the affective signal, expressions of emotion were presented as faces alone, bodies alone, and naturally, as faces with bodies. The results demonstrated striking deviations between recognition of instructed and real-life stimuli, which differed as a function of the emotion expressed. In real-life fearful expressions of emotion, bodies were far better recognized than faces, a pattern not found with instructed expressions of emotion. Anger reactions were better recognized from the body than from the face in both real-life and instructed stimuli. However, the real-life stimuli were overall better recognized than their instructed counterparts. These results indicate that differences between instructed and real-life expressions of emotion are prevalent and raise caution against an overreliance of researchers on instructed affective stimuli. The findings also demonstrate that in real life, facial expression perception may rely heavily on information from the contextualizing body. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Imitating expressions: emotion-specific neural substrates in facial mimicry.

PubMed

Lee, Tien-Wen; Josephs, Oliver; Dolan, Raymond J; Critchley, Hugo D

2006-09-01

Intentionally adopting a discrete emotional facial expression can modulate the subjective feelings corresponding to that emotion; however, the underlying neural mechanism is poorly understood. We therefore used functional brain imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to examine brain activity during intentional mimicry of emotional and non-emotional facial expressions and relate regional responses to the magnitude of expression-induced facial movement. Eighteen healthy subjects were scanned while imitating video clips depicting three emotional (sad, angry, happy), and two 'ingestive' (chewing and licking) facial expressions. Simultaneously, facial movement was monitored from displacement of fiducial markers (highly reflective dots) on each subject's face. Imitating emotional expressions enhanced activity within right inferior prefrontal cortex. This pattern was absent during passive viewing conditions. Moreover, the magnitude of facial movement during emotion-imitation predicted responses within right insula and motor/premotor cortices. Enhanced activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and frontal pole was observed during imitation of anger, in ventromedial prefrontal and rostral anterior cingulate during imitation of sadness and in striatal, amygdala and occipitotemporal during imitation of happiness. Our findings suggest a central role for right inferior frontal gyrus in the intentional imitation of emotional expressions. Further, by entering metrics for facial muscular change into analysis of brain imaging data, we highlight shared and discrete neural substrates supporting affective, action and social consequences of somatomotor emotional expression.

What is shared, what is different? Core relational themes and expressive displays of eight positive emotions.

PubMed

Campos, Belinda; Shiota, Michelle N; Keltner, Dacher; Gonzaga, Gian C; Goetz, Jennifer L

2013-01-01

Understanding positive emotions' shared and differentiating features can yield valuable insight into the structure of positive emotion space and identify emotion states, or aspects of emotion states, that are most relevant for particular psychological processes and outcomes. We report two studies that examined core relational themes (Study 1) and expressive displays (Study 2) for eight positive emotion constructs--amusement, awe, contentment, gratitude, interest, joy, love, and pride. Across studies, all eight emotions shared one quality: high positive valence. Distinctive core relational theme and expressive display patterns were found for four emotions--amusement, awe, interest, and pride. Gratitude was associated with a distinct core relational theme but not an expressive display. Joy and love were each associated with a distinct expressive display but their core relational themes also characterised pride and gratitude, respectively. Contentment was associated with a distinct expressive display but not a core relational theme. The implications of this work for the study of positive emotion are discussed.

Increased heart rate after exercise facilitates the processing of fearful but not disgusted faces.

PubMed

Pezzulo, G; Iodice, P; Barca, L; Chausse, P; Monceau, S; Mermillod, M

2018-01-10

Embodied theories of emotion assume that emotional processing is grounded in bodily and affective processes. Accordingly, the perception of an emotion re-enacts congruent sensory and affective states; and conversely, bodily states congruent with a specific emotion facilitate emotional processing. This study tests whether the ability to process facial expressions (faces having a neutral expression, expressing fear, or disgust) can be influenced by making the participants' body state congruent with the expressed emotion (e.g., high heart rate in the case of faces expressing fear). We designed a task requiring participants to categorize pictures of male and female faces that either had a neutral expression (neutral), or expressed emotions whose linkage with high heart rate is strong (fear) or significantly weaker or absent (disgust). Critically, participants were tested in two conditions: with experimentally induced high heart rate (Exercise) and with normal heart rate (Normal). Participants processed fearful faces (but not disgusted or neutral faces) faster when they were in the Exercise condition than in the Normal condition. These results support the idea that an emotionally congruent body state facilitates the automatic processing of emotionally-charged stimuli and this effect is emotion-specific rather than due to generic factors such as arousal.

Suppression and expression of emotion in social and interpersonal outcomes: A meta-analysis.

PubMed

Chervonsky, Elizabeth; Hunt, Caroline

2017-06-01

Emotion expression is critical for the communication of important social information, such as emotional states and behavioral intentions. However, people tend to vary in their level of emotional expression. This meta-analysis investigated the relationships between levels of emotion expression and suppression, and social and interpersonal outcomes. PsycINFO databases, as well as reference lists were searched. Forty-three papers from a total of 3,200 papers met inclusion criteria, allowing for 105 effect sizes to be calculated. Meta-analyses revealed that greater suppression of emotion was significantly associated with poorer social wellbeing, including more negative first impressions, lower social support, lower social satisfaction and quality, and poorer romantic relationship quality. Furthermore, the expression of positive and general/nonspecific emotion was related to better social outcomes, while the expression of anger was associated with poorer social wellbeing. Expression of negative emotion generally was also associated with poorer social outcomes, although this effect size was very small and consisted of mixed results. These findings highlight the importance of considering the role that regulation of emotional expression can play in the development of social dysfunction and interpersonal problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's Expressions of Positive Emotion are Sustained by Smiling, Touching, and Playing with Parents and Siblings: A Naturalistic Observational Study of Family Life

PubMed Central

Bai, Sunhye; Repetti, Rena L.; Sperling, Jacqueline B.

2015-01-01

Research on family socialization of positive emotion has primarily focused on the infant and toddler stages of development, and relied on observations of parent-child interactions in highly structured laboratory environments. Little is known about how children's spontaneous expressions of positive emotion are maintained in the uncontrolled settings of daily life, particularly within the family and during the school-age years. This naturalistic observational study examines three family behaviors - mutual display of positive emotion, touch and joint leisure – that surround 8 to 12 year-old children's spontaneous expressions of positive emotion, and tests whether these behaviors help to sustain children's expressions. Recordings taken of 31 families in their homes and communities over two days were screened for moments when children spontaneously expressed positive emotion in the presence of at least one parent. Children were more likely to sustain their expressions of positive emotion when mothers, fathers or siblings showed positive emotion, touched, or participated in a leisure activity. There were few differences in the ways that mothers and fathers socialized their sons’ and daughters’ positive emotion expressions. This study takes a unique, ecologically valid approach to assess how family members connect to children's expressions of positive emotion in middle childhood. Future observational studies should continue to explore mechanisms of family socialization of positive emotion, in laboratory and naturalistic settings. PMID:26524382

Emotional facial expressions reduce neural adaptation to face identity.

PubMed

Gerlicher, Anna M V; van Loon, Anouk M; Scholte, H Steven; Lamme, Victor A F; van der Leij, Andries R

2014-05-01

In human social interactions, facial emotional expressions are a crucial source of information. Repeatedly presented information typically leads to an adaptation of neural responses. However, processing seems sustained with emotional facial expressions. Therefore, we tested whether sustained processing of emotional expressions, especially threat-related expressions, would attenuate neural adaptation. Neutral and emotional expressions (happy, mixed and fearful) of same and different identity were presented at 3 Hz. We used electroencephalography to record the evoked steady-state visual potentials (ssVEP) and tested to what extent the ssVEP amplitude adapts to the same when compared with different face identities. We found adaptation to the identity of a neutral face. However, for emotional faces, adaptation was reduced, decreasing linearly with negative valence, with the least adaptation to fearful expressions. This short and straightforward method may prove to be a valuable new tool in the study of emotional processing.

Dissimilar processing of emotional facial expressions in human and monkey temporal cortex

PubMed Central

Zhu, Qi; Nelissen, Koen; Van den Stock, Jan; De Winter, François-Laurent; Pauwels, Karl; de Gelder, Beatrice; Vanduffel, Wim; Vandenbulcke, Mathieu

2013-01-01

Emotional facial expressions play an important role in social communication across primates. Despite major progress made in our understanding of categorical information processing such as for objects and faces, little is known, however, about how the primate brain evolved to process emotional cues. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the processing of emotional facial expressions between monkeys and humans. We used a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design with species (human and monkey), expression (fear and chewing) and configuration (intact versus scrambled) as factors. At the whole brain level, selective neural responses to conspecific emotional expressions were anatomically confined to the superior temporal sulcus (STS) in humans. Within the human STS, we found functional subdivisions with a face-selective right posterior STS area that also responded selectively to emotional expressions of other species and a more anterior area in the right middle STS that responded specifically to human emotions. Hence, we argue that the latter region does not show a mere emotion-dependent modulation of activity but is primarily driven by human emotional facial expressions. Conversely, in monkeys, emotional responses appeared in earlier visual cortex and outside face-selective regions in inferior temporal cortex that responded also to multiple visual categories. Within monkey IT, we also found areas that were more responsive to conspecific than to non-conspecific emotional expressions but these responses were not as specific as in human middle STS. Overall, our results indicate that human STS may have developed unique properties to deal with social cues such as emotional expressions. PMID:23142071

Diminished facial emotion expression and associated clinical characteristics in Anorexia Nervosa.

PubMed

Lang, Katie; Larsson, Emma E C; Mavromara, Liza; Simic, Mima; Treasure, Janet; Tchanturia, Kate

2016-02-28

This study aimed to investigate emotion expression in a large group of children, adolescents and adults with Anorexia Nervosa (AN), and investigate the associated clinical correlates. One hundred and forty-one participants (AN=66, HC= 75) were recruited and positive and negative film clips were used to elicit emotion expressions. The Facial Activation Coding system (FACES) was used to code emotion expression. Subjective ratings of emotion were collected. Individuals with AN displayed less positive emotions during the positive film clip compared to healthy controls (HC). There was no significant difference between the groups on the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS). The AN group displayed emotional incongruence (reporting a different emotion to what would be expected given the stimuli, with limited facial affect to signal the emotion experienced), whereby they reported feeling significantly higher rates of negative emotion during the positive clip. There were no differences in emotion expression between the groups during the negative film clip. Despite this individuals with AN reported feeling significantly higher levels of negative emotions during the negative clip. Diminished positive emotion expression was associated with more severe clinical symptoms, which could suggest that these individuals represent a group with serious social difficulties, which may require specific attention in treatment. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotional Expressions between Male and Female in Hostalize Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haider, Badeea; Khan, Sumaira; Anwar, Kanwal

2016-01-01

There are clear differences in the extent to which people express their emotions. These differences in emotional expressions have long interested researchers and are relevant to several areas of psychology. The research topic is emotional expressions between hostalize male and female in. The sum of 24 students (12 male and 12 female) were selected…

Emotional Expression in Children Treated with ADHD Medication: Development of a New Measure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perwien, Amy R.; Kratochvil, Christopher J.; Faries, Douglas; Vaughan, Brigette; Busner, Joan; Saylor, Keith E.; Buermeyer, Curtis M.; Kaplan, Stuart; Swindle, Ralph

2008-01-01

Objective: Although existing instruments contain items addressing the effect of ADHD medications on emotional expression, a review of measures did not yield any instruments that thoroughly evaluated positive and negative aspects of emotional expression. Method: The Expression and Emotion Scale for Children (EESC), a parent-report measure, was…

Reading between the lies: identifying concealed and falsified emotions in universal facial expressions.

PubMed

Porter, Stephen; ten Brinke, Leanne

2008-05-01

The widespread supposition that aspects of facial communication are uncontrollable and can betray a deceiver's true emotion has received little empirical attention. We examined the presence of inconsistent emotional expressions and "microexpressions" (1/25-1/5 of a second) in genuine and deceptive facial expressions. Participants viewed disgusting, sad, frightening, happy, and neutral images, responding to each with a genuine or deceptive (simulated, neutralized, or masked) expression. Each 1/30-s frame (104,550 frames in 697 expressions) was analyzed for the presence and duration of universal expressions, microexpressions, and blink rate. Relative to genuine emotions, masked emotions were associated with more inconsistent expressions and an elevated blink rate; neutralized emotions showed a decreased blink rate. Negative emotions were more difficult to falsify than happiness. Although untrained observers performed only slightly above chance at detecting deception, inconsistent emotional leakage occurred in 100% of participants at least once and lasted longer than the current definition of a microexpression suggests. Microexpressions were exhibited by 21.95% of participants in 2% of all expressions, and in the upper or lower face only.

Computerised analysis of facial emotion expression in eating disorders

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Background Problems with social-emotional processing are known to be an important contributor to the development and maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). Diminished facial communication of emotion has been frequently reported in individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN). Less is known about facial expressivity in bulimia nervosa (BN) and in people who have recovered from AN (RecAN). This study aimed to pilot the use of computerised facial expression analysis software to investigate emotion expression across the ED spectrum and recovery in a large sample of participants. Method 297 participants with AN, BN, RecAN, and healthy controls were recruited. Participants watched film clips designed to elicit happy or sad emotions, and facial expressions were then analysed using FaceReader. Results The finding mirrored those from previous work showing that healthy control and RecAN participants expressed significantly more positive emotions during the positive clip compared to the AN group. There were no differences in emotion expression during the sad film clip. Discussion These findings support the use of computerised methods to analyse emotion expression in EDs. The findings also demonstrate that reduced positive emotion expression is likely to be associated with the acute stage of AN illness, with individuals with BN showing an intermediate profile. PMID:28575109

Rapid processing of emotional expressions without conscious awareness.

PubMed

Smith, Marie L

2012-08-01

Rapid accurate categorization of the emotional state of our peers is of critical importance and as such many have proposed that facial expressions of emotion can be processed without conscious awareness. Typically, studies focus selectively on fearful expressions due to their evolutionary significance, leaving the subliminal processing of other facial expressions largely unexplored. Here, I investigated the time course of processing of 3 facial expressions (fearful, disgusted, and happy) plus an emotionally neutral face, during objectively unaware and aware perception. Participants completed the challenging "which expression?" task in response to briefly presented backward-masked expressive faces. Although participant's behavioral responses did not differentiate between the emotional content of the stimuli in the unaware condition, activity over frontal and occipitotemporal (OT) brain regions indicated an emotional modulation of the neuronal response. Over frontal regions this was driven by negative facial expressions and was present on all emotional trials independent of later categorization. Whereas the N170 component, recorded on lateral OT electrodes, was enhanced for all facial expressions but only on trials that would later be categorized as emotional. The results indicate that emotional faces, not only fearful, are processed without conscious awareness at an early stage and highlight the critical importance of considering categorization response when studying subliminal perception.

Cultural modes of expressing emotions influence how emotions are experienced.

PubMed

Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen; Yang, Xiao-Fei; Damasio, Hanna

2016-10-01

The brain's mapping of bodily responses during emotion contributes to emotional experiences, or feelings. Culture influences emotional expressiveness, that is, the magnitude of individuals' bodily responses during emotion. So, are cultural influences on behavioral expressiveness associated with differences in how individuals experience emotion? Chinese and American young adults reported how strongly admiration- and compassion-inducing stories made them feel, first in a private interview and then during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As expected, Americans were more expressive in the interview. Although expressiveness did not predict stronger reported feelings or neural responses during fMRI, in both cultural groups more-expressive people showed tighter trial-by-trial correlations between their experienced strength of emotion and activations in visceral-somatosensory cortex, even after controlling for individuals' overall strength of reactions (neural and felt). Moreover, expressiveness mediated a previously described cultural effect in which activations in visceral-somatosensory cortex correlated with feeling strength among Americans but not among Chinese. Post hoc supplementary analyses revealed that more-expressive individuals reached peak activation of visceral-somatosensory cortex later in the emotion process and took longer to decide how strongly they felt. The results together suggest that differences in expressiveness correspond to differences in how somatosensory mechanisms contribute to constructing conscious feelings. By influencing expressiveness, culture may therefore influence how individuals know how strongly they feel, what conscious feelings are based on, or possibly what strong versus weak emotions "feel like." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Cultural Modes of Expressing Emotions Influence How Emotions Are Experienced

PubMed Central

Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen; Yang, Xiao-Fei; Damasio, Hanna

2016-01-01

The brain’s mapping of bodily responses during emotion contributes to emotional experiences, or feelings. Culture influences emotional expressiveness, i.e. the magnitude of individuals’ bodily responses during emotion. So, are cultural influences on behavioral expressiveness associated with differences in how individuals experience emotion? Chinese and American young adults reported how strongly admiration and compassion-inducing stories made them feel, first in a private interview and then during fMRI. As expected, Americans were more expressive in the interview. While expressiveness did not predict stronger reported feelings or neural responses during fMRI, in both cultural groups more expressive people showed tighter trial-by-trial correlations between their experienced strength of emotion and activations in visceral-somatosensory cortex, even after controlling for individuals’ overall strength of reactions (neural and felt). Moreover, expressiveness mediated a previously described cultural effect in which activations in visceral-somatosensory cortex correlated with feeling strength among Americans but not among Chinese. Post-hoc supplementary analyses revealed that more expressive individuals reached peak activation of visceral-somatosensory cortex later in the emotion process and took longer to decide how strongly they felt. The results together suggest that differences in expressiveness correspond to differences in how somatosensory mechanisms contribute to constructing conscious feelings. By influencing expressiveness, culture may therefore influence how individuals know how strongly they feel, what conscious feelings are based on, or possibly what strong versus weak emotions “feel like.” PMID:27270077

Family expressiveness relates to happy emotion matching among 9-month-old infants.

PubMed

Ogren, Marissa; Burling, Joseph M; Johnson, Scott P

2018-06-07

Perceiving and understanding the emotions of those around us is an imperative skill to develop early in life. An infant's family environment provides most of their emotional exemplars in early development. However, the relation between the early development of emotion perception and family expressiveness remains understudied. To investigate this potential link to early emotion perception development, we examined 38 infants at 9 months of age. We assessed infants' ability to match emotions across facial and vocal modalities using an intermodal matching paradigm for angry-neutral, happy-neutral, and sad-neutral pairings. We also attained family expressiveness information via parent report. Our results indicate a significant positive relation between emotion matching and family expressiveness specific to the happy-neutral condition. However, we found no evidence for emotion matching for the infants as a group in any of the three conditions. These results suggest that family expressiveness does relate to emotion matching for the earliest developing emotional category among 9-month-old infants and that emotion matching with multiple emotions at this age is a challenging task. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Evidence for cultural dialects in vocal emotion expression: acoustic classification within and across five nations.

PubMed

Laukka, Petri; Neiberg, Daniel; Elfenbein, Hillary Anger

2014-06-01

The possibility of cultural differences in the fundamental acoustic patterns used to express emotion through the voice is an unanswered question central to the larger debate about the universality versus cultural specificity of emotion. This study used emotionally inflected standard-content speech segments expressing 11 emotions produced by 100 professional actors from 5 English-speaking cultures. Machine learning simulations were employed to classify expressions based on their acoustic features, using conditions where training and testing were conducted on stimuli coming from either the same or different cultures. A wide range of emotions were classified with above-chance accuracy in cross-cultural conditions, suggesting vocal expressions share important characteristics across cultures. However, classification showed an in-group advantage with higher accuracy in within- versus cross-cultural conditions. This finding demonstrates cultural differences in expressive vocal style, and supports the dialect theory of emotions according to which greater recognition of expressions from in-group members results from greater familiarity with culturally specific expressive styles.

The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression.

PubMed

Holmes, Amanda; Winston, Joel S; Eimer, Martin

2005-10-01

To investigate the impact of spatial frequency on emotional facial expression analysis, ERPs were recorded in response to low spatial frequency (LSF), high spatial frequency (HSF), and unfiltered broad spatial frequency (BSF) faces with fearful or neutral expressions, houses, and chairs. In line with previous findings, BSF fearful facial expressions elicited a greater frontal positivity than BSF neutral facial expressions, starting at about 150 ms after stimulus onset. In contrast, this emotional expression effect was absent for HSF and LSF faces. Given that some brain regions involved in emotion processing, such as amygdala and connected structures, are selectively tuned to LSF visual inputs, these data suggest that ERP effects of emotional facial expression do not directly reflect activity in these regions. It is argued that higher order neocortical brain systems are involved in the generation of emotion-specific waveform modulations. The face-sensitive N170 component was neither affected by emotional facial expression nor by spatial frequency information.

Diminished emotion expressivity but not experience in men and women with schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Mote, Jasmine; Stuart, Barbara K.; Kring, Ann M.

2014-01-01

Prior studies indicate that men with schizophrenia are less outwardly expressive but report similar emotion experience as healthy people. However, it is unclear whether women with schizophrenia show this same disconnect between expressivity and experience. Men (n=24) and women (n=25) with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and women without schizophrenia (n=25) viewed emotionally evocative film clips and were video recorded to assess facial expressivity. Participants also reported their emotion experience after each clip. Men and women with schizophrenia did not significantly differ from one another in the frequency of facial expressions, but both groups exhibited fewer expressions than women without schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia also reported lower levels of trait expressivity compared to women without schizophrenia. Overall people with schizophrenia did not differ from controls on self-reported emotion experience with one exception: Women with schizophrenia reported more unpleasant emotion than controls. These results indicate that both women and men with schizophrenia exhibit fewer outward expressions but experience comparable emotion experience as people without schizophrenia. PMID:25222047

Processing of subliminal facial expressions of emotion: a behavioral and fMRI study.

PubMed

Prochnow, D; Kossack, H; Brunheim, S; Müller, K; Wittsack, H-J; Markowitsch, H-J; Seitz, R J

2013-01-01

The recognition of emotional facial expressions is an important means to adjust behavior in social interactions. As facial expressions widely differ in their duration and degree of expressiveness, they often manifest with short and transient expressions below the level of awareness. In this combined behavioral and fMRI study, we aimed at examining whether or not consciously accessible (subliminal) emotional facial expressions influence empathic judgments and which brain activations are related to it. We hypothesized that subliminal facial expressions of emotions masked with neutral expressions of the same faces induce an empathic processing similar to consciously accessible (supraliminal) facial expressions. Our behavioral data in 23 healthy subjects showed that subliminal emotional facial expressions of 40 ms duration affect the judgments of the subsequent neutral facial expressions. In the fMRI study in 12 healthy subjects it was found that both, supra- and subliminal emotional facial expressions shared a widespread network of brain areas including the fusiform gyrus, the temporo-parietal junction, and the inferior, dorsolateral, and medial frontal cortex. Compared with subliminal facial expressions, supraliminal facial expressions led to a greater activation of left occipital and fusiform face areas. We conclude that masked subliminal emotional information is suited to trigger processing in brain areas which have been implicated in empathy and, thereby in social encounters.

The mysterious noh mask: contribution of multiple facial parts to the recognition of emotional expressions.

PubMed

Miyata, Hiromitsu; Nishimura, Ritsuko; Okanoya, Kazuo; Kawai, Nobuyuki

2012-01-01

A Noh mask worn by expert actors when performing on a Japanese traditional Noh drama is suggested to convey countless different facial expressions according to different angles of head/body orientation. The present study addressed the question of how different facial parts of a Noh mask, including the eyebrows, the eyes, and the mouth, may contribute to different emotional expressions. Both experimental situations of active creation and passive recognition of emotional facial expressions were introduced. In Experiment 1, participants either created happy or sad facial expressions, or imitated a face that looked up or down, by actively changing each facial part of a Noh mask image presented on a computer screen. For an upward tilted mask, the eyebrows and the mouth shared common features with sad expressions, whereas the eyes with happy expressions. This contingency tended to be reversed for a downward tilted mask. Experiment 2 further examined which facial parts of a Noh mask are crucial in determining emotional expressions. Participants were exposed to the synthesized Noh mask images with different facial parts expressing different emotions. Results clearly revealed that participants primarily used the shape of the mouth in judging emotions. The facial images having the mouth of an upward/downward tilted Noh mask strongly tended to be evaluated as sad/happy, respectively. The results suggest that Noh masks express chimeric emotional patterns, with different facial parts conveying different emotions This appears consistent with the principles of Noh which highly appreciate subtle and composite emotional expressions, as well as with the mysterious facial expressions observed in Western art. It was further demonstrated that the mouth serves as a diagnostic feature in characterizing the emotional expressions. This indicates the superiority of biologically-driven factors over the traditionally formulated performing styles when evaluating the emotions of the Noh masks.

The Mysterious Noh Mask: Contribution of Multiple Facial Parts to the Recognition of Emotional Expressions

PubMed Central

Miyata, Hiromitsu; Nishimura, Ritsuko; Okanoya, Kazuo; Kawai, Nobuyuki

2012-01-01

Background A Noh mask worn by expert actors when performing on a Japanese traditional Noh drama is suggested to convey countless different facial expressions according to different angles of head/body orientation. The present study addressed the question of how different facial parts of a Noh mask, including the eyebrows, the eyes, and the mouth, may contribute to different emotional expressions. Both experimental situations of active creation and passive recognition of emotional facial expressions were introduced. Methodology/Principal Findings In Experiment 1, participants either created happy or sad facial expressions, or imitated a face that looked up or down, by actively changing each facial part of a Noh mask image presented on a computer screen. For an upward tilted mask, the eyebrows and the mouth shared common features with sad expressions, whereas the eyes with happy expressions. This contingency tended to be reversed for a downward tilted mask. Experiment 2 further examined which facial parts of a Noh mask are crucial in determining emotional expressions. Participants were exposed to the synthesized Noh mask images with different facial parts expressing different emotions. Results clearly revealed that participants primarily used the shape of the mouth in judging emotions. The facial images having the mouth of an upward/downward tilted Noh mask strongly tended to be evaluated as sad/happy, respectively. Conclusions/Significance The results suggest that Noh masks express chimeric emotional patterns, with different facial parts conveying different emotions This appears consistent with the principles of Noh which highly appreciate subtle and composite emotional expressions, as well as with the mysterious facial expressions observed in Western art. It was further demonstrated that the mouth serves as a diagnostic feature in characterizing the emotional expressions. This indicates the superiority of biologically-driven factors over the traditionally formulated performing styles when evaluating the emotions of the Noh masks. PMID:23185595

Negative affectivity: moderator or confound in emotional dissonance-outcome relationships?

PubMed

Abraham, R

1999-01-01

This study was an examination of the impact of negative affectivity on relationships between emotional dissonance, job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion. Negative affectivity is the predisposition to view life in negative terms. Emotional dissonance originates from the conflict between expressed and experienced emotions. In organizations that require the expression of positive emotions, high negative affectivity individuals may experience conflict between expressed, positive emotions and felt, negative emotions. A moderator effect exists when high negative affectivity individuals experience greater job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Alternatively, negative affectivity may exert a confounding effect through its relationship to both emotional dissonance and its outcomes. Empirical tests showed that negative affectivity moderated the emotional dissonance-job satisfaction relationship and confounded the emotional dissonance-emotional exhaustion relationship.

Common cues to emotion in the dynamic facial expressions of speech and song

PubMed Central

Livingstone, Steven R.; Thompson, William F.; Wanderley, Marcelo M.; Palmer, Caroline

2015-01-01

Speech and song are universal forms of vocalization that may share aspects of emotional expression. Research has focused on parallels in acoustic features, overlooking facial cues to emotion. In three experiments, we compared moving facial expressions in speech and song. In Experiment 1, vocalists spoke and sang statements each with five emotions. Vocalists exhibited emotion-dependent movements of the eyebrows and lip corners that transcended speech–song differences. Vocalists’ jaw movements were coupled to their acoustic intensity, exhibiting differences across emotion and speech–song. Vocalists’ emotional movements extended beyond vocal sound to include large sustained expressions, suggesting a communicative function. In Experiment 2, viewers judged silent videos of vocalists’ facial expressions prior to, during, and following vocalization. Emotional intentions were identified accurately for movements during and after vocalization, suggesting that these movements support the acoustic message. Experiment 3 compared emotional identification in voice-only, face-only, and face-and-voice recordings. Emotion judgements for voice-only singing were poorly identified, yet were accurate for all other conditions, confirming that facial expressions conveyed emotion more accurately than the voice in song, yet were equivalent in speech. Collectively, these findings highlight broad commonalities in the facial cues to emotion in speech and song, yet highlight differences in perception and acoustic-motor production. PMID:25424388

Common cues to emotion in the dynamic facial expressions of speech and song.

PubMed

Livingstone, Steven R; Thompson, William F; Wanderley, Marcelo M; Palmer, Caroline

2015-01-01

Speech and song are universal forms of vocalization that may share aspects of emotional expression. Research has focused on parallels in acoustic features, overlooking facial cues to emotion. In three experiments, we compared moving facial expressions in speech and song. In Experiment 1, vocalists spoke and sang statements each with five emotions. Vocalists exhibited emotion-dependent movements of the eyebrows and lip corners that transcended speech-song differences. Vocalists' jaw movements were coupled to their acoustic intensity, exhibiting differences across emotion and speech-song. Vocalists' emotional movements extended beyond vocal sound to include large sustained expressions, suggesting a communicative function. In Experiment 2, viewers judged silent videos of vocalists' facial expressions prior to, during, and following vocalization. Emotional intentions were identified accurately for movements during and after vocalization, suggesting that these movements support the acoustic message. Experiment 3 compared emotional identification in voice-only, face-only, and face-and-voice recordings. Emotion judgements for voice-only singing were poorly identified, yet were accurate for all other conditions, confirming that facial expressions conveyed emotion more accurately than the voice in song, yet were equivalent in speech. Collectively, these findings highlight broad commonalities in the facial cues to emotion in speech and song, yet highlight differences in perception and acoustic-motor production.

Recognizing emotion in faces: developmental effects of child abuse and neglect.

PubMed

Pollak, Seth D; Cicchetti, Dante; Hornung, Katherine; Reed, Alex

2000-09-01

The contributions to the recognition of emotional signals of (a) experience and learning versus (b) internal predispositions are difficult to investigate because children are virtually always exposed to complex emotional experiences from birth. The recognition of emotion among physically abused and physically neglected preschoolers was assessed in order to examine the effects of atypical experience on emotional development. In Experiment 1, children matched a facial expression to an emotional situation. Neglected children had more difficulty discriminating emotional expressions than did control or physically abused children. Physically abused children displayed a response bias for angry facial expressions. In Experiment 2, children rated the similarity of facial expressions. Control children viewed discrete emotions as dissimilar, neglected children saw fewer distinctions between emotions, and physically abused children showed the most variance across emotions. These results suggest that to the extent that children's experience with the world varies, so too will their interpretation and understanding of emotional signals.

[Validation of the Spanish version of the Frankfurt Emotion Work Scales].

PubMed

Ortiz Bonnín, Silvia; Navarro Guzmán, Capilla; García Buades, Esther; Ramis Palmer, Carmen; Manassero Mas, M Antonia

2012-05-01

This study presents the validity and reliability analysis of a questionnaire that assesses emotion work in the service sector. Emotion work is a term introduced by Hochschild (1983) and it refers to the expression of organizationally desirable emotions to influence the interactions with clients at work. The results show a 6-factor structure: Requirement to display Positive, Negative and Neutral Emotions, Sensitivity Requirements, Interaction Control and Emotional Dissonance. The analysis of the sub-scale scores reveals that the most frequently expressed emotions are positive, whereas negative emotions are expressed less frequently.

Facial Mimicry and Emotion Consistency: Influences of Memory and Context.

PubMed

Kirkham, Alexander J; Hayes, Amy E; Pawling, Ralph; Tipper, Steven P

2015-01-01

This study investigates whether mimicry of facial emotions is a stable response or can instead be modulated and influenced by memory of the context in which the emotion was initially observed, and therefore the meaning of the expression. The study manipulated emotion consistency implicitly, where a face expressing smiles or frowns was irrelevant and to be ignored while participants categorised target scenes. Some face identities always expressed emotions consistent with the scene (e.g., smiling with a positive scene), whilst others were always inconsistent (e.g., frowning with a positive scene). During this implicit learning of face identity and emotion consistency there was evidence for encoding of face-scene emotion consistency, with slower RTs, a reduction in trust, and inhibited facial EMG for faces expressing incompatible emotions. However, in a later task where the faces were subsequently viewed expressing emotions with no additional context, there was no evidence for retrieval of prior emotion consistency, as mimicry of emotion was similar for consistent and inconsistent individuals. We conclude that facial mimicry can be influenced by current emotion context, but there is little evidence of learning, as subsequent mimicry of emotionally consistent and inconsistent faces is similar.

Expressions of positive emotion in women's college yearbook pictures and their relationship to personality and life outcomes across adulthood.

PubMed

Harker, L; Keltner, D

2001-01-01

To test hypotheses about positive emotion, the authors examined the relationship of positive emotional expression in women's college pictures to personality, observer ratings, and life outcomes. Consistent with the notion that positive emotions help build personal resources, positive emotional expression correlated with the self-reported personality traits of affiliation, competence, and low negative emotionality across adulthood and predicted changes in competence and negative emotionality. Observers rated women displaying more positive emotion more favorably on several personality dimensions and expected interactions with them to be more rewarding; thus, demonstrating the beneficial social consequences of positive emotions. Finally, positive emotional expression predicted favorable outcomes in marriage and personal well-being up to 30 years later. Controlling for physical attractiveness and social desirability had little impact on these findings.

Emotional facial expressions differentially influence predictions and performance for face recognition.

PubMed

Nomi, Jason S; Rhodes, Matthew G; Cleary, Anne M

2013-01-01

This study examined how participants' predictions of future memory performance are influenced by emotional facial expressions. Participants made judgements of learning (JOLs) predicting the likelihood that they would correctly identify a face displaying a happy, angry, or neutral emotional expression in a future two-alternative forced-choice recognition test of identity (i.e., recognition that a person's face was seen before). JOLs were higher for studied faces with happy and angry emotional expressions than for neutral faces. However, neutral test faces with studied neutral expressions had significantly higher identity recognition rates than neutral test faces studied with happy or angry expressions. Thus, these data are the first to demonstrate that people believe happy and angry emotional expressions will lead to better identity recognition in the future relative to neutral expressions. This occurred despite the fact that neutral expressions elicited better identity recognition than happy and angry expressions. These findings contribute to the growing literature examining the interaction of cognition and emotion.

Studying Emotional Expression in Music Performance.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gabrielsson, Alf

1999-01-01

Explores the importance of emotional expression in music performance. Performers played music to express different emotions and then listening tests were conducted in order to determine whether the intended expressions were perceived. Presents and discusses the results. (CMK)

Parental socialization of emotion expression: gender differences and relations to child adjustment.

PubMed

Chaplin, Tara M; Cole, Pamela M; Zahn-Waxler, Carolyn

2005-03-01

The present study examined gender differences in children's submissive and disharmonious emotions and parental attention to these emotions. Sixty children and their mothers and fathers participated when children were 4 and 6 years old. Children's emotion expression and parental responses during a game were coded. Girls expressed more submissive emotion than boys. Fathers attended more to girls' submissive emotion than to boys' at preschool age. Fathers attended more to boys' disharmonious emotion than to girls' at early school age. Parental attention at preschool age predicted later submissive expression level. Child disharmonious emotion predicted later externalizing symptoms. Gender differences in these emotions may occur as early as preschool age and may be subject to differential responding, particularly by fathers. Copyright 2005 APA, all rights reserved.

Sequential dynamics of culturally moderated facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Matsumoto, David; Willingham, Bob; Olide, Andres

2009-10-01

There is consensus that when emotions are aroused, the displays of those emotions are either universal or culture-specific. We investigated the idea that an individual's emotional displays in a given context can be both universal and culturally variable, as they change over time. We examined the emotional displays of Olympic athletes across time, classified their expressive styles, and tested the association between those styles and a number of characteristics associated with the countries the athletes represented. Athletes from relatively urban, individualistic cultures expressed their emotions more, whereas athletes from less urban, collectivistic cultures masked their emotions more. These culturally influenced expressions occurred within a few seconds after initial, immediate, and universal emotional displays. Thus, universal and culture-specific emotional displays can unfold across time in an individual in a single context.

[The role of experience in the neurology of facial expression of emotions].

PubMed

Gordillo, Fernando; Pérez, Miguel A; Arana, José M; Mestas, Lilia; López, Rafael M

2015-04-01

Facial expression of emotion has an important social function that facilitates interaction between people. This process has a neurological basis, which is not isolated from the context, or the experience of the interaction between people in that context. Yet, to date, the impact that experience has on the perception of emotions is not completely understood. To discuss the role of experience in the recognition of facial expression of emotions and to analyze the biases towards emotional perception. The maturation of the structures that support the ability to recognize emotion goes through a sensitive period during adolescence, where experience may have greater impact on emotional recognition. Experiences of abuse, neglect, war, and stress generate a bias towards expressions of anger and sadness. Similarly, positive experiences generate a bias towards the expression of happiness. Only when people are able to use the facial expression of emotions as a channel for understanding an expression, will they be able to interact appropriately with their environment. This environment, in turn, will lead to experiences that modulate this capacity. Therefore, it is a self-regulatory process that can be directed through the implementation of intervention programs on emotional aspects.

No differences in emotion recognition strategies in children with autism spectrum disorder: evidence from hybrid faces.

PubMed

Evers, Kris; Kerkhof, Inneke; Steyaert, Jean; Noens, Ilse; Wagemans, Johan

2014-01-01

Emotion recognition problems are frequently reported in individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, this research area is characterized by inconsistent findings, with atypical emotion processing strategies possibly contributing to existing contradictions. In addition, an attenuated saliency of the eyes region is often demonstrated in ASD during face identity processing. We wanted to compare reliance on mouth versus eyes information in children with and without ASD, using hybrid facial expressions. A group of six-to-eight-year-old boys with ASD and an age- and intelligence-matched typically developing (TD) group without intellectual disability performed an emotion labelling task with hybrid facial expressions. Five static expressions were used: one neutral expression and four emotional expressions, namely, anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. Hybrid faces were created, consisting of an emotional face half (upper or lower face region) with the other face half showing a neutral expression. Results showed no emotion recognition problem in ASD. Moreover, we provided evidence for the existence of top- and bottom-emotions in children: correct identification of expressions mainly depends on information in the eyes (so-called top-emotions: happiness) or in the mouth region (so-called bottom-emotions: sadness, anger, and fear). No stronger reliance on mouth information was found in children with ASD.

Physicians' responses to patients' expressions of negative emotions in hospital consultations: a video-based observational study.

PubMed

Mjaaland, Trond A; Finset, Arnstein; Jensen, Bård Fossli; Gulbrandsen, Pål

2011-09-01

Patients express their negative emotions in medical consultations either implicitly as cue to an underlying unpleasant emotion or explicitly as a clear, unambiguous concern. The health provider's response to such cues and concerns is important for the outcome of consultations. Yet, physicians often neglect patient's negative emotions. Most studies of this subject are from primary health care. We aimed to describe how physicians in a hospital respond to negative emotions in an outpatient setting. Ninety six consultations were videotaped in a general teaching hospital. The Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences was used to identify patients' expression of negative emotions in terms of cue and concern and to code physicians' subsequent responses. Cohen's kappa was used as interrater reliability measure. Acceptable kappa level was set to .60. We observed 163 expressions of negative emotions. In general, the physician responses to patients' cues and concerns did not include follow up or exploration. Concerns more often than cues led to lack of emotional exploration. When patients expressed negative emotions or cues to such, hospital physicians tended to move away from emotional communication, particularly if the emotion was expressed as an explicit concern. Medical training should enable physicians' to explore the patients' emotions in situations where it will improve the medical treatment. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Profiling of experiential pleasure, emotional regulation and emotion expression in patients with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Zou, Ying-Min; Ni, Ke; Yang, Zhuo-Ya; Li, Ying; Cai, Xin-Lu; Xie, Dong-Jie; Zhang, Rui-Ting; Zhou, Fu-Chun; Li, Wen-Xiu; Lui, Simon S Y; Shum, David H K; Cheung, Eric F C; Chan, Raymond C K

2018-05-01

Emotion deficits may be the basis of negative symptoms in schizophrenia patients and they are prevalent in these patients. However, inconsistent findings about emotion deficits in schizophrenia suggest that there may be subtypes. The present study aimed to examine and profile experiential pleasure, emotional regulation and expression in patients with schizophrenia. A set of checklists specifically capturing experiential pleasure, emotional regulation, emotion expression, depressive symptoms and anhedonia were administered to 146 in-patients with schizophrenia and 73 demographically-matched healthy controls. Psychiatric symptoms and negative symptoms were also evaluated by a trained psychiatrist for patients with schizophrenia. Two-stage cluster analysis and discriminant function analysis were used to analyze the profile of these measures in patients with schizophrenia. We found a three-cluster solution. Cluster 1 (n=41) was characterized by a deficit in experiential pleasure and emotional regulation, Cluster 2 (n=47) was characterized by a general deficit in experiential pleasure, emotional regulation and emotion expression, and Cluster 3 (n=57) was characterized by a deficit in emotion expression. Results of a discriminant function analysis indicated that the three groups were reasonably discrete. The present findings suggest that schizophrenia patients can be classified into three subtypes based on experiential pleasure, emotional regulation and emotion expression, which are characterized by distinct clinical representations. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Authentic and Play-Acted Vocal Emotion Expressions Reveal Acoustic Differences

PubMed Central

Jürgens, Rebecca; Hammerschmidt, Kurt; Fischer, Julia

2011-01-01

Play-acted emotional expressions are a frequent aspect in our life, ranging from deception to theater, film, and radio drama, to emotion research. To date, however, it remained unclear whether play-acted emotions correspond to spontaneous emotion expressions. To test whether acting influences the vocal expression of emotion, we compared radio sequences of naturally occurring emotions to actors’ portrayals. It was hypothesized that play-acted expressions were performed in a more stereotyped and aroused fashion. Our results demonstrate that speech segments extracted from play-acted and authentic expressions differ in their voice quality. Additionally, the play-acted speech tokens revealed a more variable F0-contour. Despite these differences, the results did not support the hypothesis that the variation was due to changes in arousal. This analysis revealed that differences in perception of play-acted and authentic emotional stimuli reported previously cannot simply be attributed to differences in arousal, but by slight and implicitly perceptible differences in encoding. PMID:21847385

Dissociation between facial and bodily expressions in emotion recognition: A case study.

PubMed

Leiva, Samanta; Margulis, Laura; Micciulli, Andrea; Ferreres, Aldo

2017-12-21

Existing single-case studies have reported deficit in recognizing basic emotions through facial expression and unaffected performance with body expressions, but not the opposite pattern. The aim of this paper is to present a case study with impaired emotion recognition through body expressions and intact performance with facial expressions. In this single-case study we assessed a 30-year-old patient with autism spectrum disorder, without intellectual disability, and a healthy control group (n = 30) with four tasks of basic and complex emotion recognition through face and body movements, and two non-emotional control tasks. To analyze the dissociation between facial and body expressions, we used Crawford and Garthwaite's operational criteria, and we compared the patient and the control group performance with a modified one-tailed t-test designed specifically for single-case studies. There were no statistically significant differences between the patient's and the control group's performances on the non-emotional body movement task or the facial perception task. For both kinds of emotions (basic and complex) when the patient's performance was compared to the control group's, statistically significant differences were only observed for the recognition of body expressions. There were no significant differences between the patient's and the control group's correct answers for emotional facial stimuli. Our results showed a profile of impaired emotion recognition through body expressions and intact performance with facial expressions. This is the first case study that describes the existence of this kind of dissociation pattern between facial and body expressions of basic and complex emotions.

A Facial Control Method Using Emotional Parameters in Sensibility Robot

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shibata, Hiroshi; Kanoh, Masayoshi; Kato, Shohei; Kunitachi, Tsutomu; Itoh, Hidenori

The “Ifbot” robot communicates with people by considering its own “emotions”. Ifbot has many facial expressions to communicate enjoyment. These are used to express its internal emotions, purposes, reactions caused by external stimulus, and entertainment such as singing songs. All these facial expressions are developed by designers manually. Using this approach, we must design all facial motions, if we want Ifbot to express them. It, however, is not realistic. We have therefore developed a system which convert Ifbot's emotions to its facial expressions automatically. In this paper, we propose a method for creating Ifbot's facial expressions from parameters, emotional parameters, which handle its internal emotions computationally.

Cerebellum and processing of negative facial emotions: cerebellar transcranial DC stimulation specifically enhances the emotional recognition of facial anger and sadness.

PubMed

Ferrucci, Roberta; Giannicola, Gaia; Rosa, Manuela; Fumagalli, Manuela; Boggio, Paulo Sergio; Hallett, Mark; Zago, Stefano; Priori, Alberto

2012-01-01

Some evidence suggests that the cerebellum participates in the complex network processing emotional facial expression. To evaluate the role of the cerebellum in recognising facial expressions we delivered transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex. A facial emotion recognition task was administered to 21 healthy subjects before and after cerebellar tDCS; we also tested subjects with a visual attention task and a visual analogue scale (VAS) for mood. Anodal and cathodal cerebellar tDCS both significantly enhanced sensory processing in response to negative facial expressions (anodal tDCS, p=.0021; cathodal tDCS, p=.018), but left positive emotion and neutral facial expressions unchanged (p>.05). tDCS over the right prefrontal cortex left facial expressions of both negative and positive emotion unchanged. These findings suggest that the cerebellum is specifically involved in processing facial expressions of negative emotion.

Context matters: the benefits and costs of expressing positive emotion among survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

PubMed

Bonanno, George A; Colak, Deniz M; Keltner, Dacher; Shiota, Michelle N; Papa, Anthony; Noll, Jennie G; Putnam, Frank W; Trickett, Penelope K

2007-11-01

Positive emotions promote adjustment to aversive life events. However, evolutionary theory and empirical research on trauma disclosure suggest that in the context of stigmatized events, expressing positive emotions might incur social costs. To test this thesis, the authors coded genuine (Duchenne) smiling and laughter and also non-Duchenne smiling from videotapes of late-adolescent and young adult women, approximately half with documented histories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), as they described the most distressing event of their lives. Consistent with previous studies, genuine positive emotional expression was generally associated with better social adjustment two years later. However, as anticipated, CSA survivors who expressed positive emotion in the context of describing a past CSA experience had poorer long-term social adjustment, whereas CSA survivors who expressed positive emotion while describing a nonabuse experience had improved social adjustment. These findings suggest that the benefits of positive emotional expression may often be context specific.

Longitudinal associations between physically abusive parents' emotional expressiveness and children's self-regulation.

PubMed

Milojevich, Helen M; Haskett, Mary E

2018-03-01

The present study took a developmental psychopathology approach to examine the longitudinal association between parents' emotional expressiveness and children's self-regulation. Data collection spanned from 2004 to 2008. Ninety-two physically abusive parents completed yearly assessments of their emotional expressiveness, as well as their children's self-regulation abilities. Observational and behavioral measures were also obtained yearly to capture both parents' emotional expressiveness and children's self-regulation. Specifically, parents participated in a parent-child interaction task, which provided insight into their levels of flat affect. A puzzle box task was completed by each child to assess self-regulation. Results indicated, first, that greater parental expression of negative emotions predicted poorer self-regulation in children, both concurrently and across time. Second, parental expressions of positive emotions and parents' flat affect were unrelated to children's self-regulation. Findings inform our understanding of parental socialization of self-regulation and provide insight into the roles of distinct components of emotional expressiveness. Moreover, findings have crucial implications for understanding emotional expressiveness in high-risk samples and increase our understanding of within-group functioning among maltreating families that may serve as a means to direct intervention efforts. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Mothers' adherence to "maternal love" influences emotional expression toward children: relation to maternal occupational status and satisfaction in the workplace].

PubMed

Egami, Sonoko

2007-06-01

This study examined the impact of mothers' adherence to "maternal love" on maternal emotional expression toward their children. It was postulated that adherence to "maternal love" (defined as the tendency to accept and obey blindly the traditional maternal role and sociocultural belief in "desirable mothers") would have both positive and negative effects on maternal emotional expression, depending on the mothers' occupational status and satisfaction in workplace. The results showed an interaction between mothers' adherence to "maternal love" and the mothers' satisfaction in the workplace, which affected their expression of emotion. When satisfaction in the workplace was rated in the middle, it was positively associated with positive emotional expression. When satisfaction in the workplace was rated as high, it was both positively and negatively associated with positive emotional expression for full-time workers. Moreover, when satisfaction in the workplace was rated as in the middle, it was negatively associated with negative emotional expression, and when satisfaction in the workplace was rated as low or high, it was positively associated with negative emotional expression for all workers. These findings confirmed that mothers' adherence to "maternal love" is "the double-edged sword".

Cultural similarities and differences in the perception of emotional valence and intensity: a comparison of Americans and Hong Kong Chinese.

PubMed

Zhu, Zhuoying; Ho, Samuel M Y; Bonanno, George A

2013-01-01

Despite being challenged for their ecological validity, studies of emotion perception have often relied on static, posed expressions. One of the key reasons is that dynamic, spontaneous expressions are difficult to control because of the existence of display rules and frequent co-occurrence of non-emotion related facial movements. The present study investigated cross-cultural patterns in the perception of emotion using an expressive regulation paradigm for generating facial expressions. The paradigm largely balances out the competing concerns for ecological and internal validity. Americans and Hong Kong Chinese (expressors) were presented with positively and negatively valenced pictures and were asked to enhance, suppress, or naturally display their facial expressions according to their subjective emotions. Videos of naturalistic and dynamic expressions of emotions were rated by Americans and Hong Kong Chinese (judges) for valence and intensity. The 2 cultures agreed on the valence and relative intensity of emotion expressions, but cultural differences were observed in absolute intensity ratings. The differences varied between positive and negative expressions. With positive expressions, ratings were higher when there was a cultural match between the expressor and the judge and when the expression was enhanced by the expressor. With negative expressions, Chinese judges gave higher ratings than their American counterparts for Chinese expressions under all 3 expressive conditions, and the discrepancy increased with expression intensity; no cultural differences were observed when American expressions were judged. The results were discussed with respect to the "decoding rules" and "same-culture advantage" approaches of emotion perception and a negativity bias in the Chinese collective culture.

Emotion understanding in postinstitutionalized Eastern European children

PubMed Central

WISMER FRIES, ALISON B.; POLLAK, SETH D.

2005-01-01

To examine the effects of early emotional neglect on children’s affective development, we assessed children who had experienced institutionalized care prior to adoption into family environments. One task required children to identify photographs of facial expressions of emotion. A second task required children to match facial expressions to an emotional situation. Internationally adopted, postinstitutionalized children had difficulty identifying facial expressions of emotion. In addition, postinstitutionalized children had significant difficulty matching appropriate facial expressions to happy, sad, and fearful scenarios. However, postinstitutionalized children performed as well as comparison children when asked to identify and match angry facial expressions. These results are discussed in terms of the importance of emotional input early in life on later developmental organization. PMID:15487600

Emotional conflict in interpersonal interactions.

PubMed

Ruz, María; Tudela, Pío

2011-01-15

Facial displays of emotions can help to infer the mental states of other individuals. However, the expectations we generate on the basis of people's emotions can mismatch their actual behaviour in certain circumstances, which generates conflict. In the present study, we explored the neural mechanisms of emotional conflict during interpersonal interactions. Participants had to accept or reject economic offers made by several partners who displayed emotional expressions. On every trial, a cue informed participants of whether they could trust the emotion of their partner or not. Trustworthy (low-conflict) partners with happy facial expressions were cooperative and those with angry expressions did not cooperate. Untrustworthy (high-conflict) partners, on the other hand, cooperated when their expression was angry and did not cooperate when they displayed a happy emotion. Behavioural responses were faster for trustworthy than for untrustworty partners. High-conflict partners activated the anterior cingulate and the anterior insula. In turn, trustworthy partners were associated with activations in the left precuneus. Our results suggest that the emotion displayed by another person affects our decision-making in social contexts. When emotional expressions are linked to their natural consequences, they engage ToM processes. In contrast, untrustworthy emotional expressions engage conflict-related brain regions. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Facial resemblance to emotions: group differences, impression effects, and race stereotypes.

PubMed

Zebrowitz, Leslie A; Kikuchi, Masako; Fellous, Jean-Marc

2010-02-01

The authors used connectionist modeling to extend previous research on emotion overgeneralization effects. Study 1 demonstrated that neutral expression male faces objectively resemble angry expressions more than female faces do, female faces objectively resemble surprise expressions more than male faces do, White faces objectively resemble angry expressions more than Black or Korean faces do, and Black faces objectively resemble happy and surprise expressions more than White faces do. Study 2 demonstrated that objective resemblance to emotion expressions influences trait impressions even when statistically controlling possible confounding influences of attractiveness and babyfaceness. It further demonstrated that emotion overgeneralization is moderated by face race and that racial differences in emotion resemblance contribute to White perceivers' stereotypes of Blacks and Asians. These results suggest that intergroup relations may be strained not only by cultural stereotypes but also by adaptive responses to emotion expressions that are overgeneralized to groups whose faces subtly resemble particular emotions. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved

Perception of threat from emotions and its role in poor emotional expression within eating pathology.

PubMed

Ioannou, Korina; Fox, John R E

2009-01-01

Recent research has documented links between eating disorder (ED) symptomatology and emotional expression deficits. Relevant theoretical models have alluded to the functional role of disordered eating in alleviating affect that is felt to be otherwise unmanageable and threatening. Nevertheless, research examining ED individuals' perceptions of emotional states has been sparse, while empirical studies have predominantly focused on global conceptualizations of emotion, failing to address discrete affect states. The current study had three aims: (a) to determine the relation between ED symptomatology and emotional expression, in a sample of women with ED, in an attempt to confirm previous findings of an inverse relation; (b) to test the hypothesis that women with ED inhibit the expression of emotions perceived as threatening, by examining the relation between emotional expression and perceptions of threat from emotion, while partialling out the effects of depression; and (c) to determine whether, amongst women with ED, perceptions of threat from anger are uniquely associated with emotional inhibition, when the effects of depression and body dissatisfaction are controlled for. Results demonstrated that (a) emotional expression was negatively related with the three Eating Disorders Inventory-3 subscales (drive for thinness, bulimia and body dissatisfaction); (b) perceived threat from emotion, particularly anger, was negatively correlated with emotional expression, when depression was partialled out in the analysis; and (c) perceived threat from anger significantly and uniquely predicted emotional inhibition, over and above the effects of body dissatisfaction and depression, in a sample of women with ED symptomatology. It is suggested that anger may be perceived as particularly threatening amongst women with ED, and play a significant role in the emotional expression difficulties that this population experiences. The implications of the current findings are discussed in line with relevant theory and research, with particular reference to the new Schematic Propositional Analogical Associative Representation System for Eating Disorders (SPAARS-ED) model.

Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity.

PubMed

Deng, Yaling; Chang, Lei; Yang, Meng; Huo, Meng; Zhou, Renlai

2016-01-01

The present study investigated gender differences in both emotional experience and expressivity. Heart rate (HR) was recorded as an indicator of emotional experience while the participants watched 16 video clips that induced eight types of emotion (sadness, anger, horror, disgust, neutrality, amusement, surprise, and pleasure). We also asked the participants to report valence, arousal, and motivation as indicators of emotional expressivity. Overall, the results revealed gender differences in emotional experience and emotional expressivity. When watching videos that induced anger, amusement, and pleasure, men showed larger decreases in HR, whereas women reported higher levels of arousal. There was no gender difference in HR when the participants watched videos that induced horror and disgust, but women reported lower valence, higher arousal, and stronger avoidance motivation than did men. Finally, no gender difference was observed in sadness or surprise, although there was one exception-women reported higher arousal when watching videos that induced sadness. The findings suggest that, when watching videos that induce an emotional response, men often have more intense emotional experiences, whereas women have higher emotional expressivity, particularly for negative emotions. In addition, gender differences depend on the specific emotion type but not the valence.

Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity

PubMed Central

Deng, Yaling; Chang, Lei; Yang, Meng; Huo, Meng

2016-01-01

The present study investigated gender differences in both emotional experience and expressivity. Heart rate (HR) was recorded as an indicator of emotional experience while the participants watched 16 video clips that induced eight types of emotion (sadness, anger, horror, disgust, neutrality, amusement, surprise, and pleasure). We also asked the participants to report valence, arousal, and motivation as indicators of emotional expressivity. Overall, the results revealed gender differences in emotional experience and emotional expressivity. When watching videos that induced anger, amusement, and pleasure, men showed larger decreases in HR, whereas women reported higher levels of arousal. There was no gender difference in HR when the participants watched videos that induced horror and disgust, but women reported lower valence, higher arousal, and stronger avoidance motivation than did men. Finally, no gender difference was observed in sadness or surprise, although there was one exception—women reported higher arousal when watching videos that induced sadness. The findings suggest that, when watching videos that induce an emotional response, men often have more intense emotional experiences, whereas women have higher emotional expressivity, particularly for negative emotions. In addition, gender differences depend on the specific emotion type but not the valence. PMID:27362361

Impaired detection and differentiation of briefly presented facial emotions in adults with high-functioning autism and asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Frank, R; Schulze, L; Hellweg, R; Koehne, S; Roepke, S

2018-05-01

Although deficits in the recognition of emotional facial expressions are considered a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), characterization of abnormalities in the differentiation of emotional expressions (e.g., sad vs. angry) has been rather inconsistent, especially in adults without intellectual impairments who may compensate for their deficits. In addition, previous research neglected the ability to detect emotional expressions (e.g., angry vs. neutral). The present study used a backward masking paradigm to investigate, a) the detection of emotional expressions, and b) the differentiation of emotional expressions in adults diagnosed with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome (n = 23) compared to neurotypical controls (n = 25). Compensatory strategies were prevented by shortening the stimulus presentation time (33, 67, and 100 ms). In general, participants with ASD were significantly less accurate in detecting and differentiating emotional expressions compared to the control group. In the emotion differentiation task, individuals with ASD profited significantly less from an increase in presentation time. These results reinforce theoretical models that individuals with ASD have deficits in emotion recognition under time constraints. Furthermore, first evidence was provided that emotion detection and emotion differentiation are impaired in ASD. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The attraction of emotions: Irrelevant emotional information modulates motor actions.

PubMed

Ambron, Elisabetta; Foroni, Francesco

2015-08-01

Emotional expressions are important cues that capture our attention automatically. Although a wide range of work has explored the role and influence of emotions on cognition and behavior, little is known about the way that emotions influence motor actions. Moreover, considering how critical detecting emotional facial expressions in the environment can be, it is important to understand their impact even when they are not directly relevant to the task being performed. Our novel approach was to explore this issue from the attention-and-action perspective, using a task-irrelevant distractor paradigm in which participants are asked to reach for a target while a nontarget stimulus is also presented. We tested whether the movement trajectory would be influenced by irrelevant stimuli-faces with or without emotional expressions. The results showed that reaching paths veered toward faces with emotional expressions, in particular happiness, but not toward neutral expressions. This reinforces the view of emotions as attention-capturing stimuli that are, however, also potential sources of distraction for motor actions.

Do facial movements express emotions or communicate motives?

PubMed

Parkinson, Brian

2005-01-01

This article addresses the debate between emotion-expression and motive-communication approaches to facial movements, focusing on Ekman's (1972) and Fridlund's (1994) contrasting models and their historical antecedents. Available evidence suggests that the presence of others either reduces or increases facial responses, depending on the quality and strength of the emotional manipulation and on the nature of the relationship between interactants. Although both display rules and social motives provide viable explanations of audience "inhibition" effects, some audience facilitation effects are less easily accommodated within an emotion-expression perspective. In particular, emotion is not a sufficient condition for a corresponding "expression," even discounting explicit regulation, and, apparently, "spontaneous" facial movements may be facilitated by the presence of others. Further, there is no direct evidence that any particular facial movement provides an unambiguous expression of a specific emotion. However, information communicated by facial movements is not necessarily extrinsic to emotion. Facial movements not only transmit emotion-relevant information but also contribute to ongoing processes of emotional action in accordance with pragmatic theories.

Emotional collectives: How groups shape emotions and emotions shape groups.

PubMed

van Kleef, Gerben A; Fischer, Agneta H

2016-01-01

Group settings are epicentres of emotional activity. Yet, the role of emotions in groups is poorly understood. How do group-level phenomena shape group members' emotional experience and expression? How are emotional expressions recognised, interpreted and shared in group settings? And how do such expressions influence the emotions, cognitions and behaviours of fellow group members and outside observers? To answer these and other questions, we draw on relevant theoretical perspectives (e.g., intergroup emotions theory, social appraisal theory and emotions as social information theory) and recent empirical findings regarding the role of emotions in groups. We organise our review according to two overarching themes: how groups shape emotions and how emotions shape groups. We show how novel empirical approaches break important new ground in uncovering the role of emotions in groups. Research on emotional collectives is thriving and constitutes a key to understanding the social nature of emotions.

Human and animal sounds influence recognition of body language.

PubMed

Van den Stock, Jan; Grèzes, Julie; de Gelder, Beatrice

2008-11-25

In naturalistic settings emotional events have multiple correlates and are simultaneously perceived by several sensory systems. Recent studies have shown that recognition of facial expressions is biased towards the emotion expressed by a simultaneously presented emotional expression in the voice even if attention is directed to the face only. So far, no study examined whether this phenomenon also applies to whole body expressions, although there is no obvious reason why this crossmodal influence would be specific for faces. Here we investigated whether perception of emotions expressed in whole body movements is influenced by affective information provided by human and by animal vocalizations. Participants were instructed to attend to the action displayed by the body and to categorize the expressed emotion. The results indicate that recognition of body language is biased towards the emotion expressed by the simultaneously presented auditory information, whether it consist of human or of animal sounds. Our results show that a crossmodal influence from auditory to visual emotional information obtains for whole body video images with the facial expression blanked and includes human as well as animal sounds.

Embodied emotion impairment in Huntington's Disease.

PubMed

Trinkler, Iris; Devignevielle, Sévérine; Achaibou, Amal; Ligneul, Romain V; Brugières, Pierre; Cleret de Langavant, Laurent; De Gelder, Beatrice; Scahill, Rachael; Schwartz, Sophie; Bachoud-Lévi, Anne-Catherine

2017-07-01

Theories of embodied cognition suggest that perceiving an emotion involves somatovisceral and motoric re-experiencing. Here we suggest taking such an embodied stance when looking at emotion processing deficits in patients with Huntington's Disease (HD), a neurodegenerative motor disorder. The literature on these patients' emotion recognition deficit has recently been enriched by some reports of impaired emotion expression. The goal of the study was to find out if expression deficits might be linked to a more motoric level of impairment. We used electromyography (EMG) to compare voluntary emotion expression from words to emotion imitation from static face images, and spontaneous emotion mimicry in 28 HD patients and 24 matched controls. For the latter two imitation conditions, an underlying emotion understanding is not imperative (even though performance might be helped by it). EMG measures were compared to emotion recognition and to the capacity to identify and describe emotions using alexithymia questionnaires. Alexithymia questionnaires tap into the more somato-visceral or interoceptive aspects of emotion perception. Furthermore, we correlated patients' expression and recognition scores to cerebral grey matter volume using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). EMG results replicated impaired voluntary emotion expression in HD. Critically, voluntary imitation and spontaneous mimicry were equally impaired and correlated with impaired recognition. By contrast, alexithymia scores were normal, suggesting that emotion representations on the level of internal experience might be spared. Recognition correlated with brain volume in the caudate as well as in areas previously associated with shared action representations, namely somatosensory, posterior parietal, posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and subcentral sulcus. Together, these findings indicate that in these patients emotion deficits might be tied to the "motoric level" of emotion expression. Such a double-sided recognition and expression impairment may have important consequences, interrupting empathy in nonverbal communication both ways (understanding and being understood), independently of intact internal experience of emotion. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Attention to Facial Emotion Expressions in Children with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Begeer, Sander; Rieffe, Carolien; Terwogt, Mark Meerum; Stockmann, Lex

2006-01-01

High-functioning children in the autism spectrum are frequently noted for their impaired attention to facial expressions of emotions. In this study, we examined whether attention to emotion cues in others could be enhanced in children with autism, by varying the relevance of children's attention to emotion expressions. Twenty-eight…

Preschoolers as Functionalists: The Impact of Social Context on Emotion Regulation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zeman, Janice; And Others

1997-01-01

Examined preschoolers' use of display rules, their outcome expectancies when managing negative affect, and parental perceptions of family emotional expressivity. Found that children reported expressing emotion most to fathers; boys regulated affect with mothers more than did girls. Also found that children expressed emotion when expecting help,…

Facial dynamics and emotional expressions in facial aging treatments.

PubMed

Michaud, Thierry; Gassia, Véronique; Belhaouari, Lakhdar

2015-03-01

Facial expressions convey emotions that form the foundation of interpersonal relationships, and many of these emotions promote and regulate our social linkages. Hence, the facial aging symptomatological analysis and the treatment plan must of necessity include knowledge of the facial dynamics and the emotional expressions of the face. This approach aims to more closely meet patients' expectations of natural-looking results, by correcting age-related negative expressions while observing the emotional language of the face. This article will successively describe patients' expectations, the role of facial expressions in relational dynamics, the relationship between facial structures and facial expressions, and the way facial aging mimics negative expressions. Eventually, therapeutic implications for facial aging treatment will be addressed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

What a Smile Means: Contextual Beliefs and Facial Emotion Expressions in a Non-verbal Zero-Sum Game

PubMed Central

Pádua Júnior, Fábio P.; Prado, Paulo H. M.; Roeder, Scott S.; Andrade, Eduardo B.

2016-01-01

Research into the authenticity of facial emotion expressions often focuses on the physical properties of the face while paying little attention to the role of beliefs in emotion perception. Further, the literature most often investigates how people express a pre-determined emotion rather than what facial emotion expressions people strategically choose to express. To fill these gaps, this paper proposes a non-verbal zero-sum game – the Face X Game – to assess the role of contextual beliefs and strategic displays of facial emotion expression in interpersonal interactions. This new research paradigm was used in a series of three studies, where two participants are asked to play the role of the sender (individual expressing emotional information on his/her face) or the observer (individual interpreting the meaning of that expression). Study 1 examines the outcome of the game with reference to the sex of the pair, where senders won more frequently when the pair was comprised of at least one female. Study 2 examines the strategic display of facial emotion expressions. The outcome of the game was again contingent upon the sex of the pair. Among female pairs, senders won the game more frequently, replicating the pattern of results from study 1. We also demonstrate that senders who strategically express an emotion incongruent with the valence of the event (e.g., smile after seeing a negative event) are able to mislead observers, who tend to hold a congruent belief about the meaning of the emotion expression. If sending an incongruent signal helps to explain why female senders win more frequently, it logically follows that female observers were more prone to hold a congruent, and therefore inaccurate, belief. This prospect implies that while female senders are willing and/or capable of displaying fake smiles, paired-female observers are not taking this into account. Study 3 investigates the role of contextual factors by manipulating female observers’ beliefs. When prompted to think in an incongruent manner, these observers significantly improve their performance in the game. These findings emphasize the role that contextual factors play in emotion perception—observers’ beliefs do indeed affect their judgments of facial emotion expressions. PMID:27148142

Randomized controlled trial of expressive writing for psychological and physical health: the moderating role of emotional expressivity.

PubMed

Niles, Andrea N; Haltom, Kate E Byrne; Mulvenna, Catherine M; Lieberman, Matthew D; Stanton, Annette L

2014-01-01

The current study assessed main effects and moderators (including emotional expressiveness, emotional processing, and ambivalence over emotional expression) of the effects of expressive writing in a sample of healthy adults. Young adult participants (N=116) were randomly assigned to write for 20 minutes on four occasions about deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their most stressful/traumatic event in the past five years (expressive writing) or about a control topic (control). Dependent variables were indicators of anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms. No significant effects of writing condition were evident on anxiety, depressive symptoms, or physical symptoms. Emotional expressiveness emerged as a significant moderator of anxiety outcomes, however. Within the expressive writing group, participants high in expressiveness evidenced a significant reduction in anxiety at three-month follow-up, and participants low in expressiveness showed a significant increase in anxiety. Expressiveness did not predict change in anxiety in the control group. These findings on anxiety are consistent with the matching hypothesis, which suggests that matching a person's naturally elected coping approach with an assigned intervention is beneficial. These findings also suggest that expressive writing about a stressful event may be contraindicated for individuals who do not typically express emotions.

Effects of Expressive Writing on Psychological and Physical Health: The Moderating Role of Emotional Expressivity

PubMed Central

Haltom, Kate E.; Mulvenna, Catherine M.; Lieberman, Matthew D.; Stanton, Annette L.

2013-01-01

The current study assessed main effects and moderators (including emotional expressiveness, emotional processing and ambivalence over emotional expression) of the effects of expressive writing in a sample of healthy adults. Young adult participants (N = 116) were randomly assigned to write for 20 minutes on four occasions about deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their most stressful/traumatic event in the past five years (expressive writing) or about a control topic (control). Dependent variables were indicators of anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms. No significant effects of writing condition were evident on anxiety, depressive symptoms, or physical symptoms. Emotional expressiveness emerged as a significant moderator of anxiety outcomes, however. Within the expressive writing group, participants high in expressiveness evidenced a significant reduction in anxiety at three-month follow-up, and participants low in expressiveness showed a significant increase in anxiety. Expressiveness did not predict change in anxiety in the control group. These findings on anxiety are consistent with the matching hypothesis, which suggests that matching a person’s naturally elected coping approach with an assigned intervention is beneficial. These findings also suggest that expressive writing about a stressful event may be contraindicated for individuals who do not typically express emotions. PMID:23742666

Effect of Acting Experience on Emotion Expression and Recognition in Voice: Non-Actors Provide Better Stimuli than Expected.

PubMed

Jürgens, Rebecca; Grass, Annika; Drolet, Matthis; Fischer, Julia

Both in the performative arts and in emotion research, professional actors are assumed to be capable of delivering emotions comparable to spontaneous emotional expressions. This study examines the effects of acting training on vocal emotion depiction and recognition. We predicted that professional actors express emotions in a more realistic fashion than non-professional actors. However, professional acting training may lead to a particular speech pattern; this might account for vocal expressions by actors that are less comparable to authentic samples than the ones by non-professional actors. We compared 80 emotional speech tokens from radio interviews with 80 re-enactments by professional and inexperienced actors, respectively. We analyzed recognition accuracies for emotion and authenticity ratings and compared the acoustic structure of the speech tokens. Both play-acted conditions yielded similar recognition accuracies and possessed more variable pitch contours than the spontaneous recordings. However, professional actors exhibited signs of different articulation patterns compared to non-trained speakers. Our results indicate that for emotion research, emotional expressions by professional actors are not better suited than those from non-actors.

Emotional display rules in Palestine: Ingroup/outgroup membership, status of interaction partner and gender.

PubMed

Flicker, Sharon M; Ayoub, Haneen J S; Guynn, Melissa J

2017-05-05

This study investigates emotional display rules within the Palestinian context, focusing on the seven basic emotions in a sample of 150 college students from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Overall, participants felt that it was more appropriate to express positive emotions (happiness and surprise) than negative powerful (anger, contempt and disgust) or negative powerless (fear and sadness) emotions. They also perceived it to be more appropriate to express positive and negative powerless emotions to ingroup than outgroup members and to express negative powerful emotions to lower status compared to higher status individuals. Gender differences were also found: men endorsed greater expression of both powerful and, surprisingly, powerless emotions than women, but only when interacting with outgroup members. Results are interpreted in terms of the cultural values of individualism-collectivism and power distance as well as cultural differences in emotional expressiveness between collectivistic societies. This study is one of the first to examine emotional display rules in an Arab population, thus expanding our current knowledge base. © 2017 International Union of Psychological Science.

Prolonged Interruption of Cognitive Control of Conflict Processing Over Human Faces by Task-Irrelevant Emotion Expression

PubMed Central

Kim, Jinyoung; Kang, Min-Suk; Cho, Yang Seok; Lee, Sang-Hun

2017-01-01

As documented by Darwin 150 years ago, emotion expressed in human faces readily draws our attention and promotes sympathetic emotional reactions. How do such reactions to the expression of emotion affect our goal-directed actions? Despite the substantial advance made in the neural mechanisms of both cognitive control and emotional processing, it is not yet known well how these two systems interact. Here, we studied how emotion expressed in human faces influences cognitive control of conflict processing, spatial selective attention and inhibitory control in particular, using the Eriksen flanker paradigm. In this task, participants viewed displays of a central target face flanked by peripheral faces and were asked to judge the gender of the target face; task-irrelevant emotion expressions were embedded in the target face, the flanking faces, or both. We also monitored how emotion expression affects gender judgment performance while varying the relative timing between the target and flanker faces. As previously reported, we found robust gender congruency effects, namely slower responses to the target faces whose gender was incongruent with that of the flanker faces, when the flankers preceded the target by 0.1 s. When the flankers further advanced the target by 0.3 s, however, the congruency effect vanished in most of the viewing conditions, except for when emotion was expressed only in the flanking faces or when congruent emotion was expressed in the target and flanking faces. These results suggest that emotional saliency can prolong a substantial degree of conflict by diverting bottom-up attention away from the target, and that inhibitory control on task-irrelevant information from flanking stimuli is deterred by the emotional congruency between target and flanking stimuli. PMID:28676780

Measuring emotional and cognitive empathy using dynamic, naturalistic, and spontaneous emotion displays.

PubMed

Buck, Ross; Powers, Stacie R; Hull, Kyle S

2017-10-01

Most measures of nonverbal receiving ability use posed expressions as stimuli. As empathy measures, such stimuli lack ecological validity, as the participant is not actually experiencing emotion. An alternative approach uses natural and dynamic displays of spontaneous expressions. The Communication of Affect Receiving Ability Test (CARAT) uses as stimuli spontaneous facial expressions and gestures filmed by an unobtrusive camera of solitary participants responding to emotional images. This article reports the development and initial validation of the CARAT-Spontaneous, Posed, Regulated (CARAT-SPR), which measures both abilities to detect emotion from spontaneous displays (emotion communication accuracy) and to differentiate spontaneous, posed, and regulated displays (expression categorization ability). Although spontaneous displays are natural responses to emotional images, posed displays involve asking the sender to display "as if" responding to a particular sort of image when no image is in fact present (simulation), while Regulated displays involve asking the sender to display "as if" responding to a particular sort of image when an image of opposite valence is in fact present (masking). Expression categorization ability involves judging deception-simulation and masking-and conceptually involves a kind of perspective-taking or cognitive empathy. Emotion communication using spontaneous clips achieved a high level of accuracy and was strongly correlated with ratings of sender expressivity. Expression categorization ability was not significantly correlated with expressivity ratings and was modestly negatively correlated with emotion communication accuracy. In a brief version of the CARAT-SPR, women showed evidence of greater emotion signal detection, whereas men reported greater confidence in expression categorization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Registered Nurses' and nurse assistants' responses to older persons' expressions of emotional needs in home care.

PubMed

Höglander, Jessica; Eklund, Jakob Håkansson; Eide, Hilde; Holmström, Inger K; Sundler, Annelie J

2017-12-01

This study aims to explore nurse assistants' and Registered Nurses' responses to older persons' expressions of emotional needs during home care visits. Communication is a central aspect of care. Older persons might express different emotions and needs during home care visits and such expressions can be challenging to respond to. Little is known about communication in home care or nursing staff responses to older persons' expressed emotional needs. Descriptive, cross-sectional design on nursing staff responses to older persons' negative emotions in home care. Collected data consisted of audio recordings of home care visits between older persons and nursing staff. Data were collected between August 2014-November 2015. The nursing staff responses to older persons' negative emotions in the communication were analysed with the Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences (VR-CoDES). The nursing staff most often give non-explicit responses, providing space for further disclosure of older persons' expressed negative emotions. Such responses were more frequent if the nursing staff had elicited the older persons' expressions of a negative emotion than if such expressions were elicited by the older persons themselves. Most frequent types of responses were backchannel, active invitation or information advice. The nursing staff responses were mainly non-explicit responses providing space for older persons to tell more about their experiences. Such responses can be discussed in terms of person-centred communication and is important for the comfort of emotional concerns. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Expressing Emotions in Teaching: Inducement, Suppression, and Disclosure as Caring Profession

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kimura, Yuu

2010-01-01

Is teaching emotional labor? Are teachers selling their own emotions in exchange for money? To examine these questions, this paper examines teachers' emotion expression in teaching. Most previous studies have assessed teachers' emotional experience using interviews, and have reported that because teachers manage their own emotions, teaching is…

Acute alcohol effects on facial expressions of emotions in social drinkers: a systematic review

PubMed Central

Capito, Eva Susanne; Lautenbacher, Stefan; Horn-Hofmann, Claudia

2017-01-01

Background As known from everyday experience and experimental research, alcohol modulates emotions. Particularly regarding social interaction, the effects of alcohol on the facial expression of emotion might be of relevance. However, these effects have not been systematically studied. We performed a systematic review on acute alcohol effects on social drinkers’ facial expressions of induced positive and negative emotions. Materials and methods With a predefined algorithm, we searched three electronic databases (PubMed, PsycInfo, and Web of Science) for studies conducted on social drinkers that used acute alcohol administration, emotion induction, and standardized methods to record facial expressions. We excluded those studies that failed common quality standards, and finally selected 13 investigations for this review. Results Overall, alcohol exerted effects on facial expressions of emotions in social drinkers. These effects were not generally disinhibiting, but varied depending on the valence of emotion and on social interaction. Being consumed within social groups, alcohol mostly influenced facial expressions of emotions in a socially desirable way, thus underscoring the view of alcohol as social lubricant. However, methodical differences regarding alcohol administration between the studies complicated comparability. Conclusion Our review highlighted the relevance of emotional valence and social-context factors for acute alcohol effects on social drinkers’ facial expressions of emotions. Future research should investigate how these alcohol effects influence the development of problematic drinking behavior in social drinkers. PMID:29255375

The Influence of Personality Traits on Emotion Expression in Bulimic Spectrum Disorders: A Pilot Study.

PubMed

Giner-Bartolomé, Cristina; Steward, Trevor; Wolz, Ines; Jiménez-Murcia, Susana; Granero, Roser; Tárrega, Salomé; Fernández-Formoso, José Antonio; Soriano-Mas, Carles; Menchón, José M; Fernández-Aranda, Fernando

2016-07-01

Facial expressions are critical in forming social bonds and in signalling one's emotional state to others. In eating disorder patients, impairments in facial emotion recognition have been associated with eating psychopathology severity. Little research however has been carried out on how bulimic spectrum disorder (BSD) patients spontaneously express emotions. Our aim was to investigate emotion expression in BSD patients and to explore the influence of personality traits. Our study comprised 28 BSD women and 15 healthy controls. Facial expressions were recorded while participants played a serious video game. Expressions of anger and joy were used as outcome measures. Overall, BSD participants displayed less facial expressiveness than controls. Among BSD women, expressions of joy were positively associated with reward dependence, novelty seeking and self-directedness, whereas expressions of anger were associated with lower self-directedness. Our findings suggest that specific personality traits are associated with altered emotion facial expression in patients with BSD. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

Is this happiness I see? Biases in the identification of emotional facial expressions in depression and social phobia.

PubMed

Joormann, Jutta; Gotlib, Ian H

2006-11-01

The present study was designed to examine the operation of depression-specific biases in the identification or labeling of facial expression of emotions. Participants diagnosed with major depression and social phobia and control participants were presented with faces that expressed increasing degrees of emotional intensity, slowly changing from a neutral to a full-intensity happy, sad, or angry expression. The authors assessed individual differences in the intensity of facial expression of emotion that was required for the participants to accurately identify the emotion being expressed. The depressed participants required significantly greater intensity of emotion than did the social phobic and the control participants to correctly identify happy expressions and less intensity to identify sad than angry expressions. In contrast, social phobic participants needed less intensity to correctly identify the angry expressions than did the depressed and control participants and less intensity to identify angry than sad expressions. Implications of these results for interpersonal functioning in depression and social phobia are discussed. (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved.

Expression intensity, gender and facial emotion recognition: Women recognize only subtle facial emotions better than men.

PubMed

Hoffmann, Holger; Kessler, Henrik; Eppel, Tobias; Rukavina, Stefanie; Traue, Harald C

2010-11-01

Two experiments were conducted in order to investigate the effect of expression intensity on gender differences in the recognition of facial emotions. The first experiment compared recognition accuracy between female and male participants when emotional faces were shown with full-blown (100% emotional content) or subtle expressiveness (50%). In a second experiment more finely grained analyses were applied in order to measure recognition accuracy as a function of expression intensity (40%-100%). The results show that although women were more accurate than men in recognizing subtle facial displays of emotion, there was no difference between male and female participants when recognizing highly expressive stimuli. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Are effects of emotion expression on trait impressions mediated by babyfaceness? Evidence from connectionist modeling.

PubMed

Zebrowitz, Leslie A; Kikuchi, Masako; Fellous, Jean-Marc

2007-05-01

Two studies provided evidence that bolsters the Marsh, Adams, and Kleck hypothesis that the morphology of certain emotion expressions reflects an evolved adaptation to mimic babies or mature adults. Study 1 found differences in emotion expressions' resemblance to babies using objective indices of babyfaceness provided by connectionist models that are impervious to overlapping cultural stereotypes about babies and the emotions. Study 2 not only replicated parallels between impressions of certain emotions and babies versus adults but also showed that objective indices of babyfaceness partially mediated impressions of the emotion expressions. babyface effects were independent of strong effects of attractiveness, and babyfaceness did not mediate impressions of happy expressions, to which the evolutionary hypothesis would not apply.

Limbic and prefrontal responses to facial emotion expressions in depersonalization.

PubMed

Lemche, Erwin; Surguladze, Simon A; Giampietro, Vincent P; Anilkumar, Ananthapadmanabha; Brammer, Michael J; Sierra, Mauricio; Chitnis, Xavier; Williams, Steven C R; Gasston, David; Joraschky, Peter; David, Anthony S; Phillips, Mary L

2007-03-26

Depersonalization disorder, characterized by emotional detachment, has been associated with increased prefrontal cortical and decreased autonomic activity to emotional stimuli. Event-related fMRI with simultaneous measurements of skin conductance levels occurred in nine depersonalization disorder patients and 12 normal controls to neutral, mild and intense happy and sad facial expressions. Patients, but not controls, showed decreases in subcortical limbic activity to increasingly intense happy and sad facial expressions, respectively. For both happy and sad expressions, negative correlations between skin conductance measures in bilateral dorsal prefrontal cortices occurred only in depersonalization disorder patients. Abnormal decreases in limbic activity to increasingly intense emotional expressions, and increases in dorsal prefrontal cortical activity to emotionally arousing stimuli may underlie the emotional detachment of depersonalization disorder.

Older persons' expressions of emotional cues and concerns during home care visits. Application of the Verona coding definitions of emotional sequences (VR-CoDES) in home care.

PubMed

Sundler, Annelie J; Höglander, Jessica; Eklund, Jakob Håkansson; Eide, Hilde; Holmström, Inger K

2017-02-01

This study aims to a) explore to what extent older persons express emotional cues and concerns during home care visits; b) describe what cues and concerns these older persons expressed, and c) explore who initiated these cues and concerns. A descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted. Data consisted of 188 audio recorded home care visits with older persons and registered nurses or nurse assistants, coded with the Verona coding definitions on emotional sequences (VR-CoDES). Emotional expressions of cues and concerns occurred in 95 (51%) of the 188 recorded home care visits. Most frequent were implicit expressions of cues (n=292) rather than explicit concerns (n=24). Utterances with hints to hidden concerns (63,9%, n=202) were most prevalent, followed by vague or unspecific expressions of emotional worries (15,8%, n=50). Most of these were elicited by the nursing staff (63%, n=200). Emotional needs expressed by the older persons receiving home care were mainly communicated implicitly. To be attentive to such vaguely expressed emotions may demand nursing staff to be sensitive and open. The VR-CoDES can be applied on audio recorded home care visits to analyse verbal and emotional communication, and may allow comparative research. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dynamic Facial Expressions Prime the Processing of Emotional Prosody.

PubMed

Garrido-Vásquez, Patricia; Pell, Marc D; Paulmann, Silke; Kotz, Sonja A

2018-01-01

Evidence suggests that emotion is represented supramodally in the human brain. Emotional facial expressions, which often precede vocally expressed emotion in real life, can modulate event-related potentials (N100 and P200) during emotional prosody processing. To investigate these cross-modal emotional interactions, two lines of research have been put forward: cross-modal integration and cross-modal priming. In cross-modal integration studies, visual and auditory channels are temporally aligned, while in priming studies they are presented consecutively. Here we used cross-modal emotional priming to study the interaction of dynamic visual and auditory emotional information. Specifically, we presented dynamic facial expressions (angry, happy, neutral) as primes and emotionally-intoned pseudo-speech sentences (angry, happy) as targets. We were interested in how prime-target congruency would affect early auditory event-related potentials, i.e., N100 and P200, in order to shed more light on how dynamic facial information is used in cross-modal emotional prediction. Results showed enhanced N100 amplitudes for incongruently primed compared to congruently and neutrally primed emotional prosody, while the latter two conditions did not significantly differ. However, N100 peak latency was significantly delayed in the neutral condition compared to the other two conditions. Source reconstruction revealed that the right parahippocampal gyrus was activated in incongruent compared to congruent trials in the N100 time window. No significant ERP effects were observed in the P200 range. Our results indicate that dynamic facial expressions influence vocal emotion processing at an early point in time, and that an emotional mismatch between a facial expression and its ensuing vocal emotional signal induces additional processing costs in the brain, potentially because the cross-modal emotional prediction mechanism is violated in case of emotional prime-target incongruency.

An exploration of how positive emotions are expressed by older people and nurse assistants in homecare visits.

PubMed

Heyn, Lena; Ellington, Lee; Eide, Hilde

2017-11-01

We don´t know how positive emotions are being expressed by patients and health care providers in consultations. The aim of this study is to identify positive emotions expressed by older people and nurse assistants to discuss the function of these in the visits. This paper presents secondary analysis of consultations in the COMHOME project. In this pilot study, six transcribed consultations between nurse assistants and older people in home health care were analysed using a coding system for positive emotions with seven categories capturing both content and emotional intensity of positive affect. We found 114 expressions of positive emotions, 63% from nurse assistants and 37% from patients. Patients mostly expressed gratitude, indicating that patients are grateful for being helped. Nurse assistants mostly expressed Praise or Support, indicating that they gave their patients positive affirmation. The praise and support given by nurse assistants to older people in home health care seemed effective in fostering relationships and maintaining patient resilience. Thus, we claim that emotional talk in communication also should include positive emotions. Teaching health care providers about the importance of expressions of positive emotions should be integrated in communication skills training. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Face-body integration of intense emotional expressions of victory and defeat.

PubMed

Wang, Lili; Xia, Lisheng; Zhang, Dandan

2017-01-01

Human facial expressions can be recognized rapidly and effortlessly. However, for intense emotions from real life, positive and negative facial expressions are difficult to discriminate and the judgment of facial expressions is biased towards simultaneously perceived body expressions. This study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural dynamics involved in the integration of emotional signals from facial and body expressions of victory and defeat. Emotional expressions of professional players were used to create pictures of face-body compounds, with either matched or mismatched emotional expressions in faces and bodies. Behavioral results showed that congruent emotional information of face and body facilitated the recognition of facial expressions. ERP data revealed larger P1 amplitudes for incongruent compared to congruent stimuli. Also, a main effect of body valence on the P1 was observed, with enhanced amplitudes for the stimuli with losing compared to winning bodies. The main effect of body expression was also observed in N170 and N2, with winning bodies producing larger N170/N2 amplitudes. In the later stage, a significant interaction of congruence by body valence was found on the P3 component. Winning bodies elicited lager P3 amplitudes than losing bodies did when face and body conveyed congruent emotional signals. Beyond the knowledge based on prototypical facial and body expressions, the results of this study facilitate us to understand the complexity of emotion evaluation and categorization out of laboratory.

Face-body integration of intense emotional expressions of victory and defeat

PubMed Central

Wang, Lili; Xia, Lisheng; Zhang, Dandan

2017-01-01

Human facial expressions can be recognized rapidly and effortlessly. However, for intense emotions from real life, positive and negative facial expressions are difficult to discriminate and the judgment of facial expressions is biased towards simultaneously perceived body expressions. This study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural dynamics involved in the integration of emotional signals from facial and body expressions of victory and defeat. Emotional expressions of professional players were used to create pictures of face-body compounds, with either matched or mismatched emotional expressions in faces and bodies. Behavioral results showed that congruent emotional information of face and body facilitated the recognition of facial expressions. ERP data revealed larger P1 amplitudes for incongruent compared to congruent stimuli. Also, a main effect of body valence on the P1 was observed, with enhanced amplitudes for the stimuli with losing compared to winning bodies. The main effect of body expression was also observed in N170 and N2, with winning bodies producing larger N170/N2 amplitudes. In the later stage, a significant interaction of congruence by body valence was found on the P3 component. Winning bodies elicited lager P3 amplitudes than losing bodies did when face and body conveyed congruent emotional signals. Beyond the knowledge based on prototypical facial and body expressions, the results of this study facilitate us to understand the complexity of emotion evaluation and categorization out of laboratory. PMID:28245245

Impaired Perception of Emotional Expression in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

PubMed

Oh, Seong Il; Oh, Ki Wook; Kim, Hee Jin; Park, Jin Seok; Kim, Seung Hyun

2016-07-01

The increasing recognition that deficits in social emotions occur in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is helping to explain the spectrum of neuropsychological dysfunctions, thus supporting the view of ALS as a multisystem disorder involving neuropsychological deficits as well as motor deficits. The aim of this study was to characterize the emotion perception abilities of Korean patients with ALS based on the recognition of facial expressions. Twenty-four patients with ALS and 24 age- and sex-matched healthy controls completed neuropsychological tests and facial emotion recognition tasks [ChaeLee Korean Facial Expressions of Emotions (ChaeLee-E)]. The ChaeLee-E test includes facial expressions for seven emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise, and neutral. The ability to perceive facial emotions was significantly worse among ALS patients performed than among healthy controls [65.2±18.0% vs. 77.1±6.6% (mean±SD), p=0.009]. Eight of the 24 patients (33%) scored below the 5th percentile score of controls for recognizing facial emotions. Emotion perception deficits occur in Korean ALS patients, particularly regarding facial expressions of emotion. These findings expand the spectrum of cognitive and behavioral dysfunction associated with ALS into emotion processing dysfunction.

Feedback training induces a bias for detecting happiness or fear in facial expressions that generalises to a novel task.

PubMed

Griffiths, Sarah; Jarrold, Chris; Penton-Voak, Ian S; Munafò, Marcus R

2015-12-30

Many psychological disorders are characterised by insensitivities or biases in the processing of subtle facial expressions of emotion. Training using expression morph sequences which vary the intensity of expressions may be able to address such deficits. In the current study participants were shown expressions from either happy or fearful intensity morph sequences, and trained to detect the target emotion (e.g., happy in the happy sequence) as being present in low intensity expressions. Training transfer was tested using a six alternative forced choice emotion labelling task with varying intensity expressions, which participants completed before and after training. Training increased false alarms for the target emotion in the transfer task. Hit rate for the target emotion did not increase once adjustment was made for the increase in false alarms. This suggests that training causes a bias for detecting the target emotion which generalises outside of the training task. However it does not increase accuracy for detecting the target emotion. The results are discussed in terms of the training's utility in addressing different types of emotion processing deficits in psychological disorders. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Expressed emotion in mothers of boys with gender identity disorder.

PubMed

Owen-Anderson, Allison F H; Bradley, Susan J; Zucker, Kenneth J

2010-01-01

The authors examined the construct of expressed emotion in mothers of 20 boys with gender identity disorder (GID), 20 clinical control boys with externalizing disorders (ECC), 20 community control boys (NCB), and 20 community control girls (NCG). The mean age of the children was 6.86 years (SD = 1.46, range = 4-8 years). The authors predicted that the mothers of boys with GID would demonstrate (a) higher percentages of expressed emotion, criticism, and emotional overinvolvement compared with normal controls; and (b) higher percentages of only emotional overinvolvement compared with mothers of boys with externalizing difficulties. They used the Five-Minute Speech Sample (Magana-Amato, A., 1986) to assess maternal expressed emotion. A significantly greater percentage of mothers in both clinical groups were classified as high expressed emotion than mothers in the NCB group. When the authors compared the GID group with all other groups combined, they found that the mothers of boys with GID were classified as having higher levels of a combination of both high or borderline emotional overinvolvement and low criticism than were mothers in the other 3 groups. The authors discuss expressed emotion as a maternal characteristic in the genesis and perpetuation of GID in boys.

Preschooler's Faces in Spontaneous Emotional Contexts--How Well Do They Match Adult Facial Expression Prototypes?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gaspar, Augusta; Esteves, Francisco G.

2012-01-01

Prototypical facial expressions of emotion, also known as universal facial expressions, are the underpinnings of most research concerning recognition of emotions in both adults and children. Data on natural occurrences of these prototypes in natural emotional contexts are rare and difficult to obtain in adults. By recording naturalistic…

Recognition of Facial Expressions and Prosodic Cues with Graded Emotional Intensities in Adults with Asperger Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Doi, Hirokazu; Fujisawa, Takashi X.; Kanai, Chieko; Ohta, Haruhisa; Yokoi, Hideki; Iwanami, Akira; Kato, Nobumasa; Shinohara, Kazuyuki

2013-01-01

This study investigated the ability of adults with Asperger syndrome to recognize emotional categories of facial expressions and emotional prosodies with graded emotional intensities. The individuals with Asperger syndrome showed poorer recognition performance for angry and sad expressions from both facial and vocal information. The group…

Emotional Representation in Facial Expression and Script: A Comparison between Normal and Autistic Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Balconi, Michela; Carrera, Alba

2007-01-01

The paper explored conceptual and lexical skills with regard to emotional correlates of facial stimuli and scripts. In two different experimental phases normal and autistic children observed six facial expressions of emotions (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and disgust) and six emotional scripts (contextualized facial expressions). In…

Expressive Suppression Tendencies, Projection Bias in Memory of Negative Emotions, and Well-Being.

PubMed

Chang, Valerie T; Overall, Nickola C; Madden, Helen; Low, Rachel S T

2018-02-01

The current research extends prior research linking negative emotions and emotion regulation tendencies to memory by investigating whether (a) naturally occurring negative emotions during routine weekly life are associated with more negatively biased memories of prior emotional experiences-a bias called projection; (b) tendencies to regulate emotions via expressive suppression are associated with greater projection bias in memory of negative emotions; and (c) greater projection bias in memory is associated with poorer future well-being. Participants (N = 308) completed a questionnaire assessing their general tendencies to engage in expressive suppression. Then, every week for 7 weeks, participants reported on (a) the negative emotions they experienced across the current week (e.g., "This week, I felt 'sad'"), (b) their memories of the negative emotions they experienced the prior week (e.g., "Last week, I felt 'sad'"), and (c) their well-being. First, participants demonstrated significant projection bias in memory: Greater negative emotions in a given week were associated with remembering emotions in the prior week more negatively than those prior emotions were originally reported. Second, projection bias in memory of negative emotions was greater for individuals who reported greater tendencies to regulate emotions via expressive suppression. Third, greater projection bias in memory of negative emotions was associated with reductions in well-being across weeks. These 3 novel findings indicate that (a) current negative emotions bias memory of past emotions, (b) this memory bias is magnified for people who habitually use expressive suppression to regulate emotions, and (c) this memory bias may undermine well-being over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Does the ability to express different emotions predict different indices of physical health? A skill-based study of physical symptoms and heart rate variability.

PubMed

Tuck, Natalie L; Adams, Kathryn S; Consedine, Nathan S

2017-09-01

The outward expression of emotion has been frequently associated with better health outcomes, whereas suppressing emotion is thought to contribute to worse physical health. However, work has typically focused on trait expressive tendencies and the possibility that individual differences in the ability to express specific emotions may also be associated with health has not been widely tested. A cross-sectional study of community dwelling adults. One hundred and twenty-eight participants aged 18-88 years completed questionnaires assessing demographics and health status, before attending a testing session in which resting heart rate variability (HRV) was assessed. Participants then completed a performance-based test of expressive regulatory skill in which they were instructed to enhance and suppress their emotional expressions while they watched film clips validated to elicit amusement, sadness, and anger. Participants rated subjective emotional experience before and after each clip, and their degree of expressivity was scored using FACS-based Noldus FaceReader. Missing data resulted in a final sample size of 117. Linear regressions controlling for age, sex, diagnoses, and trait emotion revealed that greater ability to enhance sad expressions was associated with higher HRV while the ability to enhance expressions of joy was associated with lower symptom interference. In parallel models, the ability to flexibly regulate (both enhance and suppress) expressions of joy and sadness was also associated with lower symptom interference. Findings suggest that the ability to regulate expressions of both sadness and joy is associated with health indices even when controlling for trait affect and potential confounds. The present findings offer early evidence that individual differences in the ability to regulate the outward expression of emotion may be relevant to health and suggest that expressive regulatory skills offer a novel avenue for research and intervention. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject The tendency to outwardly express felt emotion generally predicts better health, whereas expressive suppression typically predicts worse health outcomes. Most work has been based on trait assessments; however, the ability to regulate the expression of felt emotion can be objectively assessed using performance-based tests. Prior work in mental health suggests that the ability to flexibly up- and downregulate the expression of emotion predicts better outcomes. What does this study add The first evidence that the ability to flexibly regulate expressions predicts indices of health. Skill in both expressing and suppressing facial expressions predicts better reported health. Skills with different emotions differentially predict symptom interference and cardiac vagal tone. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Rationality, emotional expression and control: psychometric characteristics of a questionnaire for research in psycho-oncology.

PubMed

Bleiker, E M; van der Ploeg, H M; Hendriks, J H; Leer, J W; Kleijn, W C

1993-12-01

In some studies rationality, anti-emotionality and the control of (negative) emotions were found to be psychological risk factors for cancer. In the present study instruments were developed in order to cross-validate the role of the 'rationality/anti-emotionality (RAE)'-concept and the 'emotional expression and control (EEC)'-concept. The psychometric characteristics of a RAE-scale and EEC-scales were investigated in 4302 healthy women attending a breast cancer screening programme in The Netherlands. Principal components analysis revealed three factors for the RAE-scale: (1) Rationality; (2) Emotionality; and (3) Understanding. The EEC-scales consist of three factors that indicate: (1) expression of emotions to oneself; (2) expression of emotions towards others; and (3) control of emotions. These RAE and EEC scales can be of importance in psycho-oncological research, especially when: (1) the more refined subscales are used; and (2) age of the subjects is taken into account.

Why should I talk about emotion? Communication patterns associated with physician discussion of patient expressions of negative emotion in hospital admission encounters.

PubMed

Adams, Kristen; Cimino, Jenica E W; Arnold, Robert M; Anderson, Wendy G

2012-10-01

To describe hospital-based physicians' responses to patients' verbal expressions of negative emotion and identify patterns of further communication associated with different responses. Qualitative analysis of physician-patient admission encounters audio-recorded between August 2008 and March 2009 at two hospitals within a university system. A codebook was iteratively developed to identify patients' verbal expressions of negative emotion. We categorized physicians' responses by their immediate effect on further discussion of emotion - focused away (away), focused neither toward nor away (neutral), and focused toward (toward) - and examined further communication patterns following each response type. In 79 patients' encounters with 27 physicians, the median expression of negative emotion was 1, range 0-14. Physician responses were 25% away, 43% neutral, and 32% toward. Neutral and toward responses elicited patient perspectives, concerns, social and spiritual issues, and goals for care. Toward responses demonstrated physicians' support, contributing to physician-patient alignment and agreement about treatment. Responding to expressions of negative emotion neutrally or with statements that focus toward emotion elicits clinically relevant information and is associated with positive physician-patient relationship and care outcomes. Providers should respond to expressions of negative emotion with statements that allow for or explicitly encourage further discussion of emotion. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automatic emotional expression analysis from eye area

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Akkoç, Betül; Arslan, Ahmet

2015-02-01

Eyes play an important role in expressing emotions in nonverbal communication. In the present study, emotional expression classification was performed based on the features that were automatically extracted from the eye area. Fırst, the face area and the eye area were automatically extracted from the captured image. Afterwards, the parameters to be used for the analysis through discrete wavelet transformation were obtained from the eye area. Using these parameters, emotional expression analysis was performed through artificial intelligence techniques. As the result of the experimental studies, 6 universal emotions consisting of expressions of happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, anger and fear were classified at a success rate of 84% using artificial neural networks.

The influence of stimulus sex and emotional expression on the attentional blink.

PubMed

Stebbins, Hilary E; Vanous, Jesse B

2015-08-01

Past studies have demonstrated that angry faces used as the first target (T1) in an attentional blink paradigm interfere with processing of a second, neutral target (T2). However, despite research that suggests that the sex and emotional expression of a face are confounded, no study has investigated whether the sex of a stimulus might interact with emotional expression to influence the attentional blink. In the current study, both the sex and emotional expression of a T1 stimulus were manipulated to assess participants' ability to report the presences of a subsequent neutral target. Although the findings revealed limited evidence to support an interaction between sex and emotion, both the sex and emotional expression of the T1 stimulus were found to independently affect reporting of T2. These findings suggest that both emotional expression and stimulus sex are important in the temporal allocation of attentional resources to faces. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Facial emotion recognition, socio-occupational functioning and expressed emotions in schizophrenia versus bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Thonse, Umesh; Behere, Rishikesh V; Praharaj, Samir Kumar; Sharma, Podila Sathya Venkata Narasimha

2018-06-01

Facial emotion recognition deficits have been consistently demonstrated in patients with severe mental disorders. Expressed emotion is found to be an important predictor of relapse. However, the relationship between facial emotion recognition abilities and expressed emotions and its influence on socio-occupational functioning in schizophrenia versus bipolar disorder has not been studied. In this study we examined 91 patients with schizophrenia and 71 with bipolar disorder for psychopathology, socio occupational functioning and emotion recognition abilities. Primary caregivers of 62 patients with schizophrenia and 49 with bipolar disorder were assessed on Family Attitude Questionnaire to assess their expressed emotions. Patients of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder performed similarly on the emotion recognition task. Patients with schizophrenia group experienced higher critical comments and had a poorer socio-occupational functioning as compared to patients with bipolar disorder. Poorer socio-occupational functioning in patients with schizophrenia was significantly associated with greater dissatisfaction in their caregivers. In patients with bipolar disorder, poorer emotion recognition scores significantly correlated with poorer adaptive living skills and greater hostility and dissatisfaction in their caregivers. The findings of our study suggest that emotion recognition abilities in patients with bipolar disorder are associated with negative expressed emotions leading to problems in adaptive living skills. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Misinterpretation of facial expression: a cross-cultural study.

PubMed

Shioiri, T; Someya, T; Helmeste, D; Tang, S W

1999-02-01

Accurately recognizing facial emotional expressions is important in psychiatrist-versus-patient interactions. This might be difficult when the physician and patients are from different cultures. More than two decades of research on facial expressions have documented the universality of the emotions of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. In contrast, some research data supported the concept that there are significant cultural differences in the judgment of emotion. In this pilot study, the recognition of emotional facial expressions in 123 Japanese subjects was evaluated using the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expression of Emotion (JACFEE) photos. The results indicated that Japanese subjects experienced difficulties in recognizing some emotional facial expressions and misunderstood others as depicted by the posers, when compared to previous studies using American subjects. Interestingly, the sex and cultural background of the poser did not appear to influence the accuracy of recognition. The data suggest that in this young Japanese sample, judgment of certain emotional facial expressions was significantly different from the Americans. Further exploration in this area is warranted due to its importance in cross-cultural clinician-patient interactions.

Younger and Older Users’ Recognition of Virtual Agent Facial Expressions

PubMed Central

Beer, Jenay M.; Smarr, Cory-Ann; Fisk, Arthur D.; Rogers, Wendy A.

2015-01-01

As technology advances, robots and virtual agents will be introduced into the home and healthcare settings to assist individuals, both young and old, with everyday living tasks. Understanding how users recognize an agent’s social cues is therefore imperative, especially in social interactions. Facial expression, in particular, is one of the most common non-verbal cues used to display and communicate emotion in on-screen agents (Cassell, Sullivan, Prevost, & Churchill, 2000). Age is important to consider because age-related differences in emotion recognition of human facial expression have been supported (Ruffman et al., 2008), with older adults showing a deficit for recognition of negative facial expressions. Previous work has shown that younger adults can effectively recognize facial emotions displayed by agents (Bartneck & Reichenbach, 2005; Courgeon et al. 2009; 2011; Breazeal, 2003); however, little research has compared in-depth younger and older adults’ ability to label a virtual agent’s facial emotions, an import consideration because social agents will be required to interact with users of varying ages. If such age-related differences exist for recognition of virtual agent facial expressions, we aim to understand if those age-related differences are influenced by the intensity of the emotion, dynamic formation of emotion (i.e., a neutral expression developing into an expression of emotion through motion), or the type of virtual character differing by human-likeness. Study 1 investigated the relationship between age-related differences, the implication of dynamic formation of emotion, and the role of emotion intensity in emotion recognition of the facial expressions of a virtual agent (iCat). Study 2 examined age-related differences in recognition expressed by three types of virtual characters differing by human-likeness (non-humanoid iCat, synthetic human, and human). Study 2 also investigated the role of configural and featural processing as a possible explanation for age-related differences in emotion recognition. First, our findings show age-related differences in the recognition of emotions expressed by a virtual agent, with older adults showing lower recognition for the emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral. These age-related difference might be explained by older adults having difficulty discriminating similarity in configural arrangement of facial features for certain emotions; for example, older adults often mislabeled the similar emotions of fear as surprise. Second, our results did not provide evidence for the dynamic formation improving emotion recognition; but, in general, the intensity of the emotion improved recognition. Lastly, we learned that emotion recognition, for older and younger adults, differed by character type, from best to worst: human, synthetic human, and then iCat. Our findings provide guidance for design, as well as the development of a framework of age-related differences in emotion recognition. PMID:25705105

Emotional Episodes at Work: An Experiential Exercise in Feeling and Expressing Emotions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gibson, Donald E.

2006-01-01

This exercise explores how organizations affect individuals' feelings and expressions of emotion. Although recent attention by management theorists suggests that emotions are an important aspect of organizational life, people's actual experience of emotions at work often do not reflect this emphasis: Work-place emotions remain, in large part,…

Misinterpretation of Facial Expressions of Emotion in Verbal Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

PubMed Central

Eack, Shaun M.; MAZEFSKY, CARLA A.; Minshew, Nancy J.

2014-01-01

Facial emotion perception is significantly affected in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet little is known about how individuals with ASD misinterpret facial expressions that result in their difficulty in accurately recognizing emotion in faces. This study examined facial emotion perception in 45 verbal adults with ASD and 30 age- and gender-matched volunteers without ASD to identify patterns of emotion misinterpretation during face processing that contribute to emotion recognition impairments in autism. Results revealed that difficulty distinguishing emotional from neutral facial expressions characterized much of the emotion perception impairments exhibited by participants with ASD. In particular, adults with ASD uniquely misinterpreted happy faces as neutral, and were significantly more likely than typical volunteers to attribute negative valence to non-emotional faces. The over-attribution of emotions to neutral faces was significantly related to greater communication and emotional intelligence impairments in individuals with ASD. These findings suggest a potential negative bias toward the interpretation of facial expressions and may have implications for interventions designed to remediate emotion perception in ASD. PMID:24535689

A longitudinal study of emotional experience, expressivity, and psychopathology in psychotherapy inpatients and psychologically healthy persons.

PubMed

Leising, Daniel; Grande, Tilman; Faber, Rainer

2010-10-01

The authors investigated changes of emotional experience and expressivity in 34 inpatients undergoing psychodynamic therapy and in 29 healthy persons who were assessed at parallel time intervals. Participants completed 2 measures of psychopathology (Symptom Checklist-90 Revised and Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-64) and took part in relationship episode interviews. The emotional experiences they reported and their nonverbal emotional expressivity during the interviews were assessed by independent raters. Regardless of when they were assessed, the patients reported a greater number of emotions and a greater variety of emotions. Psychopathology in the patient group decreased in the course of treatment, but there were no systematic changes in the emotional domain. The findings challenge the common notion of psychopathology being associated with impaired awareness and expression of emotions. 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Annotation: Development of facial expression recognition from childhood to adolescence: behavioural and neurological perspectives.

PubMed

Herba, Catherine; Phillips, Mary

2004-10-01

Intact emotion processing is critical for normal emotional development. Recent advances in neuroimaging have facilitated the examination of brain development, and have allowed for the exploration of the relationships between the development of emotion processing abilities, and that of associated neural systems. A literature review was performed of published studies examining the development of emotion expression recognition in normal children and psychiatric populations, and of the development of neural systems important for emotion processing. Few studies have explored the development of emotion expression recognition throughout childhood and adolescence. Behavioural studies suggest continued development throughout childhood and adolescence (reflected by accuracy scores and speed of processing), which varies according to the category of emotion displayed. Factors such as sex, socio-economic status, and verbal ability may also affect this development. Functional neuroimaging studies in adults highlight the role of the amygdala in emotion processing. Results of the few neuroimaging studies in children have focused on the role of the amygdala in the recognition of fearful expressions. Although results are inconsistent, they provide evidence throughout childhood and adolescence for the continued development of and sex differences in amygdalar function in response to fearful expressions. Studies exploring emotion expression recognition in psychiatric populations of children and adolescents suggest deficits that are specific to the type of disorder and to the emotion displayed. Results from behavioural and neuroimaging studies indicate continued development of emotion expression recognition and neural regions important for this process throughout childhood and adolescence. Methodological inconsistencies and disparate findings make any conclusion difficult, however. Further studies are required examining the relationship between the development of emotion expression recognition and that of underlying neural systems, in particular subcortical and prefrontal cortical structures. These will inform understanding of the neural bases of normal and abnormal emotional development, and aid the development of earlier interventions for children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders.

Willingness to express emotions to caregiving spouses.

PubMed

Monin, Joan K; Martire, Lynn M; Schulz, Richard; Clark, Margaret S

2009-02-01

This study examined the association between care-recipients' willingness to express emotions to spousal caregivers and caregiver's well-being and support behaviors. Using self-report measures in the context of a larger study, 262 care-recipients with osteoarthritis reported on their willingness to express emotions to caregivers, and caregivers reported on their stress and insensitive responding to care-recipients. Results revealed that care-recipients' willingness to express happiness was associated with less insensitive caregiver responding, and willingness to express interpersonal emotions (e.g., compassion, guilt) was associated with less caregiving stress. There were also gender differences, such that caregiving wives, in particular, benefited from their husband's willingness to express vulnerable (e.g., anxiety, sadness) and interpersonal emotions. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved

Willingness to Express Emotions to Caregiving Spouses

PubMed Central

Monin, Joan K.; Martire, Lynn M.; Schulz, Richard; Clark, Margaret S.

2009-01-01

This study examined the association between care-recipients’ willingness to express emotions to spousal caregivers and caregiver’s well-being and support behaviors. Using self-report measures in the context of a larger study, 262 care-recipients with osteoarthritis reported on their willingness to express emotions to caregivers, and caregivers reported on their stress and insensitive responding to care-recipients. Results revealed that care-recipients’ willingness to express happiness was associated with less insensitive caregiver responding, and willingness to express interpersonal emotions (e.g., compassion, guilt) was associated with less caregiving stress. There were also gender differences, such that caregiving wives, in particular, benefited from their husband’s willingness to express vulnerable (e.g., anxiety, sadness) and interpersonal emotions. PMID:19186921

Changing the Tune: Listeners Like Music that Expresses a Contrasting Emotion

PubMed Central

Schellenberg, E. Glenn; Corrigall, Kathleen A.; Ladinig, Olivia; Huron, David

2012-01-01

Theories of esthetic appreciation propose that (1) a stimulus is liked because it is expected or familiar, (2) a stimulus is liked most when it is neither too familiar nor too novel, or (3) a novel stimulus is liked because it elicits an intensified emotional response. We tested the third hypothesis by examining liking for music as a function of whether the emotion it expressed contrasted with the emotion expressed by music heard previously. Stimuli were 30-s happy- or sad-sounding excerpts from recordings of classical piano music. On each trial, listeners heard a different excerpt and made liking and emotion-intensity ratings. The emotional character of consecutive excerpts was repeated with varying frequencies, followed by an excerpt that expressed a contrasting emotion. As the number of presentations of the background emotion increased, liking and intensity ratings became lower compared to those for the contrasting emotion. Consequently, when the emotional character of the music was relatively novel, listeners’ responses intensified and their appreciation increased. PMID:23269918

Balance in Positive Emotional Expressivity across School Contexts Relates to Kindergartners' Adjustment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hernández, Maciel M.; Eisenberg, Nancy; Valiente, Carlos; Spinrad, Tracy L.; Berger, Rebecca H.; VanSchyndel, Sarah K.; Thompson, Marilyn S.; Southworth, Jody; Silva, Kassondra M.

2018-01-01

Positive emotional expressivity has been associated with increased social competence and decreased maladjustment in childhood. However, a few researchers have found null or even positive associations between positive emotional expressivity and maladjustment, which suggests that there may be nuanced associations of positive expressivity, perhaps as…

The automaticity of emotion recognition.

PubMed

Tracy, Jessica L; Robins, Richard W

2008-02-01

Evolutionary accounts of emotion typically assume that humans evolved to quickly and efficiently recognize emotion expressions because these expressions convey fitness-enhancing messages. The present research tested this assumption in 2 studies. Specifically, the authors examined (a) how quickly perceivers could recognize expressions of anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, fear, happiness, pride, sadness, shame, and surprise; (b) whether accuracy is improved when perceivers deliberate about each expression's meaning (vs. respond as quickly as possible); and (c) whether accurate recognition can occur under cognitive load. Across both studies, perceivers quickly and efficiently (i.e., under cognitive load) recognized most emotion expressions, including the self-conscious emotions of pride, embarrassment, and shame. Deliberation improved accuracy in some cases, but these improvements were relatively small. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the cognitive processes underlying emotion recognition.

Fashioning the Face: Sensorimotor Simulation Contributes to Facial Expression Recognition.

PubMed

Wood, Adrienne; Rychlowska, Magdalena; Korb, Sebastian; Niedenthal, Paula

2016-03-01

When we observe a facial expression of emotion, we often mimic it. This automatic mimicry reflects underlying sensorimotor simulation that supports accurate emotion recognition. Why this is so is becoming more obvious: emotions are patterns of expressive, behavioral, physiological, and subjective feeling responses. Activation of one component can therefore automatically activate other components. When people simulate a perceived facial expression, they partially activate the corresponding emotional state in themselves, which provides a basis for inferring the underlying emotion of the expresser. We integrate recent evidence in favor of a role for sensorimotor simulation in emotion recognition. We then connect this account to a domain-general understanding of how sensory information from multiple modalities is integrated to generate perceptual predictions in the brain. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Universals and cultural variations in 22 emotional expressions across five cultures.

PubMed

Cordaro, Daniel T; Sun, Rui; Keltner, Dacher; Kamble, Shanmukh; Huddar, Niranjan; McNeil, Galen

2018-02-01

We collected and Facial Action Coding System (FACS) coded over 2,600 free-response facial and body displays of 22 emotions in China, India, Japan, Korea, and the United States to test 5 hypotheses concerning universals and cultural variants in emotional expression. New techniques enabled us to identify cross-cultural core patterns of expressive behaviors for each of the 22 emotions. We also documented systematic cultural variations of expressive behaviors within each culture that were shaped by the cultural resemblance in values, and identified a gradient of universality for the 22 emotions. Our discussion focused on the science of new expressions and how the evidence from this investigation identifies the extent to which emotional displays vary across cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Infants' Emerging Sensitivity to Emotional Body Expressions: Insights from Asymmetrical Frontal Brain Activity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Missana, Manuela; Grossmann, Tobias

2015-01-01

Sensitive responding to others' emotional body expressions is an essential social skill in humans. Using event-related brain potentials, it has recently been shown that the ability to discriminate between emotional body expressions develops between 4 and 8 months of age. However, it is not clear whether the perception of emotional body expressions…

Multichannel Communication: The Impact of the Paralinguistic Channel on Facial Expression of Emotion.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brideau, Linda B.; Allen, Vernon L.

A study was undertaken to examine the impact of the paralinguistic channel on the ability to encode facial expressions of emotion. The first set of subjects, 19 encoders, were asked to encode facial expressions for five emotions (fear, sadness, anger, happiness, and disgust). The emotions were produced in three encoding conditions: facial channel…

Emotion in Children's Art: Do Young Children Understand the Emotions Expressed in Other Children's Drawings?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Misailidi, Plousia; Bonoti, Fotini

2008-01-01

This study examined developmental changes in children's ability to understand the emotions expressed in other children's drawings. Eighty participants, at each of four age groups--three, four, five and six years--were presented with a series of child drawings, each expressing a different emotion (happiness, sadness, anger or fear). All drawings…

Age-related differences in event-related potentials for early visual processing of emotional faces.

PubMed

Hilimire, Matthew R; Mienaltowski, Andrew; Blanchard-Fields, Fredda; Corballis, Paul M

2014-07-01

With advancing age, processing resources are shifted away from negative emotional stimuli and toward positive ones. Here, we explored this 'positivity effect' using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants identified the presence or absence of a visual probe that appeared over photographs of emotional faces. The ERPs elicited by the onsets of angry, sad, happy and neutral faces were recorded. We examined the frontocentral emotional positivity (FcEP), which is defined as a positive deflection in the waveforms elicited by emotional expressions relative to neutral faces early on in the time course of the ERP. The FcEP is thought to reflect enhanced early processing of emotional expressions. The results show that within the first 130 ms young adults show an FcEP to negative emotional expressions, whereas older adults show an FcEP to positive emotional expressions. These findings provide additional evidence that the age-related positivity effect in emotion processing can be traced to automatic processes that are evident very early in the processing of emotional facial expressions. © The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Gently does it: Humans outperform a software classifier in recognizing subtle, nonstereotypical facial expressions.

PubMed

Yitzhak, Neta; Giladi, Nir; Gurevich, Tanya; Messinger, Daniel S; Prince, Emily B; Martin, Katherine; Aviezer, Hillel

2017-12-01

According to dominant theories of affect, humans innately and universally express a set of emotions using specific configurations of prototypical facial activity. Accordingly, thousands of studies have tested emotion recognition using sets of highly intense and stereotypical facial expressions, yet their incidence in real life is virtually unknown. In fact, a commonplace experience is that emotions are expressed in subtle and nonprototypical forms. Such facial expressions are at the focus of the current study. In Experiment 1, we present the development and validation of a novel stimulus set consisting of dynamic and subtle emotional facial displays conveyed without constraining expressers to using prototypical configurations. Although these subtle expressions were more challenging to recognize than prototypical dynamic expressions, they were still well recognized by human raters, and perhaps most importantly, they were rated as more ecological and naturalistic than the prototypical expressions. In Experiment 2, we examined the characteristics of subtle versus prototypical expressions by subjecting them to a software classifier, which used prototypical basic emotion criteria. Although the software was highly successful at classifying prototypical expressions, it performed very poorly at classifying the subtle expressions. Further validation was obtained from human expert face coders: Subtle stimuli did not contain many of the key facial movements present in prototypical expressions. Together, these findings suggest that emotions may be successfully conveyed to human viewers using subtle nonprototypical expressions. Although classic prototypical facial expressions are well recognized, they appear less naturalistic and may not capture the richness of everyday emotional communication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

The Right Place at the Right Time: Priming Facial Expressions with Emotional Face Components in Developmental Visual Agnosia

PubMed Central

Aviezer, Hillel; Hassin, Ran. R.; Perry, Anat; Dudarev, Veronica; Bentin, Shlomo

2012-01-01

The current study examined the nature of deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions in case LG, an individual with a rare form of developmental visual agnosia (DVA). LG presents with profoundly impaired recognition of facial expressions, yet the underlying nature of his deficit remains unknown. During typical face processing, normal sighted individuals extract information about expressed emotions from face regions with activity diagnostic for specific emotion categories. Given LG’s impairment, we sought to shed light on his emotion perception by examining if priming facial expressions with diagnostic emotional face components would facilitate his recognition of the emotion expressed by the face. LG and control participants matched isolated face components with components appearing in a subsequently presented full-face and then categorized the face’s emotion. Critically, the matched components were from regions which were diagnostic or non-diagnostic of the emotion portrayed by the full face. In experiment 1, when the full faces were briefly presented (150 ms), LG’s performance was strongly influenced by the diagnosticity of the components: His emotion recognition was boosted within normal limits when diagnostic components were used and was obliterated when non-diagnostic components were used. By contrast, in experiment 2, when the face-exposure duration was extended (2000 ms), the beneficial effect of the diagnostic matching was diminished as was the detrimental effect of the non-diagnostic matching. These data highlight the impact of diagnostic facial features in normal expression recognition and suggest that impaired emotion recognition in DVA results from deficient visual integration across diagnostic face components. PMID:22349446

Repetition Blindness for Faces: A Comparison of Face Identity, Expression, and Gender Judgments.

PubMed

Murphy, Karen; Ward, Zoe

2017-01-01

Repetition blindness (RB) refers to the impairment in reporting two identical targets within a rapid serial visual presentation stream. While numerous studies have demonstrated RB for words and picture of objects, very few studies have examined RB for faces. This study extended this research by examining RB when the two faces were complete repeats (same emotion and identity), identity repeats (same individual, different emotion), and emotion repeats (different individual, same emotion) for identity, gender, and expression judgment tasks. Complete RB and identity RB effects were evident for all three judgment tasks. Emotion RB was only evident for the expression and gender judgments. Complete RB effects were larger than emotion or identity RB effects across all judgment tasks. For the expression judgments, there was more emotion than identity RB. The identity RB effect was larger than the emotion RB effect for the gender judgments. Cross task comparisons revealed larger complete RB effects for the expression and gender judgments than the identity decisions. There was a larger emotion RB effect for the expression than gender judgments and the identity RB effect was larger for the gender than for the identity and expression judgments. These results indicate that while faces are subject to RB, this is affected by the type of repeated information and relevance of the facial characteristic to the judgment decision. This study provides further support for the operation of separate processing mechanisms for face gender, emotion, and identity information within models of face recognition.

Repetition Blindness for Faces: A Comparison of Face Identity, Expression, and Gender Judgments

PubMed Central

Murphy, Karen; Ward, Zoe

2017-01-01

Repetition blindness (RB) refers to the impairment in reporting two identical targets within a rapid serial visual presentation stream. While numerous studies have demonstrated RB for words and picture of objects, very few studies have examined RB for faces. This study extended this research by examining RB when the two faces were complete repeats (same emotion and identity), identity repeats (same individual, different emotion), and emotion repeats (different individual, same emotion) for identity, gender, and expression judgment tasks. Complete RB and identity RB effects were evident for all three judgment tasks. Emotion RB was only evident for the expression and gender judgments. Complete RB effects were larger than emotion or identity RB effects across all judgment tasks. For the expression judgments, there was more emotion than identity RB. The identity RB effect was larger than the emotion RB effect for the gender judgments. Cross task comparisons revealed larger complete RB effects for the expression and gender judgments than the identity decisions. There was a larger emotion RB effect for the expression than gender judgments and the identity RB effect was larger for the gender than for the identity and expression judgments. These results indicate that while faces are subject to RB, this is affected by the type of repeated information and relevance of the facial characteristic to the judgment decision. This study provides further support for the operation of separate processing mechanisms for face gender, emotion, and identity information within models of face recognition. PMID:29038663

Mimicking emotions: how 3-12-month-old infants use the facial expressions and eyes of a model.

PubMed

Soussignan, Robert; Dollion, Nicolas; Schaal, Benoist; Durand, Karine; Reissland, Nadja; Baudouin, Jean-Yves

2018-06-01

While there is an extensive literature on the tendency to mimic emotional expressions in adults, it is unclear how this skill emerges and develops over time. Specifically, it is unclear whether infants mimic discrete emotion-related facial actions, whether their facial displays are moderated by contextual cues and whether infants' emotional mimicry is constrained by developmental changes in the ability to discriminate emotions. We therefore investigate these questions using Baby-FACS to code infants' facial displays and eye-movement tracking to examine infants' looking times at facial expressions. Three-, 7-, and 12-month-old participants were exposed to dynamic facial expressions (joy, anger, fear, disgust, sadness) of a virtual model which either looked at the infant or had an averted gaze. Infants did not match emotion-specific facial actions shown by the model, but they produced valence-congruent facial responses to the distinct expressions. Furthermore, only the 7- and 12-month-olds displayed negative responses to the model's negative expressions and they looked more at areas of the face recruiting facial actions involved in specific expressions. Our results suggest that valence-congruent expressions emerge in infancy during a period where the decoding of facial expressions becomes increasingly sensitive to the social signal value of emotions.

The role of visual experience in the production of emotional facial expressions by blind people: a review.

PubMed

Valente, Dannyelle; Theurel, Anne; Gentaz, Edouard

2018-04-01

Facial expressions of emotion are nonverbal behaviors that allow us to interact efficiently in social life and respond to events affecting our welfare. This article reviews 21 studies, published between 1932 and 2015, examining the production of facial expressions of emotion by blind people. It particularly discusses the impact of visual experience on the development of this behavior from birth to adulthood. After a discussion of three methodological considerations, the review of studies reveals that blind subjects demonstrate differing capacities for producing spontaneous expressions and voluntarily posed expressions. Seventeen studies provided evidence that blind and sighted spontaneously produce the same pattern of facial expressions, even if some variations can be found, reflecting facial and body movements specific to blindness or differences in intensity and control of emotions in some specific contexts. This suggests that lack of visual experience seems to not have a major impact when this behavior is generated spontaneously in real emotional contexts. In contrast, eight studies examining voluntary expressions indicate that blind individuals have difficulty posing emotional expressions. The opportunity for prior visual observation seems to affect performance in this case. Finally, we discuss three new directions for research to provide additional and strong evidence for the debate regarding the innate or the culture-constant learning character of the production of emotional facial expressions by blind individuals: the link between perception and production of facial expressions, the impact of display rules in the absence of vision, and the role of other channels in expression of emotions in the context of blindness.

Can an anger face also be scared? Malleability of facial expressions.

PubMed

Widen, Sherri C; Naab, Pamela

2012-10-01

Do people always interpret a facial expression as communicating a single emotion (e.g., the anger face as only angry) or is that interpretation malleable? The current study investigated preschoolers' (N = 60; 3-4 years) and adults' (N = 20) categorization of facial expressions. On each of five trials, participants selected from an array of 10 facial expressions (an open-mouthed, high arousal expression and a closed-mouthed, low arousal expression each for happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust) all those that displayed the target emotion. Children's interpretation of facial expressions was malleable: 48% of children who selected the fear, anger, sadness, and disgust faces for the "correct" category also selected these same faces for another emotion category; 47% of adults did so for the sadness and disgust faces. The emotion children and adults attribute to facial expressions is influenced by the emotion category for which they are looking.

Positivity bias in judging ingroup members' emotional expressions.

PubMed

Lazerus, Talya; Ingbretsen, Zachary A; Stolier, Ryan M; Freeman, Jonathan B; Cikara, Mina

2016-12-01

We investigated how group membership impacts valence judgments of ingroup and outgroup members' emotional expressions. In Experiment 1, participants, randomized into 2 novel, competitive groups, rated the valence of in- and outgroup members' facial expressions (e.g., fearful, happy, neutral) using a circumplex affect grid. Across all emotions, participants judged ingroup members' expressions as more positive than outgroup members' expressions. In Experiment 2, participants categorized fearful and happy expressions as being either positive or negative using a mouse-tracking paradigm. Participants exhibited the most direct trajectories toward the "positive" label for ingroup happy expressions and an initial attraction toward positive for ingroup expressions of fear, with outgroup emotion trajectories falling in between. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 and demonstrated that the effect could not be accounted for by targets' gaze direction. Overall, people judged ingroup faces as more positive, regardless of emotion, both in deliberate and implicit judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Improvement of emotional healthcare system with stress detection from ECG signal.

PubMed

Tivatansakul, S; Ohkura, M

2015-01-01

Our emotional healthcare system is designed to cope with users' negative emotions in daily life. To make the system more intelligent, we integrated emotion recognition by facial expression to provide appropriate services based on user's current emotional state. Our emotion recognition by facial expression has confusion issue to recognize some positive, neutral and negative emotions that make the emotional healthcare system provide a relaxation service even though users don't have negative emotions. Therefore, to increase the effectiveness of the system to provide the relaxation service, we integrate stress detection from ECG signal. The stress detection might be able to address the confusion issue of emotion recognition by facial expression to provide the service. Indeed, our results show that integration of stress detection increases the effectiveness and efficiency of the emotional healthcare system to provide services.

Capturing Physiology of Emotion along Facial Muscles: A Method of Distinguishing Feigned from Involuntary Expressions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Khan, Masood Mehmood; Ward, Robert D.; Ingleby, Michael

The ability to distinguish feigned from involuntary expressions of emotions could help in the investigation and treatment of neuropsychiatric and affective disorders and in the detection of malingering. This work investigates differences in emotion-specific patterns of thermal variations along the major facial muscles. Using experimental data extracted from 156 images, we attempted to classify patterns of emotion-specific thermal variations into neutral, and voluntary and involuntary expressions of positive and negative emotive states. Initial results suggest (i) each facial muscle exhibits a unique thermal response to various emotive states; (ii) the pattern of thermal variances along the facial muscles may assist in classifying voluntary and involuntary facial expressions; and (iii) facial skin temperature measurements along the major facial muscles may be used in automated emotion assessment.

The Relations of Mothers' Negative Expressivity to Children's Experience and Expression of Negative Emotion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valiente, Carlos; Eisenberg, Nancy; Shepard, Stephanie A.; Fabes, Richard A.; Cumberland, Amanda J.; Losoya, Sandra H.; Spinrad, Tracy L.

2004-01-01

Guided by the heuristic model proposed by Eisenberg et al. [Psychol. Inq. 9 (1998) 241], we examined the relations of mothers' reported and observed negative expressivity to children's (N = 159; 74 girls; M age = 7.67 years) experience and expression of emotion. Children's experience and/or expression of emotion in response to a distressing film…

Processing dynamic facial affect in frequent cannabis-users: evidence of deficits in the speed of identifying emotional expressions.

PubMed

Platt, Bradley; Kamboj, Sunjeev; Morgan, Celia J A; Curran, H Valerie

2010-11-01

While heavy cannabis-users seem to show various cognitive impairments, it remains unclear whether they also experience significant deficits in affective functioning. Evidence of such deficits may contribute to our understanding of the interpersonal difficulties in cannabis-users, and the link between cannabis-use and psychological disorders (Moore et al., 2007). Emotion recognition performance of heavy cannabis-users and non-using controls was compared. A measure of emotion recognition was used in which participants identified facial expressions as they changed from neutral (open-mouth) to gradually more intense expressions of sadness, neutral, anger or happiness (open or closed mouth). Reaction times and accuracy were recorded as the facial expressions changed. Participants also completed measures of 'theory of mind,' depression and impulsivity. Cannabis-users were significantly slower than controls at identifying all three emotional expressions. There was no difference between groups in identifying facial expressions changing from open-mouth neutral expressions to closed-mouth neutral expressions suggesting that differences in emotion recognition were not due to a general slowing of reaction times. Cannabis-users were also significantly more liberal in their response criterion for recognising sadness. Heavy cannabis-use may be associated with affect recognition deficits. In particular, a greater intensity of emotion expression was required before identification of positive and negative emotions. This was found using stimuli which simulated dynamic changes in emotion expression, and in turn, suggests that cannabis-users may experience generalised problems in decoding basic emotions during social interactions. The implications of these findings are discussed for vulnerability to psychological and interpersonal difficulties in cannabis-users. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facial responsiveness of psychopaths to the emotional expressions of others

PubMed Central

Mokros, Andreas; Olderbak, Sally; Wilhelm, Oliver

2018-01-01

Psychopathic individuals show selfish, manipulative, and antisocial behavior in addition to emotional detachment and reduced empathy. Their empathic deficits are thought to be associated with a reduced responsiveness to emotional stimuli. Immediate facial muscle responses to the emotional expressions of others reflect the expressive part of emotional responsiveness and are positively related to trait empathy. Empirical evidence for reduced facial muscle responses in adult psychopathic individuals to the emotional expressions of others is rare. In the present study, 261 male criminal offenders and non-offenders categorized dynamically presented facial emotion expressions (angry, happy, sad, and neutral) during facial electromyography recording of their corrugator muscle activity. We replicated a measurement model of facial muscle activity, which controls for general facial responsiveness to face stimuli, and modeled three correlated emotion-specific factors (i.e., anger, happiness, and sadness) representing emotion specific activity. In a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we compared the means of the anger, happiness, and sadness latent factors between three groups: 1) non-offenders, 2) low, and 3) high psychopathic offenders. There were no significant mean differences between groups. Our results challenge current theories that focus on deficits in emotional responsiveness as leading to the development of psychopathy and encourage further theoretical development on deviant emotional processes in psychopathic individuals. PMID:29324826

When the face reveals what words do not: facial expressions of emotion, smiling, and the willingness to disclose childhood sexual abuse.

PubMed

Bonanno, George A; Keltner, Dacher; Noll, Jennie G; Putnam, Frank W; Trickett, Penelope K; LeJeune, Jenna; Anderson, Cameron

2002-07-01

For survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), verbal disclosure is often complex and painful. The authors examined the voluntary disclosure-nondisclosure of CSA in relation to nonverbal expressions of emotion in the face. Consistent with hypotheses derived from recent theorizing about the moral nature of emotion, CSA survivors who did not voluntarily disclose CSA showed greater facial expressions of shame, whereas CSA survivors who voluntarily disclosed CSA expressed greater disgust. Expressions of disgust also signaled sexual abuse accompanied by violence. Consistent with recent theorizing about smiling behavior, CSA nondisclosers made more polite smiles, whereas nonabused participants expressed greater genuine positive emotion. Discussion addressed the implications of these findings for the study of disclosure of traumatic events, facial expression, and the links between morality and emotion.

Misinterpretation of facial expressions of emotion in verbal adults with autism spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Eack, Shaun M; Mazefsky, Carla A; Minshew, Nancy J

2015-04-01

Facial emotion perception is significantly affected in autism spectrum disorder, yet little is known about how individuals with autism spectrum disorder misinterpret facial expressions that result in their difficulty in accurately recognizing emotion in faces. This study examined facial emotion perception in 45 verbal adults with autism spectrum disorder and 30 age- and gender-matched volunteers without autism spectrum disorder to identify patterns of emotion misinterpretation during face processing that contribute to emotion recognition impairments in autism. Results revealed that difficulty distinguishing emotional from neutral facial expressions characterized much of the emotion perception impairments exhibited by participants with autism spectrum disorder. In particular, adults with autism spectrum disorder uniquely misinterpreted happy faces as neutral, and were significantly more likely than typical volunteers to attribute negative valence to nonemotional faces. The over-attribution of emotions to neutral faces was significantly related to greater communication and emotional intelligence impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. These findings suggest a potential negative bias toward the interpretation of facial expressions and may have implications for interventions designed to remediate emotion perception in autism spectrum disorder. © The Author(s) 2014.

Emotion-Bracelet: A Web Service for Expressing Emotions through an Electronic Interface.

PubMed

Martinez, Alicia; Estrada, Hugo; Molina, Alejandra; Mejia, Manuel; Perez, Joaquin

2016-11-24

The mechanisms to communicate emotions have dramatically changed in the last 10 years with social networks, where users massively communicate their emotional states by using the Internet. However, people with socialization problems have difficulty expressing their emotions verbally or interpreting the environment and providing an appropriate emotional response. In this paper, a novel solution called the Emotion-Bracelet is presented that combines a hardware device and a software system. The proposed approach identifies the polarity and emotional intensity of texts published on a social network site by performing real-time processing using a web service. It also shows emotions with a LED matrix using five emoticons that represent positive, very positive, negative, very negative, and neutral states. The Emotion-Bracelet is designed to help people express their emotions in a non-intrusive way, thereby expanding the social aspect of human emotions.

Emotion-Bracelet: A Web Service for Expressing Emotions through an Electronic Interface

PubMed Central

Martinez, Alicia; Estrada, Hugo; Molina, Alejandra; Mejia, Manuel; Perez, Joaquin

2016-01-01

The mechanisms to communicate emotions have dramatically changed in the last 10 years with social networks, where users massively communicate their emotional states by using the Internet. However, people with socialization problems have difficulty expressing their emotions verbally or interpreting the environment and providing an appropriate emotional response. In this paper, a novel solution called the Emotion-Bracelet is presented that combines a hardware device and a software system. The proposed approach identifies the polarity and emotional intensity of texts published on a social network site by performing real-time processing using a web service. It also shows emotions with a LED matrix using five emoticons that represent positive, very positive, negative, very negative, and neutral states. The Emotion-Bracelet is designed to help people express their emotions in a non-intrusive way, thereby expanding the social aspect of human emotions. PMID:27886130

Computerized measurement of facial expression of emotions in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Alvino, Christopher; Kohler, Christian; Barrett, Frederick; Gur, Raquel E; Gur, Ruben C; Verma, Ragini

2007-07-30

Deficits in the ability to express emotions characterize several neuropsychiatric disorders and are a hallmark of schizophrenia, and there is need for a method of quantifying expression, which is currently done by clinical ratings. This paper presents the development and validation of a computational framework for quantifying emotional expression differences between patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. Each face is modeled as a combination of elastic regions, and expression changes are modeled as a deformation between a neutral face and an expressive face. Functions of these deformations, known as the regional volumetric difference (RVD) functions, form distinctive quantitative profiles of expressions. Employing pattern classification techniques, we have designed expression classifiers for the four universal emotions of happiness, sadness, anger and fear by training on RVD functions of expression changes. The classifiers were cross-validated and then applied to facial expression images of patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. The classification score for each image reflects the extent to which the expressed emotion matches the intended emotion. Group-wise statistical analysis revealed this score to be significantly different between healthy controls and patients, especially in the case of anger. This score correlated with clinical severity of flat affect. These results encourage the use of such deformation based expression quantification measures for research in clinical applications that require the automated measurement of facial affect.

When Early Experiences Build a Wall to Others’ Emotions: An Electrophysiological and Autonomic Study

PubMed Central

Ardizzi, Martina; Martini, Francesca; Umiltà, Maria Alessandra; Sestito, Mariateresa; Ravera, Roberto; Gallese, Vittorio

2013-01-01

Facial expression of emotions is a powerful vehicle for communicating information about others’ emotional states and it normally induces facial mimicry in the observers. The aim of this study was to investigate if early aversive experiences could interfere with emotion recognition, facial mimicry, and with the autonomic regulation of social behaviors. We conducted a facial emotion recognition task in a group of “street-boys” and in an age-matched control group. We recorded facial electromyography (EMG), a marker of facial mimicry, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an index of the recruitment of autonomic system promoting social behaviors and predisposition, in response to the observation of facial expressions of emotions. Results showed an over-attribution of anger, and reduced EMG responses during the observation of both positive and negative expressions only among street-boys. Street-boys also showed lower RSA after observation of facial expressions and ineffective RSA suppression during presentation of non-threatening expressions. Our findings suggest that early aversive experiences alter not only emotion recognition but also facial mimicry of emotions. These deficits affect the autonomic regulation of social behaviors inducing lower social predisposition after the visualization of facial expressions and an ineffective recruitment of defensive behavior in response to non-threatening expressions. PMID:23593374

Updating schematic emotional facial expressions in working memory: Response bias and sensitivity.

PubMed

Tamm, Gerly; Kreegipuu, Kairi; Harro, Jaanus; Cowan, Nelson

2017-01-01

It is unclear if positive, negative, or neutral emotional expressions have an advantage in short-term recognition. Moreover, it is unclear from previous studies of working memory for emotional faces whether effects of emotions comprise response bias or sensitivity. The aim of this study was to compare how schematic emotional expressions (sad, angry, scheming, happy, and neutral) are discriminated and recognized in an updating task (2-back recognition) in a representative sample of birth cohort of young adults. Schematic facial expressions allow control of identity processing, which is separate from expression processing, and have been used extensively in attention research but not much, until now, in working memory research. We found that expressions with a U-curved mouth (i.e., upwardly curved), namely happy and scheming expressions, favoured a bias towards recognition (i.e., towards indicating that the probe and the stimulus in working memory are the same). Other effects of emotional expression were considerably smaller (1-2% of the variance explained)) compared to a large proportion of variance that was explained by the physical similarity of items being compared. We suggest that the nature of the stimuli plays a role in this. The present application of signal detection methodology with emotional, schematic faces in a working memory procedure requiring fast comparisons helps to resolve important contradictions that have emerged in the emotional perception literature. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Four not six: Revealing culturally common facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Jack, Rachael E; Sun, Wei; Delis, Ioannis; Garrod, Oliver G B; Schyns, Philippe G

2016-06-01

As a highly social species, humans generate complex facial expressions to communicate a diverse range of emotions. Since Darwin's work, identifying among these complex patterns which are common across cultures and which are culture-specific has remained a central question in psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and more recently machine vision and social robotics. Classic approaches to addressing this question typically tested the cross-cultural recognition of theoretically motivated facial expressions representing 6 emotions, and reported universality. Yet, variable recognition accuracy across cultures suggests a narrower cross-cultural communication supported by sets of simpler expressive patterns embedded in more complex facial expressions. We explore this hypothesis by modeling the facial expressions of over 60 emotions across 2 cultures, and segregating out the latent expressive patterns. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we first map the conceptual organization of a broad spectrum of emotion words by building semantic networks in 2 cultures. For each emotion word in each culture, we then model and validate its corresponding dynamic facial expression, producing over 60 culturally valid facial expression models. We then apply to the pooled models a multivariate data reduction technique, revealing 4 latent and culturally common facial expression patterns that each communicates specific combinations of valence, arousal, and dominance. We then reveal the face movements that accentuate each latent expressive pattern to create complex facial expressions. Our data questions the widely held view that 6 facial expression patterns are universal, instead suggesting 4 latent expressive patterns with direct implications for emotion communication, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and social robotics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Parent, family, and child characteristics: associations with mother- and father-reported emotion socialization practices.

PubMed

Wong, Maria S; McElwain, Nancy L; Halberstadt, Amy G

2009-08-01

The present research examined parental beliefs about children's negative emotions, parent-reported marital conflict/ambivalence, and child negative emotionality and gender as predictors of mothers' and fathers' reported reactions to their kindergarten children's negative emotions and self-expressiveness in the family (N = 55, two-parent families). Models predicting parents' nonsupportive reactions and negative expressiveness were significant. For both mothers and fathers, more accepting beliefs about children's negative emotions were associated with fewer nonsupportive reactions, and greater marital conflict/ambivalence was associated with more negative expressiveness. Furthermore, interactions between child negative emotionality and parental resources (e.g., marital conflict/ambivalence; accepting beliefs) emerged for fathers' nonsupportive reactions and mothers' negative expressiveness. In some instances, child gender acted as a moderator such that associations between parental beliefs about emotions and the emotion socialization outcomes emerged when child and parent gender were concordant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

Orienting asymmetries and physiological reactivity in dogs' response to human emotional faces.

PubMed

Siniscalchi, Marcello; d'Ingeo, Serenella; Quaranta, Angelo

2018-06-19

Recent scientific literature shows that emotional cues conveyed by human vocalizations and odours are processed in an asymmetrical way by the canine brain. In the present study, during feeding behaviour, dogs were suddenly presented with 2-D stimuli depicting human faces expressing the Ekman's six basic emotion (e.g. anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, and neutral), simultaneously into the left and right visual hemifields. A bias to turn the head towards the left (right hemisphere) rather than the right side was observed with human faces expressing anger, fear, and happiness emotions, but an opposite bias (left hemisphere) was observed with human faces expressing surprise. Furthermore, dogs displayed higher behavioural and cardiac activity to picture of human faces expressing clear arousal emotional state. Overall, results demonstrated that dogs are sensitive to emotional cues conveyed by human faces, supporting the existence of an asymmetrical emotional modulation of the canine brain to process basic human emotions.

Responses to discrimination: the role of emotion and expectations for emotional regulation.

PubMed

Gill, Ritu; Matheson, Kimberly

2006-02-01

The present study examined the role of emotion in women's perceptions of discrimination and their endorsement of behavioral responses to change the status quo. In an experimental simulation involving a situation of sex discrimination, women (N = 108) were primed to experience a particular emotion (sad, angry, control condition) and were subsequently instructed to either suppress or express (or neither) their emotional responses. Women primed to feel sad and told to suppress their emotions reported the least discrimination, whereas angered women who were permitted to express themselves reported the greatest discrimination. Furthermore, when encouraged to express their emotions, women primed to feel sad were more likely to endorse normative actions to rectify the situation, whereas women induced to feel angry were more likely to endorse collective actions to change the status quo. These findings have implications for the role of emotions and expectations regarding their expression on collective action taking.

The influence on perceptions of truthfulness of the emotional expressions shown when talking about failure

PubMed Central

David, Shlomo; Hareli, Shlomo; Hess, Ursula

2015-01-01

The study aimed to assess whether showing emotion in an organizational inquiry into failure affects perceptions of truthfulness as a function of the match between the explanation of what caused the failure and the emotion expressed. Two web-based studies were conducted. Participants with work experience saw videos of an inquiry and rated the protagonist’s truthfulness. In both studies protagonists who expressed an emotion (anger or shame) were rated as less truthful than protagonists who expressed no emotion, regardless of what the failure was attributed to. In order to not confound effects of emotions with occupational stereotype effects only male protagonists were shown. Showing emotions when questioned is normal. Managers have to be aware of a tendency to count this against the employee. This is the only research focusing on the effects of showing emotions on perceptions of truthfulness in an organizational context. PMID:27247646

Emotional Responses to Music: Experience, Expression, and Physiology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lundqvist, Lars-Olov; Carlsson, Fredrik; Hilmersson, Per; Juslin, Patrik N.

2009-01-01

A crucial issue in research on music and emotion is whether music evokes genuine emotional responses in listeners (the emotivist position) or whether listeners merely perceive emotions expressed by the music (the cognitivist position). To investigate this issue, we measured self-reported emotion, facial muscle activity, and autonomic activity in…

Emotional Expression at Different Managerial Career Stages: Female Principals in Arab Schools in Israel

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arar, Khalid

2017-01-01

This paper examines emotional expression experienced by female principals in the Arab school system in Israel over their managerial careers--role-related emotions that they choose to express or repress before others. I employed narrative methodology, interviewing nine female principals from the Arab school system to investigate expression of…

Neural processing of fearful and happy facial expressions during emotion-relevant and emotion-irrelevant tasks: a fixation-to-feature approach

PubMed Central

Neath-Tavares, Karly N.; Itier, Roxane J.

2017-01-01

Research suggests an important role of the eyes and mouth for discriminating facial expressions of emotion. A gaze-contingent procedure was used to test the impact of fixation to facial features on the neural response to fearful, happy and neutral facial expressions in an emotion discrimination (Exp.1) and an oddball detection (Exp.2) task. The N170 was the only eye-sensitive ERP component, and this sensitivity did not vary across facial expressions. In both tasks, compared to neutral faces, responses to happy expressions were seen as early as 100–120ms occipitally, while responses to fearful expressions started around 150ms, on or after the N170, at both occipital and lateral-posterior sites. Analyses of scalp topographies revealed different distributions of these two emotion effects across most of the epoch. Emotion processing interacted with fixation location at different times between tasks. Results suggest a role of both the eyes and mouth in the neural processing of fearful expressions and of the mouth in the processing of happy expressions, before 350ms. PMID:27430934

A facial expression of pax: Assessing children's "recognition" of emotion from faces.

PubMed

Nelson, Nicole L; Russell, James A

2016-01-01

In a classic study, children were shown an array of facial expressions and asked to choose the person who expressed a specific emotion. Children were later asked to name the emotion in the face with any label they wanted. Subsequent research often relied on the same two tasks--choice from array and free labeling--to support the conclusion that children recognize basic emotions from facial expressions. Here five studies (N=120, 2- to 10-year-olds) showed that these two tasks produce illusory recognition; a novel nonsense facial expression was included in the array. Children "recognized" a nonsense emotion (pax or tolen) and two familiar emotions (fear and jealousy) from the same nonsense face. Children likely used a process of elimination; they paired the unknown facial expression with a label given in the choice-from-array task and, after just two trials, freely labeled the new facial expression with the new label. These data indicate that past studies using this method may have overestimated children's expression knowledge. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

How pre-service elementary teachers express emotions about climate change and related disciplinary ideas

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hufnagel, Elizabeth J.

As we face the challenges of serious environmental issues, science education has made a commitment to improving environmental literacy, in particular climate literacy (NRC, 2012; 2013). With an increased focus on climate change education in the United States, more research on the teaching and learning of this problem in science classrooms is occurring (e.g. Arslan, Cigdemoglu, & Moseley, 2012; Svihla & Linn, 2012). However, even though people experience a range of emotions about global problems like climate change (Hicks & Holden, 2007; Ojala, 2012; Rickinson, 2001), little attention is given to their emotions about the problem in science classrooms. Because emotions are evaluative (Boler, 1999; Keltner & Gross, 1999), they provided a lens for understanding how students engage personally with climate change. In this study, I drew from sociolinguistics, social psychology, and the sociology of emotions to examine a) the social interactions that allowed for emotional expressions to be constructed and b) the ways in which pre-service elementary teachers constructed emotional expressions about climate change in a science course. Three overall findings emerged: 1) emotions provided a means of understanding how students' conceptualized climate to be relevant to their lives, 2) emotional expressions and the aboutness of these expressions indicated that the students conceptualized climate change as distanced, both temporally and spatially, and 3) although most emotional constructions were distanced, there were multiple instances of emotional expressions in which students took climate change personally. Following a discussion of the findings, implications, limitations, and directions for future research are also described.

Bidirectional Effects of Expressed Emotion and Behavior Problems and Symptoms in Adolescents and Adults with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Greenberg, Jan S.; Seltzer, Marsha Mailick; Hong, Jinkuk; Orsmond, Gael I.

2006-01-01

Expressed emotion measures the emotional climate of the family and is predictive of symptom levels in a range of medical and psychiatric conditions. This study extends the investigation of the effects of expressed emotion to families of individuals with autism. A sample of 149 mothers co-residing with their adolescent or adult child with autism…

Action Unit Models of Facial Expression of Emotion in the Presence of Speech

PubMed Central

Shah, Miraj; Cooper, David G.; Cao, Houwei; Gur, Ruben C.; Nenkova, Ani; Verma, Ragini

2014-01-01

Automatic recognition of emotion using facial expressions in the presence of speech poses a unique challenge because talking reveals clues for the affective state of the speaker but distorts the canonical expression of emotion on the face. We introduce a corpus of acted emotion expression where speech is either present (talking) or absent (silent). The corpus is uniquely suited for analysis of the interplay between the two conditions. We use a multimodal decision level fusion classifier to combine models of emotion from talking and silent faces as well as from audio to recognize five basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happy and sad. Our results strongly indicate that emotion prediction in the presence of speech from action unit facial features is less accurate when the person is talking. Modeling talking and silent expressions separately and fusing the two models greatly improves accuracy of prediction in the talking setting. The advantages are most pronounced when silent and talking face models are fused with predictions from audio features. In this multi-modal prediction both the combination of modalities and the separate models of talking and silent facial expression of emotion contribute to the improvement. PMID:25525561

A cross-cultural study on emotion expression and the learning of social norms.

PubMed

Hareli, Shlomo; Kafetsios, Konstantinos; Hess, Ursula

2015-01-01

When we do not know how to correctly behave in a new context, the emotions that people familiar with the context show in response to the behaviors of others, can help us understand what to do or not to do. The present study examined cross-cultural differences in how group emotional expressions (anger, sadness, neutral) can be used to deduce a norm violation in four cultures (Germany, Israel, Greece, and the US), which differ in terms of decoding rules for negative emotions. As expected, in all four countries, anger was a stronger norm violation signal than sadness or neutral expressions. However, angry and sad expressions were perceived as more intense and the relevant norm was learned better in Germany and Israel than in Greece and the US. Participants in Greece were relatively better at using sadness as a sign of a likely norm violation. The results demonstrate both cultural universality and cultural differences in the use of group emotion expressions in norm learning. In terms of cultural differences they underscore that the social signal value of emotional expressions may vary with culture as a function of cultural differences, both in emotion perception, and as a function of a differential use of emotions.

Faces of glory: the left-cheek posing bias for medallists of Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitions.

PubMed

Okubo, Matia

2018-04-20

Laboratory studies have shown that people tend to show the left side of their face when asked to broadly express emotions, while they tend to show the right side when asked to hide emotions. Because emotions are expressed more intensely in the left side of the face, it is hypothesized that an individual's intention to express or hide emotions biases the direction of lateral facial poses. The present study tested this hypothesis using photographic portraits of individuals experiencing emotional events in a naturalistic setting: the reception of medals in Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitions. Portrait photographs of Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitors were sourced online (N = 460) and were rated by two independent raters in terms of posing direction, emotional expression, and medal colour. Gold and silver medallists showed their left cheeks to the camera for commemorative photographs taken immediately after the medal ceremony. Positive emotions were expressed more often for gold medallists than silver ones. The left-cheek posing bias observed in the present study supports the hypothesis that the intended purpose of expressing or hiding emotions determines the direction of lateral posing biases, and extends the laboratory findings to situations in the real world.

The effect of reactive emotions expressed in response to another's anger on inferences of social power.

PubMed

Hareli, Shlomo; David, Shlomo

2017-06-01

Social perception of emotions is influenced by the context in which it occurs. One such context is a social interaction involving an exchange of emotions. The way parties to the interaction are perceived is shaped by the combination of emotions exchanged. This idea was examined by assessing the extent to which expressions of anger toward a target-which, in isolation, are perceived as signals of high social power-are influenced by the target's emotional reaction to it (i.e., reactive emotions). Three studies show that the angry person was perceived as having a higher level of social power when this anger was responded by fear or sadness than when it was responded by neutrality or anger. Study 1 indicated that reactive emotions have a stronger effect on perceived social power when emotions were incongruent with gender stereotypes. Study 2 indicated that these effects are a result of these emotions serving as reactive emotions rather than a benchmark against which the angry person's power is assessed. Study 3 showed that reactive emotions affect perceived social power by serving as signals of the level to which the high social power suggested by the first person's expression is confirmed by its target. Comparing effects of reactive emotions to anger with reactive emotions to sadness, showed that perceived social power of the expresser is determined by the nature of the expression, with some adjustment caused by the reactive emotions. This underscores the importance of social interaction as a context for the social perception of emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Dynamic facial expressions of emotion transmit an evolving hierarchy of signals over time.

PubMed

Jack, Rachael E; Garrod, Oliver G B; Schyns, Philippe G

2014-01-20

Designed by biological and social evolutionary pressures, facial expressions of emotion comprise specific facial movements to support a near-optimal system of signaling and decoding. Although highly dynamical, little is known about the form and function of facial expression temporal dynamics. Do facial expressions transmit diagnostic signals simultaneously to optimize categorization of the six classic emotions, or sequentially to support a more complex communication system of successive categorizations over time? Our data support the latter. Using a combination of perceptual expectation modeling, information theory, and Bayesian classifiers, we show that dynamic facial expressions of emotion transmit an evolving hierarchy of "biologically basic to socially specific" information over time. Early in the signaling dynamics, facial expressions systematically transmit few, biologically rooted face signals supporting the categorization of fewer elementary categories (e.g., approach/avoidance). Later transmissions comprise more complex signals that support categorization of a larger number of socially specific categories (i.e., the six classic emotions). Here, we show that dynamic facial expressions of emotion provide a sophisticated signaling system, questioning the widely accepted notion that emotion communication is comprised of six basic (i.e., psychologically irreducible) categories, and instead suggesting four. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Virtual faces expressing emotions: an initial concomitant and construct validity study.

PubMed

Joyal, Christian C; Jacob, Laurence; Cigna, Marie-Hélène; Guay, Jean-Pierre; Renaud, Patrice

2014-01-01

Facial expressions of emotions represent classic stimuli for the study of social cognition. Developing virtual dynamic facial expressions of emotions, however, would open-up possibilities, both for fundamental and clinical research. For instance, virtual faces allow real-time Human-Computer retroactions between physiological measures and the virtual agent. The goal of this study was to initially assess concomitants and construct validity of a newly developed set of virtual faces expressing six fundamental emotions (happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust). Recognition rates, facial electromyography (zygomatic major and corrugator supercilii muscles), and regional gaze fixation latencies (eyes and mouth regions) were compared in 41 adult volunteers (20 ♂, 21 ♀) during the presentation of video clips depicting real vs. virtual adults expressing emotions. Emotions expressed by each set of stimuli were similarly recognized, both by men and women. Accordingly, both sets of stimuli elicited similar activation of facial muscles and similar ocular fixation times in eye regions from man and woman participants. Further validation studies can be performed with these virtual faces among clinical populations known to present social cognition difficulties. Brain-Computer Interface studies with feedback-feedforward interactions based on facial emotion expressions can also be conducted with these stimuli.

Age-related differences in emotion recognition ability: a cross-sectional study.

PubMed

Mill, Aire; Allik, Jüri; Realo, Anu; Valk, Raivo

2009-10-01

Experimental studies indicate that recognition of emotions, particularly negative emotions, decreases with age. However, there is no consensus at which age the decrease in emotion recognition begins, how selective this is to negative emotions, and whether this applies to both facial and vocal expression. In the current cross-sectional study, 607 participants ranging in age from 18 to 84 years (mean age = 32.6 +/- 14.9 years) were asked to recognize emotions expressed either facially or vocally. In general, older participants were found to be less accurate at recognizing emotions, with the most distinctive age difference pertaining to a certain group of negative emotions. Both modalities revealed an age-related decline in the recognition of sadness and -- to a lesser degree -- anger, starting at about 30 years of age. Although age-related differences in the recognition of expression of emotion were not mediated by personality traits, 2 of the Big 5 traits, openness and conscientiousness, made an independent contribution to emotion-recognition performance. Implications of age-related differences in facial and vocal emotion expression and early onset of the selective decrease in emotion recognition are discussed in terms of previous findings and relevant theoretical models.

Face or body? Oxytocin improves perception of emotions from facial expressions in incongruent emotional body context.

PubMed

Perry, Anat; Aviezer, Hillel; Goldstein, Pavel; Palgi, Sharon; Klein, Ehud; Shamay-Tsoory, Simone G

2013-11-01

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been repeatedly reported to play an essential role in the regulation of social cognition in humans in general, and specifically in enhancing the recognition of emotions from facial expressions. The later was assessed in different paradigms that rely primarily on isolated and decontextualized emotional faces. However, recent evidence has indicated that the perception of basic facial expressions is not context invariant and can be categorically altered by context, especially body context, at early perceptual levels. Body context has a strong effect on our perception of emotional expressions, especially when the actual target face and the contextually expected face are perceptually similar. To examine whether and how OT affects emotion recognition, we investigated the role of OT in categorizing facial expressions in incongruent body contexts. Our results show that in the combined process of deciphering emotions from facial expressions and from context, OT gives an advantage to the face. This advantage is most evident when the target face and the contextually expected face are perceptually similar. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Impaired Integration of Emotional Faces and Affective Body Context in a Rare Case of Developmental Visual Agnosia

PubMed Central

Aviezer, Hillel; Hassin, Ran. R.; Bentin, Shlomo

2011-01-01

In the current study we examined the recognition of facial expressions embedded in emotionally expressive bodies in case LG, an individual with a rare form of developmental visual agnosia who suffers from severe prosopagnosia. Neuropsychological testing demonstrated that LG‘s agnosia is characterized by profoundly impaired visual integration. Unlike individuals with typical developmental prosopagnosia who display specific difficulties with face identity (but typically not expression) recognition, LG was also impaired at recognizing isolated facial expressions. By contrast, he successfully recognized the expressions portrayed by faceless emotional bodies handling affective paraphernalia. When presented with contextualized faces in emotional bodies his ability to detect the emotion expressed by a face did not improve even if it was embedded in an emotionally-congruent body context. Furthermore, in contrast to controls, LG displayed an abnormal pattern of contextual influence from emotionally-incongruent bodies. The results are interpreted in the context of a general integration deficit in developmental visual agnosia, suggesting that impaired integration may extend from the level of the face to the level of the full person. PMID:21482423

Body Weight Can Change How Your Emotions Are Perceived

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Accurately interpreting other’s emotions through facial expressions has important adaptive values for social interactions. However, due to the stereotypical social perception of overweight individuals as carefree, humorous, and light-hearted, the body weight of those with whom we interact may have a systematic influence on our emotion judgment even though it has no relevance to the expressed emotion itself. In this experimental study, we examined the role of body weight in faces on the affective perception of facial expressions. We hypothesized that the weight perceived in a face would bias the assessment of an emotional expression, with overweight faces generally more likely to be perceived as having more positive and less negative expressions than healthy weight faces. Using two-alternative forced-choice perceptual decision tasks, participants were asked to sort the emotional expressions of overweight and healthy weight facial stimuli that had been gradually morphed across six emotional intensity levels into one of two categories—“neutral vs. happy” (Experiment 1) and “neutral vs. sad” (Experiment 2). As predicted, our results demonstrated that overweight faces were more likely to be categorized as happy (i.e., lower happy decision threshold) and less likely to be categorized as sad (i.e., higher sad decision threshold) compared to healthy weight faces that had the same levels of emotional intensity. The neutral-sad decision threshold shift was negatively correlated with participant’s own fear of becoming fat, that is, those without a fear of becoming fat more strongly perceived overweight faces as sad relative to those with a higher fear. These findings demonstrate that the weight of the face systematically influences how its emotional expression is interpreted, suggesting that being overweight may make emotional expressions appear more happy and less sad than they really are. PMID:27870892

Facial emotion perception by intensity in children and adolescents with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.

PubMed

Leleu, Arnaud; Saucourt, Guillaume; Rigard, Caroline; Chesnoy, Gabrielle; Baudouin, Jean-Yves; Rossi, Massimiliano; Edery, Patrick; Franck, Nicolas; Demily, Caroline

2016-03-01

Difficulties in the recognition of emotions in expressive faces have been reported in people with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS). However, while low-intensity expressive faces are frequent in everyday life, nothing is known about their ability to perceive facial emotions depending on the intensity of expression. Through a visual matching task, children and adolescents with 22q11.2DS as well as gender- and age-matched healthy participants were asked to categorise the emotion of a target face among six possible expressions. Static pictures of morphs between neutrality and expressions were used to parametrically manipulate the intensity of the target face. In comparison to healthy controls, results showed higher perception thresholds (i.e. a more intense expression is needed to perceive the emotion) and lower accuracy for the most expressive faces indicating reduced categorisation abilities in the 22q11.2DS group. The number of intrusions (i.e. each time an emotion is perceived as another one) and a more gradual perception performance indicated smooth boundaries between emotional categories. Correlational analyses with neuropsychological and clinical measures suggested that reduced visual skills may be associated with impaired categorisation of facial emotions. Overall, the present study indicates greater difficulties for children and adolescents with 22q11.2DS to perceive an emotion in low-intensity expressive faces. This disability is subtended by emotional categories that are not sharply organised. It also suggests that these difficulties may be associated with impaired visual cognition, a hallmark of the cognitive deficits observed in the syndrome. These data yield promising tracks for future experimental and clinical investigations.

Body Weight Can Change How Your Emotions Are Perceived.

PubMed

Oh, Yujung; Hass, Norah C; Lim, Seung-Lark

2016-01-01

Accurately interpreting other's emotions through facial expressions has important adaptive values for social interactions. However, due to the stereotypical social perception of overweight individuals as carefree, humorous, and light-hearted, the body weight of those with whom we interact may have a systematic influence on our emotion judgment even though it has no relevance to the expressed emotion itself. In this experimental study, we examined the role of body weight in faces on the affective perception of facial expressions. We hypothesized that the weight perceived in a face would bias the assessment of an emotional expression, with overweight faces generally more likely to be perceived as having more positive and less negative expressions than healthy weight faces. Using two-alternative forced-choice perceptual decision tasks, participants were asked to sort the emotional expressions of overweight and healthy weight facial stimuli that had been gradually morphed across six emotional intensity levels into one of two categories-"neutral vs. happy" (Experiment 1) and "neutral vs. sad" (Experiment 2). As predicted, our results demonstrated that overweight faces were more likely to be categorized as happy (i.e., lower happy decision threshold) and less likely to be categorized as sad (i.e., higher sad decision threshold) compared to healthy weight faces that had the same levels of emotional intensity. The neutral-sad decision threshold shift was negatively correlated with participant's own fear of becoming fat, that is, those without a fear of becoming fat more strongly perceived overweight faces as sad relative to those with a higher fear. These findings demonstrate that the weight of the face systematically influences how its emotional expression is interpreted, suggesting that being overweight may make emotional expressions appear more happy and less sad than they really are.

The Functional Role of Neural Oscillations in Non-Verbal Emotional Communication

PubMed Central

Symons, Ashley E.; El-Deredy, Wael; Schwartze, Michael; Kotz, Sonja A.

2016-01-01

Effective interpersonal communication depends on the ability to perceive and interpret nonverbal emotional expressions from multiple sensory modalities. Current theoretical models propose that visual and auditory emotion perception involves a network of brain regions including the primary sensory cortices, the superior temporal sulcus (STS), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). However, relatively little is known about how the dynamic interplay between these regions gives rise to the perception of emotions. In recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of neural oscillations in mediating neural communication within and between functional neural networks. Here we review studies investigating changes in oscillatory activity during the perception of visual, auditory, and audiovisual emotional expressions, and aim to characterize the functional role of neural oscillations in nonverbal emotion perception. Findings from the reviewed literature suggest that theta band oscillations most consistently differentiate between emotional and neutral expressions. While early theta synchronization appears to reflect the initial encoding of emotionally salient sensory information, later fronto-central theta synchronization may reflect the further integration of sensory information with internal representations. Additionally, gamma synchronization reflects facilitated sensory binding of emotional expressions within regions such as the OFC, STS, and, potentially, the amygdala. However, the evidence is more ambiguous when it comes to the role of oscillations within the alpha and beta frequencies, which vary as a function of modality (or modalities), presence or absence of predictive information, and attentional or task demands. Thus, the synchronization of neural oscillations within specific frequency bands mediates the rapid detection, integration, and evaluation of emotional expressions. Moreover, the functional coupling of oscillatory activity across multiples frequency bands supports a predictive coding model of multisensory emotion perception in which emotional facial and body expressions facilitate the processing of emotional vocalizations. PMID:27252638

The Functional Role of Neural Oscillations in Non-Verbal Emotional Communication.

PubMed

Symons, Ashley E; El-Deredy, Wael; Schwartze, Michael; Kotz, Sonja A

2016-01-01

Effective interpersonal communication depends on the ability to perceive and interpret nonverbal emotional expressions from multiple sensory modalities. Current theoretical models propose that visual and auditory emotion perception involves a network of brain regions including the primary sensory cortices, the superior temporal sulcus (STS), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). However, relatively little is known about how the dynamic interplay between these regions gives rise to the perception of emotions. In recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of neural oscillations in mediating neural communication within and between functional neural networks. Here we review studies investigating changes in oscillatory activity during the perception of visual, auditory, and audiovisual emotional expressions, and aim to characterize the functional role of neural oscillations in nonverbal emotion perception. Findings from the reviewed literature suggest that theta band oscillations most consistently differentiate between emotional and neutral expressions. While early theta synchronization appears to reflect the initial encoding of emotionally salient sensory information, later fronto-central theta synchronization may reflect the further integration of sensory information with internal representations. Additionally, gamma synchronization reflects facilitated sensory binding of emotional expressions within regions such as the OFC, STS, and, potentially, the amygdala. However, the evidence is more ambiguous when it comes to the role of oscillations within the alpha and beta frequencies, which vary as a function of modality (or modalities), presence or absence of predictive information, and attentional or task demands. Thus, the synchronization of neural oscillations within specific frequency bands mediates the rapid detection, integration, and evaluation of emotional expressions. Moreover, the functional coupling of oscillatory activity across multiples frequency bands supports a predictive coding model of multisensory emotion perception in which emotional facial and body expressions facilitate the processing of emotional vocalizations.

Facial morphology and children's categorization of facial expressions of emotions: a comparison between Asian and Caucasian faces.

PubMed

Gosselin, P; Larocque, C

2000-09-01

The effects of Asian and Caucasian facial morphology were examined by having Canadian children categorize pictures of facial expressions of basic emotions. The pictures were selected from the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion set developed by D. Matsumoto and P. Ekman (1989). Sixty children between the ages of 5 and 10 years were presented with short stories and an array of facial expressions, and were asked to point to the expression that best depicted the specific emotion experienced by the characters. The results indicated that expressions of fear and surprise were better categorized from Asian faces, whereas expressions of disgust were better categorized from Caucasian faces. These differences originated in some specific confusions between expressions.

Interoceptive sensitivity predicts sensitivity to the emotions of others.

PubMed

Terasawa, Yuri; Moriguchi, Yoshiya; Tochizawa, Saiko; Umeda, Satoshi

2014-01-01

Some theories of emotion emphasise a close relationship between interoception and subjective experiences of emotion. In this study, we used facial expressions to examine whether interoceptive sensibility modulated emotional experience in a social context. Interoceptive sensibility was measured using the heartbeat detection task. To estimate individual emotional sensitivity, we made morphed photos that ranged between a neutral and an emotional facial expression (i.e., anger, sadness, disgust and happy). Recognition rates of particular emotions from these photos were calculated and considered as emotional sensitivity thresholds. Our results indicate that participants with accurate interoceptive awareness are sensitive to the emotions of others, especially for expressions of sadness and happy. We also found that false responses to sad faces were closely related with an individual's degree of social anxiety. These results suggest that interoceptive awareness modulates the intensity of the subjective experience of emotion and affects individual traits related to emotion processing.

Put on that colour, it fits your emotion: Colour appropriateness as a function of expressed emotion.

PubMed

Dael, Nele; Perseguers, Marie-Noëlle; Marchand, Cynthia; Antonietti, Jean-Philippe; Mohr, Christine

2016-01-01

People associate affective meaning with colour, and this may influence decisions about colours. Hue is traditionally considered the most salient descriptor of colour and colour-affect associations, although colour brightness and saturation seem to have particularly strong affective connotations. To test whether colour choices can be driven by emotion, we investigated whether and how colour hue, brightness, and saturation are systematically associated with bodily expressions of positive (joy) and negative (fear) emotions. Twenty-five non-colour-blind participants viewed videos of these expressions and selected for each video the most appropriate colour using colour sliders providing values for hue, brightness, and saturation. The overall colour choices were congruent with the expressed emotion--that is, participants selected brighter and more saturated colours for joy expressions than for fear expressions. Also, colours along the red-yellow spectrum were deemed more appropriate for joy expressions and cyan-bluish hues for fear expressions. The current study adds further support to the role of emotion in colour choices by (a) showing that emotional information is spontaneously used in an unconstrained choice setting, (b) extending to ecologically valid stimuli occurring in everyday encounters (dressed bodies), and (c) suggesting that all colour parameters are likely to be important when processing affective nonverbal person information, though not independently from each other.

Putting the face in context: Body expressions impact facial emotion processing in human infants.

PubMed

Rajhans, Purva; Jessen, Sarah; Missana, Manuela; Grossmann, Tobias

2016-06-01

Body expressions exert strong contextual effects on facial emotion perception in adults. Specifically, conflicting body cues hamper the recognition of emotion from faces, as evident on both the behavioral and neural level. We examined the developmental origins of the neural processes involved in emotion perception across body and face in 8-month-old infants by measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs). We primed infants with body postures (fearful, happy) that were followed by either congruent or incongruent facial expressions. Our results revealed that body expressions impact facial emotion processing and that incongruent body cues impair the neural discrimination of emotional facial expressions. Priming effects were associated with attentional and recognition memory processes, as reflected in a modulation of the Nc and Pc evoked at anterior electrodes. These findings demonstrate that 8-month-old infants possess neural mechanisms that allow for the integration of emotion across body and face, providing evidence for the early developmental emergence of context-sensitive facial emotion perception. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

The right place at the right time: priming facial expressions with emotional face components in developmental visual agnosia.

PubMed

Aviezer, Hillel; Hassin, Ran R; Perry, Anat; Dudarev, Veronica; Bentin, Shlomo

2012-04-01

The current study examined the nature of deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions in case LG, an individual with a rare form of developmental visual agnosia (DVA). LG presents with profoundly impaired recognition of facial expressions, yet the underlying nature of his deficit remains unknown. During typical face processing, normal sighted individuals extract information about expressed emotions from face regions with activity diagnostic for specific emotion categories. Given LG's impairment, we sought to shed light on his emotion perception by examining if priming facial expressions with diagnostic emotional face components would facilitate his recognition of the emotion expressed by the face. LG and control participants matched isolated face components with components appearing in a subsequently presented full-face and then categorized the face's emotion. Critically, the matched components were from regions which were diagnostic or non-diagnostic of the emotion portrayed by the full face. In experiment 1, when the full faces were briefly presented (150 ms), LG's performance was strongly influenced by the diagnosticity of the components: his emotion recognition was boosted within normal limits when diagnostic components were used and was obliterated when non-diagnostic components were used. By contrast, in experiment 2, when the face-exposure duration was extended (2000 ms), the beneficial effect of the diagnostic matching was diminished as was the detrimental effect of the non-diagnostic matching. These data highlight the impact of diagnostic facial features in normal expression recognition and suggest that impaired emotion recognition in DVA results from deficient visual integration across diagnostic face components. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

That "poker face" just might lose you the game! The impact of expressive suppression and mimicry on sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Schneider, Kristin G; Hempel, Roelie J; Lynch, Thomas R

2013-10-01

Successful interpersonal functioning often requires both the ability to mask inner feelings and the ability to accurately recognize others' expressions--but what if effortful control of emotional expressions impacts the ability to accurately read others? In this study, we examined the influence of self-controlled expressive suppression and mimicry on facial affect sensitivity--the speed with which one can accurately identify gradually intensifying facial expressions of emotion. Muscle activity of the brow (corrugator, related to anger), upper lip (levator, related to disgust), and cheek (zygomaticus, related to happiness) were recorded using facial electromyography while participants randomized to one of three conditions (Suppress, Mimic, and No-Instruction) viewed a series of six distinct emotional expressions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust) as they morphed from neutral to full expression. As hypothesized, individuals instructed to suppress their own facial expressions showed impairment in facial affect sensitivity. Conversely, mimicry of emotion expressions appeared to facilitate facial affect sensitivity. Results suggest that it is difficult for a person to be able to simultaneously mask inner feelings and accurately "read" the facial expressions of others, at least when these expressions are at low intensity. The combined behavioral and physiological data suggest that the strategies an individual selects to control his or her own expression of emotion have important implications for interpersonal functioning.

Greater perceptual sensitivity to happy facial expression.

PubMed

Maher, Stephen; Ekstrom, Tor; Chen, Yue

2014-01-01

Perception of subtle facial expressions is essential for social functioning; yet it is unclear if human perceptual sensitivities differ in detecting varying types of facial emotions. Evidence diverges as to whether salient negative versus positive emotions (such as sadness versus happiness) are preferentially processed. Here, we measured perceptual thresholds for the detection of four types of emotion in faces--happiness, fear, anger, and sadness--using psychophysical methods. We also evaluated the association of the perceptual performances with facial morphological changes between neutral and respective emotion types. Human observers were highly sensitive to happiness compared with the other emotional expressions. Further, this heightened perceptual sensitivity to happy expressions can be attributed largely to the emotion-induced morphological change of a particular facial feature (end-lip raise).

The influence of context on distinct facial expressions of disgust.

PubMed

Reschke, Peter J; Walle, Eric A; Knothe, Jennifer M; Lopez, Lukas D

2018-06-11

Face perception is susceptible to contextual influence and perceived physical similarities between emotion cues. However, studies often use structurally homogeneous facial expressions, making it difficult to explore how within-emotion variability in facial configuration affects emotion perception. This study examined the influence of context on the emotional perception of categorically identical, yet physically distinct, facial expressions of disgust. Participants categorized two perceptually distinct disgust facial expressions, "closed" (i.e., scrunched nose, closed mouth) and "open" (i.e., scrunched nose, open mouth, protruding tongue), that were embedded in contexts comprising emotion postures and scenes. Results demonstrated that the effect of nonfacial elements was significantly stronger for "open" disgust facial expressions than "closed" disgust facial expressions. These findings provide support that physical similarity within discrete categories of facial expressions is mutable and plays an important role in affective face perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The functional organization of preschool-age children's emotion expressions and actions in challenging situations.

PubMed

Dennis, Tracy A; Cole, Pamela M; Wiggins, Crystal N; Cohen, Laura H; Zalewski, Maureen

2009-08-01

Although functional links between emotion and action are implied in emotion regulation research, there is limited evidence that specific adaptive actions for coping with a challenge are more probable when certain negative emotions are expressed. The current study examined this question among 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 113; M age = 47.84 months, SD = 6.19). Emotion expressions and actions were observed during 2 challenging tasks: children waited for a gift while the mother worked, and children worked alone to retrieve a prize from a locked box with the wrong key. Angry and happy expressions, compared with sad expressions, were associated with more actions. These actions varied with the nature of the task, reflecting appreciation of situational appropriateness. In addition, when waiting with the mother, happiness was associated with the broadest range of actions, whereas when working alone on the locked box, anger was associated with the broadest range of actions. Results are discussed in terms of the adaptive function of negative emotions and in terms of functional and dimensional models of emotion. Findings have implications for the development of emotion regulation and social-emotional competence. 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

The Functional Organization of Preschool-Age Children’s Emotion Expressions and Actions in Challenging Situations

PubMed Central

Dennis, Tracy A.; Cole, Pamela M.; Wiggins, Crystal N.; Cohen, Laura H.; Zalewski, Maureen

2010-01-01

Although functional links between emotion and action are implied in emotion regulation research, there is limited evidence that specific adaptive actions for coping with a challenge are more probable when certain negative emotions are expressed. The current study examined this question among 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 113; M age = 47.84 months, SD = 6.19). Emotion expressions and actions were observed during 2 challenging tasks: children waited for a gift while the mother worked, and children worked alone to retrieve a prize from a locked box with the wrong key. Angry and happy expressions, compared with sad expressions, were associated with more actions. These actions varied with the nature of the task, reflecting appreciation of situational appropriateness. In addition, when waiting with the mother, happiness was associated with the broadest range of actions, whereas when working alone on the locked box, anger was associated with the broadest range of actions. Results are discussed in terms of the adaptive function of negative emotions and in terms of functional and dimensional models of emotion. Findings have implications for the development of emotion regulation and social–emotional competence. PMID:19653775

Effect of risperidone versus haloperidol on emotional responding in schizophrenic patients.

PubMed

Fakra, E; Khalfa, S; Da Fonseca, D; Besnier, N; Delaveau, P; Azorin, J M; Blin, O

2008-10-01

Studies on emotional processing report that schizophrenic patients present a specific pattern of emotional responding that usually includes deficits in emotional expressiveness, increased feelings of unpleasant emotion but decreased feelings of pleasant emotion, and increased physiological reactivity. However, studies have rarely controlled the nature of antipsychotic medication. Yet, the influence of these drugs on emotional response is uncertain and could vary depending on their pharmacological profile. This prospective and randomized study aimed to compare the effects of an atypical antipsychotic, risperidone, to a typical one, haloperidol, on patients' emotional responding during an emotional induction task. Twenty-five schizophrenic patients underwent two emotional and clinical evaluations: one before treatment initiation and a second 4 weeks after. Emotional states of fear, sadness, anger, joy, and disgust were induced, as well as a neutral baseline state. Video recordings of patients during the induction task allowed for assessment of emotional expressiveness. Self-reports and measures of skin conductance and heart rate were performed to determine both subjective and physiological reactions to emotional experience. Compared to haloperidol, risperidone did not reduce patients' facial expressiveness, decreased physiological reactivity, and decreased experience of unpleasant emotion but maintained experience of pleasant emotion. Emotional expressiveness was negatively correlated to parkisonism. Our preliminary results suggest that atypical antipsychotics allow for better-adapted patterns of emotional responding than typical ones do. We suggest that this effect is due to reduced striatal D2 blockade, therefore, attenuating akinesia, coupled with increased 5HT and DA levels in prefrontal cortex, which improves emotional regulation.

Mapping the emotional face. How individual face parts contribute to successful emotion recognition.

PubMed

Wegrzyn, Martin; Vogt, Maria; Kireclioglu, Berna; Schneider, Julia; Kissler, Johanna

2017-01-01

Which facial features allow human observers to successfully recognize expressions of emotion? While the eyes and mouth have been frequently shown to be of high importance, research on facial action units has made more precise predictions about the areas involved in displaying each emotion. The present research investigated on a fine-grained level, which physical features are most relied on when decoding facial expressions. In the experiment, individual faces expressing the basic emotions according to Ekman were hidden behind a mask of 48 tiles, which was sequentially uncovered. Participants were instructed to stop the sequence as soon as they recognized the facial expression and assign it the correct label. For each part of the face, its contribution to successful recognition was computed, allowing to visualize the importance of different face areas for each expression. Overall, observers were mostly relying on the eye and mouth regions when successfully recognizing an emotion. Furthermore, the difference in the importance of eyes and mouth allowed to group the expressions in a continuous space, ranging from sadness and fear (reliance on the eyes) to disgust and happiness (mouth). The face parts with highest diagnostic value for expression identification were typically located in areas corresponding to action units from the facial action coding system. A similarity analysis of the usefulness of different face parts for expression recognition demonstrated that faces cluster according to the emotion they express, rather than by low-level physical features. Also, expressions relying more on the eyes or mouth region were in close proximity in the constructed similarity space. These analyses help to better understand how human observers process expressions of emotion, by delineating the mapping from facial features to psychological representation.

Mapping the emotional face. How individual face parts contribute to successful emotion recognition

PubMed Central

Wegrzyn, Martin; Vogt, Maria; Kireclioglu, Berna; Schneider, Julia; Kissler, Johanna

2017-01-01

Which facial features allow human observers to successfully recognize expressions of emotion? While the eyes and mouth have been frequently shown to be of high importance, research on facial action units has made more precise predictions about the areas involved in displaying each emotion. The present research investigated on a fine-grained level, which physical features are most relied on when decoding facial expressions. In the experiment, individual faces expressing the basic emotions according to Ekman were hidden behind a mask of 48 tiles, which was sequentially uncovered. Participants were instructed to stop the sequence as soon as they recognized the facial expression and assign it the correct label. For each part of the face, its contribution to successful recognition was computed, allowing to visualize the importance of different face areas for each expression. Overall, observers were mostly relying on the eye and mouth regions when successfully recognizing an emotion. Furthermore, the difference in the importance of eyes and mouth allowed to group the expressions in a continuous space, ranging from sadness and fear (reliance on the eyes) to disgust and happiness (mouth). The face parts with highest diagnostic value for expression identification were typically located in areas corresponding to action units from the facial action coding system. A similarity analysis of the usefulness of different face parts for expression recognition demonstrated that faces cluster according to the emotion they express, rather than by low-level physical features. Also, expressions relying more on the eyes or mouth region were in close proximity in the constructed similarity space. These analyses help to better understand how human observers process expressions of emotion, by delineating the mapping from facial features to psychological representation. PMID:28493921

Does Facial Expression Recognition Provide a Toehold for the Development of Emotion Understanding?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strand, Paul S.; Downs, Andrew; Barbosa-Leiker, Celestina

2016-01-01

The authors explored predictions from basic emotion theory (BET) that facial emotion expression recognition skills are insular with respect to their own development, and yet foundational to the development of emotional perspective-taking skills. Participants included 417 preschool children for whom estimates of these 2 emotion understanding…

Emotional Expression at Work and at Home: Domain, Status, or Individual Characteristics?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lively, Kathryn J.; Powell, Brian

2006-01-01

Using the emotions module of the 1996 General Social Survey, we examine strategies that individuals use to express emotion. We focus on anger, one of the emotions most problematic or potentially disruptive to human interaction. Relying on insights from three theoretical approaches to emotion--the cultural perspective, the structural perspective,…

Relationship of expressed emotion with relapse of schizophrenia patients in Kelantan.

PubMed

Azhar, M Z; Varma, S L

1996-02-01

The families of 83 schizophrenic patients were studied to find out the level of expressed emotion in them leading to the relapse of these patients. The patients were having more than two episodes of schizophrenia (DSM-III-R). The most salient finding was the virtual absence of high level of expressed emotion as the cause of relapse. It was found that the majority of the families (72.3%) had low expressed emotion while only 25.3% had high expressed emotion and only 2.4% families were equivocal in this respect. This finding is in contrast with various other findings in this area. The most likely explanation for this disagreement is the cultural differences between Malaysian patients and Western patients.

She looks sad, but he looks mad: the effects of age, gender, and ambiguity on emotion perception.

PubMed

Parmley, Maria; Cunningham, Joseph G

2014-01-01

This study investigated how target sex, target age, and expressive ambiguity influence emotion perception. Undergraduate participants (N = 192) watched morphed video clips of eight child and eight adult facial expressions shifting from neutral to either sadness or anger. Participants were asked to stop the video clip when they first saw an emotion appear (perceptual sensitivity) and were asked to identify the emotion that they saw (accuracy). Results indicate that female participants identified sad expressions sooner in female targets than in male targets. Participants were also more accurate identifying angry facial expressions by male children than by female children. Findings are discussed in terms of the effects of ambiguity, gender, and age on the perception of emotional expressions.

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

PubMed

Diano, Matteo; Tamietto, Marco; Celeghin, Alessia; Weiskrantz, Lawrence; Tatu, Mona-Karina; Bagnis, Arianna; Duca, Sergio; Geminiani, Giuliano; Cauda, Franco; Costa, Tommaso

2017-03-27

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.

Measuring child and adolescent emotional lability: How do questionnaire-based ratings relate to experienced and observed emotion in everyday life and experimental settings?

PubMed

Van Liefferinge, Dagmar; Sonuga-Barke, Edmund; Danckaerts, Marina; Fayn, Kirill; Van Broeck, Nady; van der Oord, Saskia

2018-05-30

Emotional lability (EL) is an important trans-diagnostic concept that is associated with significant functional impairment in childhood and adolescence. EL is typically measured with questionnaires, although little is known about the ecological validity of these ratings. In this paper, we undertook 2 studies addressing this issue by examining the relationship between rating-based measures of EL and directly measured emotional expressions and experiences. Furthermore, the associations between directly measured emotional expressions and experiences and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptomatology were also examined, given the clear association of EL with ADHD in former research. In Study 1, we examined the relationship between parental report of children's EL and ADHD, and children's emotional expressions in an experimental context (N = 67). In Study 2, we examined the relationship between parental ratings and real-time measures of emotional experiences in daily life in adolescents (N = 65). EL ratings were associated with different elements of real-time emotional experiences and expressions. Elements of emotional expressions but not emotional experiences were also associated with ADHD symptom reports. These studies provide evidence for the ecological validity of EL ratings. Furthermore, they add evidence for the associations between EL and ADHD. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Measuring ability to enhance and suppress emotional expression: The Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression (FREE) Scale.

PubMed

Burton, Charles L; Bonanno, George A

2016-08-01

Flexibility in self-regulatory behaviors has proved to be an important quality for adjusting to stressful life events and requires individuals to have a diverse repertoire of emotion regulation abilities. However, the most commonly used emotion regulation questionnaires assess frequency of behavior rather than ability, with little evidence linking these measures to observable capacity to enact a behavior. The aim of the current investigation was to develop and validate a Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression (FREE) Scale that measures a person's ability to enhance and suppress displayed emotion across an array of hypothetical contexts. In Studies 1 and 2, a series of confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the FREE Scale consists of 4 first-order factors divided by regulation and emotional valence type that can contribute to 2 higher order factors: expressive enhancement ability and suppression ability. In Study 1, we also compared the FREE Scale to other commonly used emotion regulation measures, which revealed that suppression ability is conceptually distinct from suppression frequency. In Study 3, we compared the FREE Scale with a composite of traditional frequency-based indices of expressive regulation to predict performance in a previously validated emotional modulation paradigm. Participants' enhancement and suppression ability scores on the FREE Scale predicted their corresponding performance on the laboratory task, even when controlling for baseline expressiveness. These studies suggest that the FREE Scale is a valid and flexible measure of expressive regulation ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Gender differences in emotion expression in children: a meta-analytic review.

PubMed

Chaplin, Tara M; Aldao, Amelia

2013-07-01

Emotion expression is an important feature of healthy child development that has been found to show gender differences. However, there has been no empirical review of the literature on gender and facial, vocal, and behavioral expressions of different types of emotions in children. The present study constitutes a comprehensive meta-analytic review of gender differences and moderators of differences in emotion expression from infancy through adolescence. We analyzed 555 effect sizes from 166 studies with a total of 21,709 participants. Significant but very small gender differences were found overall, with girls showing more positive emotions (g = -.08) and internalizing emotions (e.g., sadness, anxiety, sympathy; g = -.10) than boys, and boys showing more externalizing emotions (e.g., anger; g = .09) than girls. Notably, gender differences were moderated by age, interpersonal context, and task valence, underscoring the importance of contextual factors in gender differences. Gender differences in positive emotions were more pronounced with increasing age, with girls showing more positive emotions than boys in middle childhood (g = -.20) and adolescence (g = -.28). Boys showed more externalizing emotions than girls at toddler/preschool age (g = .17) and middle childhood (g = .13) and fewer externalizing emotions than girls in adolescence (g = -.27). Gender differences were less pronounced with parents and were more pronounced with unfamiliar adults (for positive emotions) and with peers/when alone (for externalizing emotions). Our findings of gender differences in emotion expression in specific contexts have important implications for gender differences in children's healthy and maladaptive development. 2013 APA, all rights reserved

The relationship between emotional suppression and psychological distress in breast cancer patients after surgery.

PubMed

Nakatani, Yuki; Iwamitsu, Yumi; Kuranami, Masaru; Okazaki, Shigemi; Shikanai, Hiroe; Yamamoto, Kenji; Watanabe, Masahiko; Miyaoka, Hitoshi

2014-09-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between emotional suppression and psychological distress in breast cancer patients after surgery. We examined this relationship using questionnaires at the first visit to the breast cancer outpatient clinic at our hospital and after surgery, as well as interviews after surgery. A total of 31 breast cancer patients were asked to complete the Courtauld Emotional Control Scale and the Profile of Mood States at their first visit to the outpatient clinic. Patients were also asked to complete the Profile of Mood States between 1 and 6 months after surgery. Trained clinical psychologists conducted the interviews, asking patients to speak freely about their current anxieties, worries and thoughts. Based on the median Courtauld Emotional Control Scale score of 42 points, participants were divided into emotional suppression and emotional expression groups. The Total Mood Disturbance score, as well as each of the subscale (except vigor) scores of the Profile of Mood States, were significantly higher in the emotional suppression group than the emotional expression group. The emotional suppression group expressed significantly more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions than the emotional expression group. Patients with emotional suppression felt and expressed more psychological distress after surgery. This finding highlights the need for medical staff to comprehend the psychological traits of breast cancer patients, including emotional suppression, in the early stages of breast cancer in order to provide adequate psychological support. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Gender Differences in Emotion Expression in Children: A Meta-Analytic Review

PubMed Central

Chaplin, Tara M.; Aldao, Amelia

2012-01-01

Emotion expression is an important feature of healthy child development that has been found to show gender differences. However, there has been no empirical review of the literature on gender and facial, vocal, and behavioral expressions of different types of emotions in children. The present study constitutes a comprehensive meta-analytic review of gender differences, and moderators of differences, in emotion expression from infancy through adolescence. We analyzed 555 effect sizes from 166 studies with a total of 21,709 participants. Significant, but very small, gender differences were found overall, with girls showing more positive emotions (g = −.08) and internalizing emotions (e.g., sadness, anxiety, sympathy; g = −.10) than boys, and boys showing more externalizing emotions (e.g., anger; g = .09) than girls. Notably, gender differences were moderated by age, interpersonal context, and task valence, underscoring the importance of contextual factors in gender differences. Gender differences in positive emotions were more pronounced with increasing age, with girls showing more positive emotions than boys in middle childhood (g = −.20) and adolescence (g = −.28). Boys showed more externalizing emotions than girls at toddler/preschool age (g = .17) and middle childhood (g = .13) and fewer externalizing emotions than girls in adolescence (g = −.27). Gender differences were less pronounced with parents and were more pronounced with unfamiliar adults (for positive emotions) and with peers/when alone (for externalizing emotions). Our findings of gender differences in emotion expression in specific contexts have important implications for gender differences in children’s healthy and maladaptive development. PMID:23231534

Introducing the Geneva Multimodal expression corpus for experimental research on emotion perception.

PubMed

Bänziger, Tanja; Mortillaro, Marcello; Scherer, Klaus R

2012-10-01

Research on the perception of emotional expressions in faces and voices is exploding in psychology, the neurosciences, and affective computing. This article provides an overview of some of the major emotion expression (EE) corpora currently available for empirical research and introduces a new, dynamic, multimodal corpus of emotion expressions, the Geneva Multimodal Emotion Portrayals Core Set (GEMEP-CS). The design features of the corpus are outlined and justified, and detailed validation data for the core set selection are presented and discussed. Finally, an associated database with microcoded facial, vocal, and body action elements, as well as observer ratings, is introduced.

Mere social categorization modulates identification of facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Young, Steven G; Hugenberg, Kurt

2010-12-01

The ability of the human face to communicate emotional states via facial expressions is well known, and past research has established the importance and universality of emotional facial expressions. However, recent evidence has revealed that facial expressions of emotion are most accurately recognized when the perceiver and expresser are from the same cultural ingroup. The current research builds on this literature and extends this work. Specifically, we find that mere social categorization, using a minimal-group paradigm, can create an ingroup emotion-identification advantage even when the culture of the target and perceiver is held constant. Follow-up experiments show that this effect is supported by differential motivation to process ingroup versus outgroup faces and that this motivational disparity leads to more configural processing of ingroup faces than of outgroup faces. Overall, the results point to distinct processing modes for ingroup and outgroup faces, resulting in differential identification accuracy for facial expressions of emotion. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

[Difficulty of young children of understanding emotion dissimulation].

PubMed

Perron, Mélanie; Gosselin, Pierre

2009-12-01

The authors investigated the understanding of emotion dissimulation in school-age children. Sixty participants were read short stories in which a main character expressed an emotion or hid an emotion from other characters. The participants were asked to identify the emotion felt by the main characters and to indicate the facial expressions they would display. Then they were asked what emotions the main characters felt while they were displaying these expressions, and what the beliefs of the other story characters would be as to the emotion felt by the main characters. The results revealed that children from 5 to 6 years of age have a partial understanding of emotion dissimulation. They were accurate in finding the emotion felt by the main characters when questioned the first time. They were also accurate in choosing the expressions the main characters would display to hide their emotions. However, they were often inaccurate as to the felt emotions of the main characters when questioned the second time. Compared with 9- and 10-year-olds, the younger children had more difficulty understanding the simultaneous character of felt and displayed emotions. Five- and 6-year-olds were also less accurate than the older children when asked to indicate the beliefs of the other characters in stories where felt emotions were hidden. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

The Child Affective Facial Expression (CAFE) set: validity and reliability from untrained adults.

PubMed

LoBue, Vanessa; Thrasher, Cat

2014-01-01

Emotional development is one of the largest and most productive areas of psychological research. For decades, researchers have been fascinated by how humans respond to, detect, and interpret emotional facial expressions. Much of the research in this area has relied on controlled stimulus sets of adults posing various facial expressions. Here we introduce a new stimulus set of emotional facial expressions into the domain of research on emotional development-The Child Affective Facial Expression set (CAFE). The CAFE set features photographs of a racially and ethnically diverse group of 2- to 8-year-old children posing for six emotional facial expressions-angry, fearful, sad, happy, surprised, and disgusted-and a neutral face. In the current work, we describe the set and report validity and reliability data on the set from 100 untrained adult participants.

Development of emotional facial recognition in late childhood and adolescence.

PubMed

Thomas, Laura A; De Bellis, Michael D; Graham, Reiko; LaBar, Kevin S

2007-09-01

The ability to interpret emotions in facial expressions is crucial for social functioning across the lifespan. Facial expression recognition develops rapidly during infancy and improves with age during the preschool years. However, the developmental trajectory from late childhood to adulthood is less clear. We tested older children, adolescents and adults on a two-alternative forced-choice discrimination task using morphed faces that varied in emotional content. Actors appeared to pose expressions that changed incrementally along three progressions: neutral-to-fear, neutral-to-anger, and fear-to-anger. Across all three morph types, adults displayed more sensitivity to subtle changes in emotional expression than children and adolescents. Fear morphs and fear-to-anger blends showed a linear developmental trajectory, whereas anger morphs showed a quadratic trend, increasing sharply from adolescents to adults. The results provide evidence for late developmental changes in emotional expression recognition with some specificity in the time course for distinct emotions.

Judgments of subtle facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Matsumoto, David; Hwang, Hyisung C

2014-04-01

Most studies on judgments of facial expressions of emotion have primarily utilized prototypical, high-intensity expressions. This paper examines judgments of subtle facial expressions of emotion, including not only low-intensity versions of full-face prototypes but also variants of those prototypes. A dynamic paradigm was used in which observers were shown a neutral expression followed by the target expression to judge, and then the neutral expression again, allowing for a simulation of the emergence of the expression from and then return to a baseline. We also examined how signal and intensity clarities of the expressions (explained more fully in the Introduction) were associated with judgment agreement levels. Low-intensity, full-face prototypical expressions of emotion were judged as the intended emotion at rates significantly greater than chance. A number of the proposed variants were also judged as the intended emotions. Both signal and intensity clarities were individually associated with agreement rates; when their interrelationships were taken into account, signal clarity independently predicted agreement rates but intensity clarity did not. The presence or absence of specific muscles appeared to be more important to agreement rates than their intensity levels, with the exception of the intensity of zygomatic major, which was positively correlated with agreement rates for judgments of joy.

[Expression of the emotions in the drawing of a man by the child from 5 to 11 years of age].

PubMed

Brechet, Claire; Picard, Delphine; Baldy, René

2007-06-01

This study examines the development of children's ability to express emotions in their human figure drawing. Sixty children of 5, 8, and 11 years were asked to draw "a man," and then a "sad", "happy," "angry" and "surprised" man. Expressivity of the drawings was assessed by means of two procedures: a limited choice and a free labelling procedure. Emotionally expressive drawings were then evaluated in terms of the number and the type of graphic cues that were used to express emotion. It was found that children are able to depict happiness and sadness at 8, anger and surprise at 11. With age, children use increasingly numerous and complex graphic cues for each emotion (i.e., facial expression, body position, and contextual cues). Graphic cues for facial expression (e.g., concave mouth, curved eyebrows, wide opened eyes) share strong similarities with specific "action units" described by Ekman and Friesen (1978) in their Facial Action Coding System. Children's ability to depict emotion in their human figure drawing is discussed in relation to perceptual, conceptual, and graphic abilities.

Does gratitude always work? Ambivalence over emotional expression inhibits the beneficial effect of gratitude on well-being.

PubMed

Chen, Lung Hung; Chen, Mei-Yen; Tsai, Ying-Mei

2012-01-01

The psychological benefit of gratitude has been well demonstrated in previous studies. However, when we examined these studies closely, we found that the moderators were rarely investigated, suggesting that further work is needed to explore the boundaries of gratitude In this regard, the authors have proposed that ambivalence over emotional expression might be a potential moderator that would inhibit the beneficial effect of gratitude on well-being. Two studies were conducted to examine our hypothesis. Study 1 consisted of 353 Taiwanese college students who completed the Gratitude Questionnaire-Taiwan version (GQ-T), Ambivalence over Emotional Expression Questionnaire (AEQ), and one question about subjective happiness. We found that ambivalence over emotional expression significantly moderated the effect of gratitude on happiness. To validate our findings in Study 1, 233 Taiwanese college students were recruited for Study 2, and they completed the GQ-T, AEQ, subjective happiness short-form UCLA loneliness scale, as well as the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Both studies demonstrated that ambivalence over emotional expression moderated the relationship between gratitude and well-being indexes. Simply stated, the authors found that across the two independent samples, among students who are high in ambivalence over emotional expression, the beneficial effect of gratitude on subjective happiness was inhibited. However, the moderating pattern for loneliness and depression was contrary to our expectations, indicating that high ambivalence over emotional expression does not inhibit gratitude. Possible explanations and implications for social relationships and emotional expression are discussed.

Individual and interpersonal emotion regulation among adults with substance use disorders and matched controls.

PubMed

Dingle, Genevieve A; Neves, Diana da Costa; Alhadad, Sakinah S J; Hides, Leanne

2018-06-01

Self-report studies show that negative emotional states and ineffective use of emotion regulation strategies are key maintaining factors of substance use disorders (SUD). However, experimental research into emotional processing in adults with SUD is in its infancy. Theoretical conceptualizations of emotion regulation have shifted from a focus on individual (internal) processes to one that encompasses social and interpersonal functions - including the regulation of facial expression of emotion. The purpose of this study was to examine the individual and interpersonal emotion regulation capacity of 35 adults in residential treatment diagnosed with a SUD compared to 35 demographically matched controls (both samples M age  = 25 years; 37% females). Participants completed a facial emotion expression flexibility task while viewing emotive images, as well as the Difficulties of Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and the Social (Emotion) Expectancy Scale (SES). Adults in SUD treatment experienced significantly more emotion regulation difficulties on all DERS subscales than controls. They also reported higher levels of negative self-evaluation and social expectancies not to feel negative emotions (anxiety and depression) compared to controls. Moreover, when viewing emotive images, the treatment sample showed significantly less flexibility of their emotional expression compared to the control sample. These findings demonstrate that the awareness, expression, and regulation of emotions are particularly difficult for people with SUD and this may maintain their substance use and provide an important target for treatment. Compared to matched controls, adults with substance use disorders self-report significantly more difficulties with emotional awareness and regulation. Compared to matched controls, adults with substance use disorders report significantly greater expectancies not to show depression and anxiety. When viewing positive and negative images, adults with substance use disorders are significantly less flexible in their facial expression of emotion than matched controls in response to regulatory instructions. Emotion regulation should be measured and addressed as part of substance use disorder treatment. © 2017 Commonwealth of Australia. British Journal of Clinical Psychology © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

How Context Influences Our Perception of Emotional Faces: A Behavioral Study on the Kuleshov Effect.

PubMed

Calbi, Marta; Heimann, Katrin; Barratt, Daniel; Siri, Francesca; Umiltà, Maria A; Gallese, Vittorio

2017-01-01

Facial expressions are of major importance in understanding the mental and emotional states of others. So far, most studies on the perception and comprehension of emotions have used isolated facial expressions as stimuli; for example, photographs of actors displaying facial expressions corresponding to one of the so called 'basic emotions.' However, our real experience during social interactions is different: facial expressions of emotion are mostly perceived in a wider context, constituted by body language, the surrounding environment, and our beliefs and expectations. Already in the early twentieth century, the Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov argued that such context, established by intermediate shots of strong emotional content, could significantly change our interpretation of facial expressions in film. Prior experiments have shown behavioral effects pointing in this direction, but have only used static images as stimuli. Our study used a more ecological design with participants watching film sequences of neutral faces, crosscut with scenes of strong emotional content (evoking happiness or fear, plus neutral stimuli as a baseline condition). The task was to rate the emotion displayed by a target person's face in terms of valence, arousal, and category. Results clearly demonstrated the presence of a significant effect in terms of both valence and arousal in the fear condition only. Moreover, participants tended to categorize the target person's neutral facial expression choosing the emotion category congruent with the preceding context. Our results highlight the context-sensitivity of emotions and the importance of studying them under ecologically valid conditions.

Gender role conflict and emotional approach coping in men with cancer.

PubMed

Hoyt, Michael A

2009-10-01

The utility of emotional approach coping (EAC), or expressing and processing emotions, has been equivocal for men. Gender role conflict, or the negative cognitive, emotional and behavioural consequences associated with male gender role socialisation, likely shape coping responses and may negatively affect the efficacy of men's emotion-directed coping efforts and adjustment to cancer. Perceptions of receptiveness of one's interpersonal environment may be particularly important to the effectiveness of EAC. This study examined the relationships among EAC, gender role conflict, and distress in a group of 183 men with cancer. Structural equation modelling revealed that higher gender role conflict was associated with lower emotional expression, which in turn was associated with greater distress. Gender role conflict was not related to emotional processing. Higher gender role conflict also was associated directly with more distress. In subsequent analyses, social constraints and age were examined as possible moderators of EAC. Emotional expression was related to more psychological distress for those in highly constrained environments; and emotional processing was associated with more distress with younger age. Emotional expression may be particularly affected by social influences related to gender and social receptivity. More research is needed to better distinguish constructive and unconstructive emotional processing.

Identifying Features of Bodily Expression As Indicators of Emotional Experience during Multimedia Learning

PubMed Central

Riemer, Valentin; Frommel, Julian; Layher, Georg; Neumann, Heiko; Schrader, Claudia

2017-01-01

The importance of emotions experienced by learners during their interaction with multimedia learning systems, such as serious games, underscores the need to identify sources of information that allow the recognition of learners’ emotional experience without interrupting the learning process. Bodily expression is gaining in attention as one of these sources of information. However, to date, the question of how bodily expression can convey different emotions has largely been addressed in research relying on acted emotion displays. Following a more contextualized approach, the present study aims to identify features of bodily expression (i.e., posture and activity of the upper body and the head) that relate to genuine emotional experience during interaction with a serious game. In a multimethod approach, 70 undergraduates played a serious game relating to financial education while their bodily expression was captured using an off-the-shelf depth-image sensor (Microsoft Kinect). In addition, self-reports of experienced enjoyment, boredom, and frustration were collected repeatedly during gameplay, to address the dynamic changes in emotions occurring in educational tasks. Results showed that, firstly, the intensities of all emotions indeed changed significantly over the course of the game. Secondly, by using generalized estimating equations, distinct features of bodily expression could be identified as significant indicators for each emotion under investigation. A participant keeping their head more turned to the right was positively related to frustration being experienced, whereas keeping their head more turned to the left was positively related to enjoyment. Furthermore, having their upper body positioned more closely to the gaming screen was also positively related to frustration. Finally, increased activity of a participant’s head emerged as a significant indicator of boredom being experienced. These results confirm the value of bodily expression as an indicator of emotional experience in multimedia learning systems. Furthermore, the findings may guide developers of emotion recognition procedures by focusing on the identified features of bodily expression. PMID:28798717

The perception of emotion in body expressions.

PubMed

de Gelder, B; de Borst, A W; Watson, R

2015-01-01

During communication, we perceive and express emotional information through many different channels, including facial expressions, prosody, body motion, and posture. Although historically the human body has been perceived primarily as a tool for actions, there is now increased understanding that the body is also an important medium for emotional expression. Indeed, research on emotional body language is rapidly emerging as a new field in cognitive and affective neuroscience. This article reviews how whole-body signals are processed and understood, at the behavioral and neural levels, with specific reference to their role in emotional communication. The first part of this review outlines brain regions and spectrotemporal dynamics underlying perception of isolated neutral and affective bodies, the second part details the contextual effects on body emotion recognition, and final part discusses body processing on a subconscious level. More specifically, research has shown that body expressions as compared with neutral bodies draw upon a larger network of regions responsible for action observation and preparation, emotion processing, body processing, and integrative processes. Results from neurotypical populations and masking paradigms suggest that subconscious processing of affective bodies relies on a specific subset of these regions. Moreover, recent evidence has shown that emotional information from the face, voice, and body all interact, with body motion and posture often highlighting and intensifying the emotion expressed in the face and voice. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Misremembering emotion: Inductive category effects for complex emotional stimuli.

PubMed

Corbin, Jonathan C; Crawford, L Elizabeth; Vavra, Dylan T

2017-07-01

Memories of objects are biased toward what is typical of the category to which they belong. Prior research on memory for emotional facial expressions has demonstrated a bias towards an emotional expression prototype (e.g., slightly happy faces are remembered as happier). We investigate an alternate source of bias in memory for emotional expressions - the central tendency bias. The central tendency bias skews reconstruction of a memory trace towards the center of the distribution for a particular attribute. This bias has been attributed to a Bayesian combination of an imprecise memory for a particular object with prior information about its category. Until now, studies examining the central tendency bias have focused on simple stimuli. We extend this work to socially relevant, complex, emotional facial expressions. We morphed facial expressions on a continuum from sad to happy. Different ranges of emotion were used in four experiments in which participants viewed individual expressions and, after a variable delay, reproduced each face by adjusting a morph to match it. Estimates were biased toward the center of the presented stimulus range, and the bias increased at longer memory delays, consistent with the Bayesian prediction that as trace memory loses precision, category knowledge is given more weight. The central tendency effect persisted within and across emotion categories (sad, neutral, and happy). This article expands the scope of work on inductive category effects to memory for complex, emotional stimuli.

Positive facial expressions during retrieval of self-defining memories.

PubMed

Gandolphe, Marie Charlotte; Nandrino, Jean Louis; Delelis, Gérald; Ducro, Claire; Lavallee, Audrey; Saloppe, Xavier; Moustafa, Ahmed A; El Haj, Mohamad

2017-11-14

In this study, we investigated, for the first time, facial expressions during the retrieval of Self-defining memories (i.e., those vivid and emotionally intense memories of enduring concerns or unresolved conflicts). Participants self-rated the emotional valence of their Self-defining memories and autobiographical retrieval was analyzed with a facial analysis software. This software (Facereader) synthesizes the facial expression information (i.e., cheek, lips, muscles, eyebrow muscles) to describe and categorize facial expressions (i.e., neutral, happy, sad, surprised, angry, scared, and disgusted facial expressions). We found that participants showed more emotional than neutral facial expressions during the retrieval of Self-defining memories. We also found that participants showed more positive than negative facial expressions during the retrieval of Self-defining memories. Interestingly, participants attributed positive valence to the retrieved memories. These findings are the first to demonstrate the consistency between facial expressions and the emotional subjective experience of Self-defining memories. These findings provide valuable physiological information about the emotional experience of the past.

Exposure to Parents' Negative Emotions as a Developmental Pathway to the Family Aggregation of Depression and Anxiety in the First Year of Life.

PubMed

Aktar, Evin; Bögels, Susan M

2017-12-01

Depression and anxiety load in families. In the present study, we focus on exposure to parental negative emotions in first postnatal year as a developmental pathway to early parent-to-child transmission of depression and anxiety. We provide an overview of the little research available on the links between infants' exposure to negative emotion and infants' emotional development in this developmentally sensitive period, and highlight priorities for future research. To address continuity between normative and maladaptive development, we discuss exposure to parental negative emotions in infants of parents with as well as without depression and/or anxiety diagnoses. We focus on infants' emotional expressions in everyday parent-infant interactions, and on infants' attention to negative facial expressions as early indices of emotional development. Available evidence suggests that infants' emotional expressions echo parents' expressions and reactions in everyday interactions. In turn, infants exposed more to negative emotions from the parent seem to attend less to negative emotions in others' facial expressions. The links between exposure to parental negative emotion and development hold similarly in infants of parents with and without depression and/or anxiety diagnoses. Given its potential links to infants' emotional development, and to later psychological outcomes in children of parents with depression and anxiety, we conclude that early exposure to parental negative emotions is an important developmental mechanism that awaits further research. Longitudinal designs that incorporate the study of early exposure to parents' negative emotion, socio-emotional development in infancy, and later psychological functioning while considering other genetic and biological vulnerabilities should be prioritized in future research.

Impact of civil war on emotion recognition: the denial of sadness in Sierra Leone.

PubMed

Umiltà, Maria Allessandra; Wood, Rachel; Loffredo, Francesca; Ravera, Roberto; Gallese, Vittorio

2013-01-01

Studies of children with atypical emotional experience demonstrate that childhood exposure to high levels of hostility and threat biases emotion perception. This study investigates emotion processing, in former child soldiers and non-combatant civilians. All participants have experienced prolonged violence exposure during childhood. The study, carried out in Sierra Leone, aimed to examine the effects of exposure to and forced participation in acts of extreme violence on the emotion processing of young adults war survivors. A total of 76 young, male adults (38 former child soldier survivors and 38 civilian survivors) were tested in order to assess participants' ability to identify four different facial emotion expressions from photographs and movies. Both groups were able to recognize facial expressions of emotion. However, despite their general ability to correctly identify facial emotions, participants showed a significant response bias in their recognition of sadness. Both former soldiers and civilians made more errors in identifying expressions of sadness than in the other three emotions and when mislabeling sadness participants most often described it as anger. Conversely, when making erroneous identifications of other emotions, participants were most likely to label the expressed emotion as sadness. In addition, while for three of the four emotions participants were better able to make a correct identification the greater the intensity of the expression, this pattern was not observed for sadness. During movies presentation the recognition of sadness was significantly worse for soldiers. While both former child soldiers and civilians were found to be able to identify facial emotions, a significant response bias in their attribution of negative emotions was observed. Such bias was particularly pronounced in former child soldiers. These findings point to a pervasive long-lasting effect of childhood exposure to violence on emotion processing in later life.

Impact of civil war on emotion recognition: the denial of sadness in Sierra Leone

PubMed Central

Umiltà, Maria Allessandra; Wood, Rachel; Loffredo, Francesca; Ravera, Roberto; Gallese, Vittorio

2013-01-01

Studies of children with atypical emotional experience demonstrate that childhood exposure to high levels of hostility and threat biases emotion perception. This study investigates emotion processing, in former child soldiers and non-combatant civilians. All participants have experienced prolonged violence exposure during childhood. The study, carried out in Sierra Leone, aimed to examine the effects of exposure to and forced participation in acts of extreme violence on the emotion processing of young adults war survivors. A total of 76 young, male adults (38 former child soldier survivors and 38 civilian survivors) were tested in order to assess participants' ability to identify four different facial emotion expressions from photographs and movies. Both groups were able to recognize facial expressions of emotion. However, despite their general ability to correctly identify facial emotions, participants showed a significant response bias in their recognition of sadness. Both former soldiers and civilians made more errors in identifying expressions of sadness than in the other three emotions and when mislabeling sadness participants most often described it as anger. Conversely, when making erroneous identifications of other emotions, participants were most likely to label the expressed emotion as sadness. In addition, while for three of the four emotions participants were better able to make a correct identification the greater the intensity of the expression, this pattern was not observed for sadness. During movies presentation the recognition of sadness was significantly worse for soldiers. While both former child soldiers and civilians were found to be able to identify facial emotions, a significant response bias in their attribution of negative emotions was observed. Such bias was particularly pronounced in former child soldiers. These findings point to a pervasive long-lasting effect of childhood exposure to violence on emotion processing in later life. PMID:24027541

Emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder: effects of emotional information on negative bias.

PubMed

Fenske, Sabrina; Lis, Stefanie; Liebke, Lisa; Niedtfeld, Inga; Kirsch, Peter; Mier, Daniela

2015-01-01

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by severe deficits in social interactions, which might be linked to deficits in emotion recognition. Research on emotion recognition abilities in BPD revealed heterogeneous results, ranging from deficits to heightened sensitivity. The most stable findings point to an impairment in the evaluation of neutral facial expressions as neutral, as well as to a negative bias in emotion recognition; that is the tendency to attribute negative emotions to neutral expressions, or in a broader sense to report a more negative emotion category than depicted. However, it remains unclear which contextual factors influence the occurrence of this negative bias. Previous studies suggest that priming by preceding emotional information and also constrained processing time might augment the emotion recognition deficit in BPD. To test these assumptions, 32 female BPD patients and 31 healthy females, matched for age and education, participated in an emotion recognition study, in which every facial expression was preceded by either a positive, neutral or negative scene. Furthermore, time constraints for processing were varied by presenting the facial expressions with short (100 ms) or long duration (up to 3000 ms) in two separate blocks. BPD patients showed a significant deficit in emotion recognition for neutral and positive facial expression, associated with a significant negative bias. In BPD patients, this emotion recognition deficit was differentially affected by preceding emotional information and time constraints, with a greater influence of emotional information during long face presentations and a greater influence of neutral information during short face presentations. Our results are in line with previous findings supporting the existence of a negative bias in emotion recognition in BPD patients, and provide further insights into biased social perceptions in BPD patients.

When action meets emotions: how facial displays of emotion influence goal-related behavior.

PubMed

Ferri, Francesca; Stoianov, Ivilin Peev; Gianelli, Claudia; D'Amico, Luigi; Borghi, Anna M; Gallese, Vittorio

2010-10-01

Many authors have proposed that facial expressions, by conveying emotional states of the person we are interacting with, influence the interaction behavior. We aimed at verifying how specific the effect is of the facial expressions of emotions of an individual (both their valence and relevance/specificity for the purpose of the action) with respect to how the action aimed at the same individual is executed. In addition, we investigated whether and how the effects of emotions on action execution are modulated by participants' empathic attitudes. We used a kinematic approach to analyze the simulation of feeding others, which consisted of recording the "feeding trajectory" by using a computer mouse. Actors could express different highly arousing emotions, namely happiness, disgust, anger, or a neutral expression. Response time was sensitive to the interaction between valence and relevance/specificity of emotion: disgust caused faster response. In addition, happiness induced slower feeding time and longer time to peak velocity, but only in blocks where it alternated with expressions of disgust. The kinematic profiles described how the effect of the specificity of the emotional context for feeding, namely a modulation of accuracy requirements, occurs. An early acceleration in kinematic relative-to-neutral feeding profiles occurred when actors expressed positive emotions (happiness) in blocks with specific-to-feeding negative emotions (disgust). On the other hand, the end-part of the action was slower when feeding happy with respect to neutral faces, confirming the increase of accuracy requirements and motor control. These kinematic effects were modulated by participants' empathic attitudes. In conclusion, the social dimension of emotions, that is, their ability to modulate others' action planning/execution, strictly depends on their relevance and specificity to the purpose of the action. This finding argues against a strict distinction between social and nonsocial emotions.

Children's Expressed Emotions when Disclosing Maltreatment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sayfan, Liat; Mitchell, Emilie B.; Goodman, Gail S.; Eisen, Mitchell L.; Qin, Jianjian

2008-01-01

Objective: Our goal was to examine children's expressed emotions when they disclose maltreatment. Little scientific research exists on this topic, and yet children's emotional expressions at disclosure may inform psychological theory and play a crucial role in legal determinations. Method: One hundred and twenty-four videotaped forensic interviews…

Maternal Punitive Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions and Young Adult Trait Anger: Effect of Gender and Emotional Closeness.

PubMed

Perry, Nicole B; Cavanaugh, Alyson; Dunbar, Angel; Leerkes, Esther M

The current study tested whether young adult's recollected reports of their mother's punitive reactions to their negative emotions in childhood predicted anger expression in young adulthood and whether emotional closeness weakens this association. Further, a three-way interaction was tested to examine whether emotional closeness is a stronger protective factor for young women than for young men. Results revealed a significant three-way interaction (gender X emotional closeness X maternal punitive reactions). For young men, maternal punitive reactions to negative emotions were directly associated with increased anger expressions. Maternal punitive reactions to young women's negative emotions in childhood were associated with increased anger in adulthood only when they reported low maternal emotional closeness. Findings suggest that maternal emotional closeness may serve as a buffer against the negative effects of maternal punitive reactions for women's anger expression in young adulthood.

Maternal Punitive Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions and Young Adult Trait Anger: Effect of Gender and Emotional Closeness

PubMed Central

Perry, Nicole B.; Cavanaugh, Alyson; Dunbar, Angel; Leerkes, Esther M.

2015-01-01

The current study tested whether young adult’s recollected reports of their mother’s punitive reactions to their negative emotions in childhood predicted anger expression in young adulthood and whether emotional closeness weakens this association. Further, a three-way interaction was tested to examine whether emotional closeness is a stronger protective factor for young women than for young men. Results revealed a significant three-way interaction (gender X emotional closeness X maternal punitive reactions). For young men, maternal punitive reactions to negative emotions were directly associated with increased anger expressions. Maternal punitive reactions to young women’s negative emotions in childhood were associated with increased anger in adulthood only when they reported low maternal emotional closeness. Findings suggest that maternal emotional closeness may serve as a buffer against the negative effects of maternal punitive reactions for women’s anger expression in young adulthood. PMID:26568644

Emotion Recognition from Congruent and Incongruent Emotional Expressions and Situational Cues in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tell, Dina; Davidson, Denise

2015-01-01

In this research, the emotion recognition abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children were compared. When facial expressions and situational cues of emotion were congruent, accuracy in recognizing emotions was good for both children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children. When…

A cross-cultural study on emotion expression and the learning of social norms

PubMed Central

Hareli, Shlomo; Kafetsios, Konstantinos; Hess, Ursula

2015-01-01

When we do not know how to correctly behave in a new context, the emotions that people familiar with the context show in response to the behaviors of others, can help us understand what to do or not to do. The present study examined cross-cultural differences in how group emotional expressions (anger, sadness, neutral) can be used to deduce a norm violation in four cultures (Germany, Israel, Greece, and the US), which differ in terms of decoding rules for negative emotions. As expected, in all four countries, anger was a stronger norm violation signal than sadness or neutral expressions. However, angry and sad expressions were perceived as more intense and the relevant norm was learned better in Germany and Israel than in Greece and the US. Participants in Greece were relatively better at using sadness as a sign of a likely norm violation. The results demonstrate both cultural universality and cultural differences in the use of group emotion expressions in norm learning. In terms of cultural differences they underscore that the social signal value of emotional expressions may vary with culture as a function of cultural differences, both in emotion perception, and as a function of a differential use of emotions. PMID:26483744

Neural processing of fearful and happy facial expressions during emotion-relevant and emotion-irrelevant tasks: A fixation-to-feature approach.

PubMed

Neath-Tavares, Karly N; Itier, Roxane J

2016-09-01

Research suggests an important role of the eyes and mouth for discriminating facial expressions of emotion. A gaze-contingent procedure was used to test the impact of fixation to facial features on the neural response to fearful, happy and neutral facial expressions in an emotion discrimination (Exp.1) and an oddball detection (Exp.2) task. The N170 was the only eye-sensitive ERP component, and this sensitivity did not vary across facial expressions. In both tasks, compared to neutral faces, responses to happy expressions were seen as early as 100-120ms occipitally, while responses to fearful expressions started around 150ms, on or after the N170, at both occipital and lateral-posterior sites. Analyses of scalp topographies revealed different distributions of these two emotion effects across most of the epoch. Emotion processing interacted with fixation location at different times between tasks. Results suggest a role of both the eyes and mouth in the neural processing of fearful expressions and of the mouth in the processing of happy expressions, before 350ms. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Objectifying facial expressivity assessment of Parkinson's patients: preliminary study.

PubMed

Wu, Peng; Gonzalez, Isabel; Patsis, Georgios; Jiang, Dongmei; Sahli, Hichem; Kerckhofs, Eric; Vandekerckhove, Marie

2014-01-01

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) can exhibit a reduction of spontaneous facial expression, designated as "facial masking," a symptom in which facial muscles become rigid. To improve clinical assessment of facial expressivity of PD, this work attempts to quantify the dynamic facial expressivity (facial activity) of PD by automatically recognizing facial action units (AUs) and estimating their intensity. Spontaneous facial expressivity was assessed by comparing 7 PD patients with 8 control participants. To voluntarily produce spontaneous facial expressions that resemble those typically triggered by emotions, six emotions (amusement, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear) were elicited using movie clips. During the movie clips, physiological signals (facial electromyography (EMG) and electrocardiogram (ECG)) and frontal face video of the participants were recorded. The participants were asked to report on their emotional states throughout the experiment. We first examined the effectiveness of the emotion manipulation by evaluating the participant's self-reports. Disgust-induced emotions were significantly higher than the other emotions. Thus we focused on the analysis of the recorded data during watching disgust movie clips. The proposed facial expressivity assessment approach captured differences in facial expressivity between PD patients and controls. Also differences between PD patients with different progression of Parkinson's disease have been observed.

The role of working memory in decoding emotions.

PubMed

Phillips, Louise H; Channon, Shelley; Tunstall, Mary; Hedenstrom, Anna; Lyons, Kathryn

2008-04-01

Decoding facial expressions of emotion is an important aspect of social communication that is often impaired following psychiatric or neurological illness. However, little is known of the cognitive components involved in perceiving emotional expressions. Three dual task studies explored the role of verbal working memory in decoding emotions. Concurrent working memory load substantially interfered with choosing which emotional label described a facial expression (Experiment 1). A key factor in the magnitude of interference was the number of emotion labels from which to choose (Experiment 2). In contrast the ability to decide that two faces represented the same emotion in a discrimination task was relatively unaffected by concurrent working memory load (Experiment 3). Different methods of assessing emotion perception make substantially different demands on working memory. Implications for clinical disorders which affect both working memory and emotion perception are considered. (Copyright) 2008 APA.

Nursing Students in a Global Learning Environment: Creative Teaching Methods on Culture, Emotion, and Communication.

PubMed

Wilhelm, Dalit; Zlotnick, Cheryl

2014-07-01

Two tools were created to help international students to better understand culture by becoming more astute observers of nonverbal behaviors, particularly behaviors depicting emotions among Norwegian students. The two tools were a trilingual list of words illustrating emotions and an exercise with images to practice verbalizing their observations of emotional expression. Students compared the subdued behaviors of Norwegians to the Israelis' very vivid behaviors. The intense emotional expression of Israelis influenced their interpretations. By making comparisons and through the experiences with Israelis, they learned more about culture and their own emotional expression. Creative strategies can contribute to students understanding and reflection of patients in a different culture. Encouraging students to grasp the nuances of emotional expression is part of understanding a different culture. Students, like faculty, learn that self-exploration is an evolving process that requires checking out one's assumptions and interpretations. © The Author(s) 2013.

When your face describes your memories: facial expressions during retrieval of autobiographical memories.

PubMed

El Haj, Mohamad; Daoudi, Mohamed; Gallouj, Karim; Moustafa, Ahmed A; Nandrino, Jean-Louis

2018-05-11

Thanks to the current advances in the software analysis of facial expressions, there is a burgeoning interest in understanding emotional facial expressions observed during the retrieval of autobiographical memories. This review describes the research on facial expressions during autobiographical retrieval showing distinct emotional facial expressions according to the characteristics of retrieved memoires. More specifically, this research demonstrates that the retrieval of emotional memories can trigger corresponding emotional facial expressions (e.g. positive memories may trigger positive facial expressions). Also, this study demonstrates the variations of facial expressions according to specificity, self-relevance, or past versus future direction of memory construction. Besides linking research on facial expressions during autobiographical retrieval to cognitive and affective characteristics of autobiographical memory in general, this review positions this research within the broader context research on the physiologic characteristics of autobiographical retrieval. We also provide several perspectives for clinical studies to investigate facial expressions in populations with deficits in autobiographical memory (e.g. whether autobiographical overgenerality in neurologic and psychiatric populations may trigger few emotional facial expressions). In sum, this review paper demonstrates how the evaluation of facial expressions during autobiographical retrieval may help understand the functioning and dysfunctioning of autobiographical memory.

Emotional word usage in groups at risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders: An objective investigation of attention to emotion

PubMed Central

Fung, Christie K.; Moore, Melody M.; Karcher, Nicole R.; Kerns, John G.; Martin, Elizabeth A.

2017-01-01

Both extreme levels of social anhedonia (SocAnh) and extreme levels of perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag) indicate increased risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and are associated with emotional deficits. For SocAnh, there is evidence of self-reported decreased trait positive affect and abnormalities in emotional attention. For PerMag, there is evidence of increased trait negative affect and increased attention to negative emotion. Yet, the nature of more objective emotional abnormalities in these groups is unclear. The goal of this study was to assess attention to emotions more objectively in a SocAnh, PerMag, and control group by using a positive (vs. neutral) mood induction procedure followed by a free writing period. Linguistic analyses revealed that the SocAnh group used fewer positive emotion words than the control group, with the PerMag group falling in between the others. In addition, both at-risk groups used more negative emotion words than the control group. Also, for the control group only, those in the positive mood induction used more positive emotion words, suggesting their emotions influenced their linguistic expression. Overall, SocAnh is associated with decreased positive emotional expression and at-risk groups are associated with increased negative emotional expression and a decreased influence of emotions on linguistic expression. PMID:28242515

Emotional word usage in groups at risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders: An objective investigation of attention to emotion.

PubMed

Fung, Christie K; Moore, Melody M; Karcher, Nicole R; Kerns, John G; Martin, Elizabeth A

2017-06-01

Both extreme levels of social anhedonia (SocAnh) and extreme levels of perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag) indicate increased risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and are associated with emotional deficits. For SocAnh, there is evidence of self-reported decreased trait positive affect and abnormalities in emotional attention. For PerMag, there is evidence of increased trait negative affect and increased attention to negative emotion. Yet, the nature of more objective emotional abnormalities in these groups is unclear. The goal of this study was to assess attention to emotions more objectively in a SocAnh, PerMag, and control group by using a positive (vs. neutral) mood induction procedure followed by a free writing period. Linguistic analyses revealed that the SocAnh group used fewer positive emotion words than the control group, with the PerMag group falling in between the others. In addition, both at-risk groups used more negative emotion words than the control group. Also, for the control group only, those in the positive mood induction used more positive emotion words, suggesting their emotions influenced their linguistic expression. Overall, SocAnh is associated with decreased positive emotional expression and at-risk groups are associated with increased negative emotional expression and a decreased influence of emotions on linguistic expression. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The autistic child's appraisal of expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Hobson, R P

1986-05-01

Groups of MA-matched autistic, normal and non-autistic retarded children were tested for their ability to choose drawn and photographed facial expressions of emotion to "go with" a person videotaped in gestures, vocalizations and contexts indicative of four emotional states. Although both autistic and control subjects were adept in choosing drawings of non-personal objects to correspond with videotaped cues, the autistic children were markedly impaired in selecting the appropriate faces for the videotaped expressions and contexts. Within the autistic group, the children's performance in this task of emotion recognition was related to MA. It is suggested that autistic children have difficulty in recognizing how different expressions of particular emotions are associated with each other, and that this might contribute to their failure to understand the emotional states of other people.

Emotional competence and extrinsic emotion regulation directed toward an ostracized person.

PubMed

Nozaki, Yuki

2015-12-01

Positive interpersonal relationships hinge on individuals' competence in regulating others' emotions as well as their own. Nevertheless, little is known about the relationship between emotional competence and specific interpersonal behaviors. In particular, it is unclear which situations require emotional competence for extrinsic emotion regulation and whether emotionally competent individuals actually attempt to regulate others' emotions. To clarify these issues, the current investigation examined the relationship between emotional competence and extrinsic emotion regulation directed toward an ostracized person. The results of Study 1 (N = 39) indicated that interpersonal emotional competence (competence related to others' emotions) was positively associated with participants' efforts to relieve the ostracized person's sadness. In Study 2 (N = 120), this relationship was moderated by the ostracized person's emotional expression. In particular, participants with high interpersonal emotional competence were more likely to attempt to regulate the sadness of ostracized individuals who expressed neutral affect. In contrast, when the ostracized person expressed sadness, there were no significant relationships between high or low interpersonal emotional competence and extrinsic emotion regulation behavior. These results offer novel insight into how emotionally competent individuals use their competence to benefit others. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Affective theory of mind inferences contextually influence the recognition of emotional facial expressions.

PubMed

Stewart, Suzanne L K; Schepman, Astrid; Haigh, Matthew; McHugh, Rhian; Stewart, Andrew J

2018-03-14

The recognition of emotional facial expressions is often subject to contextual influence, particularly when the face and the context convey similar emotions. We investigated whether spontaneous, incidental affective theory of mind inferences made while reading vignettes describing social situations would produce context effects on the identification of same-valenced emotions (Experiment 1) as well as differently-valenced emotions (Experiment 2) conveyed by subsequently presented faces. Crucially, we found an effect of context on reaction times in both experiments while, in line with previous work, we found evidence for a context effect on accuracy only in Experiment 1. This demonstrates that affective theory of mind inferences made at the pragmatic level of a text can automatically, contextually influence the perceptual processing of emotional facial expressions in a separate task even when those emotions are of a distinctive valence. Thus, our novel findings suggest that language acts as a contextual influence to the recognition of emotional facial expressions for both same and different valences.

Dynamic Displays Enhance the Ability to Discriminate Genuine and Posed Facial Expressions of Emotion

PubMed Central

Namba, Shushi; Kabir, Russell S.; Miyatani, Makoto; Nakao, Takashi

2018-01-01

Accurately gauging the emotional experience of another person is important for navigating interpersonal interactions. This study investigated whether perceivers are capable of distinguishing between unintentionally expressed (genuine) and intentionally manipulated (posed) facial expressions attributed to four major emotions: amusement, disgust, sadness, and surprise. Sensitivity to this discrimination was explored by comparing unstaged dynamic and static facial stimuli and analyzing the results with signal detection theory. Participants indicated whether facial stimuli presented on a screen depicted a person showing a given emotion and whether that person was feeling a given emotion. The results showed that genuine displays were evaluated more as felt expressions than posed displays for all target emotions presented. In addition, sensitivity to the perception of emotional experience, or discriminability, was enhanced in dynamic facial displays, but was less pronounced in the case of static displays. This finding indicates that dynamic information in facial displays contributes to the ability to accurately infer the emotional experiences of another person. PMID:29896135

An experimental investigation of verbal expression of emotion in anorexia and bulimia nervosa.

PubMed

Davies, Helen; Swan, Nicola; Schmidt, Ulrike; Tchanturia, Kate

2012-11-01

This study aims to use an experimental design to investigate verbal expression of emotion in anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). Forty-two patients with AN, 26 patients with BN and 34 healthy controls (HCs) were videoed talking about discrete emotional experiences. Talks were analysed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Participants also completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ). People with AN used fewer words when describing their emotional experiences and fewer positive affect words than HCs. People with BN were indistinguishable from HCs. Both ED groups had higher scores on the suppression subscale of the ERQ compared with HCs. Suppression was negatively correlated with negative verbal expression. This study highlights differences between AN and BN in emotion expression. It supports a model of AN, which highlights emotion inhibition as a maintaining factor of the illness. Methods of emotion regulation in EDs may contribute to increased negative mood and poorer social functioning. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin on the Interpretation and Expression of Emotions in Anorexia Nervosa.

PubMed

Leppanen, J; Cardi, V; Ng, K W; Paloyelis, Y; Stein, D; Tchanturia, K; Treasure, J

2017-03-01

Altered social-emotional functioning is considered to play an important role in the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). Recently, there has been increasing interest in investigating the role of intranasal oxytocin in social-emotional processing. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of intranasal oxytocin on the interpretation and expression of emotions among people with AN. Thirty women with AN and 29 age-matched healthy women took part in the present study, which used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design. The participants received a single dose of 40 IU of intranasal oxytocin in one session and a placebo spray in the other. Fifteen minutes after administration, the participants completed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test to assess the interpretation of complex emotions and mental states followed by a video task, which assessed expressions of facial affect when they were viewing humorous and sad film clips. The intranasal oxytocin did not significantly influence the expression or interpretation of emotions in the AN or healthy comparison groups. The AN group expressed significantly less positive emotion, spent more time looking away and reported experiencing a significantly more negative affect in response to the film clips. The finding that intranasal oxytocin had little to no effect on the interpretation or expression of emotions in either group supports the notion that the effects of oxytocin on social-emotional processing are not straightforward and may depend on individual and environmental differences, as well as the emotion being processed. Replication of these findings is necessary to explore the effect of timing on the effects of oxytocin before firm conclusions can be drawn. Nonetheless, these findings add to the steady accumulation of evidence that people with AN have reduced emotional expression and avoidance of emotionally provoking stimuli. © 2017 The Authors. Journal of Neuroendocrinology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Society for Neuroendocrinology.

Understanding ironic criticism and empathic praise: The role of emotive communication.

PubMed

Agostino, Alba; Im-Bolter, Nancie; Stefanatos, Arianna K; Dennis, Maureen

2017-06-01

Ironic criticism and empathic praise are forms of social communication that influence the affective states of others in a negative or positive way. In a sample of 76 typically developing children and adolescents (mean age = 11 years; 4 months; SD: 2 years; 8 months), we studied how understanding of emotional expression (facial expression of emotion) and emotive communication (affective theory of mind) was related to the ability to understand negatively valenced ironic criticism and positively valenced empathic praise. We modelled comprehension of irony and empathy in school-aged children in relation to age and understanding of emotional expression and emotive communication. As expected, children showed significantly better understanding of emotional expression than emotive communication, which requires understanding why someone might mask their inner emotions. Meditational analyses showed that emotive communication partially mediated the relation between age and understanding ironic criticism and empathic praise. These findings suggest that the development of understanding irony and empathy over the school-age years is associated with affective attributions or affective theory of mind. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Theory of mind has been found to be related to the developmental understanding of social communication. Correct interpretation of facial emotional cues is also important for interpreting social communication. What does this study add? Affective components (i.e., affective theory of mind) also contribute to the development of social communication. Emotive communication, the ability to modulate one's emotional expression according to social display rules may be predictive of social communication competency. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Physiological and Cognitive Effects of Expressive Dissonance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robinson, Jennifer L.; Demaree, Heath A.

2007-01-01

Emotional well-being depends in part on affect modulation. The present study extends research on emotion regulation by assessing the physiological and cognitive effects of a novel response-focused regulation strategy, termed "expressive dissonance." Expressive dissonance refers to the incongruence between an emotional state (e.g., sadness) and a…

Differential Language Functioning of Monolinguals and Bilinguals on Positive-Negative Emotional Expression

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kheirzadeh, Shiela; Hajiabed, Mohammadreza

2016-01-01

The present interdisciplinary research investigates the differential emotional expression between Persian monolinguals and Persian-English bilinguals. In other words, the article was an attempt to answer the questions whether bilinguals and monolinguals differ in the expression of positive and negative emotions elicited through sad and happy…

Adult Perceptions of Positive and Negative Infant Emotional Expressions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bolzani Dinehart, Laura H.; Messinger, Daniel S.; Acosta, Susan I.; Cassel, Tricia; Ambadar, Zara; Cohn, Jeffrey

2005-01-01

Adults' perceptions provide information about the emotional meaning of infant facial expressions. This study asks whether similar facial movements influence adult perceptions of emotional intensity in both infant positive (smile) and negative (cry face) facial expressions. Ninety-five college students rated a series of naturally occurring and…

Marital Satisfaction, Family Emotional Expressiveness, Home Learning Environments, and Children's Emergent Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Froyen, Laura C.; Skibbe, Lori E.; Bowles, Ryan P.; Blow, Adrian J.; Gerde, Hope K.

2013-01-01

The current study investigates associations among marital satisfaction, family emotional expressiveness, the home learning environment, and preschool-aged children's emergent literacy skills among 385 Midwestern mothers and their children. Path analyses examined how marital satisfaction related to emotional expressiveness in the home and whether…

Preschoolers' Emotion Expression and Regulation: Relations with School Adjustment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herndon, Kristina J.; Bailey, Craig S.; Shewark, Elizabeth A.; Denham, Susanne A.; Bassett, Hideko H.

2013-01-01

Children's expression and regulation of emotions are building blocks of their experiences in classrooms. Thus, the authors' primary goal was to investigate whether preschoolers' expression or ability to regulate emotions were associated with teachers' ratings of school adjustment. A secondary goal was to investigate how boys and girls differed…

Facial recognition in education system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Krithika, L. B.; Venkatesh, K.; Rathore, S.; Kumar, M. Harish

2017-11-01

Human beings exploit emotions comprehensively for conveying messages and their resolution. Emotion detection and face recognition can provide an interface between the individuals and technologies. The most successful applications of recognition analysis are recognition of faces. Many different techniques have been used to recognize the facial expressions and emotion detection handle varying poses. In this paper, we approach an efficient method to recognize the facial expressions to track face points and distances. This can automatically identify observer face movements and face expression in image. This can capture different aspects of emotion and facial expressions.

Developmental changes in facial expressions of emotions in the strange situation during the second year of life.

PubMed

Izard, Carroll E; Abe, Jo Ann A

2004-09-01

Infants' expressions of discrete emotions were coded during the more stressful episodes (4 through 8) of the Strange Situation at 13 and 18 months. The data showed a significant decrease in full-face expressions (more complex configurations of movements) and a significant increase in component expressions (simpler and more constrained patterns of movements). The authors interpreted this trend as a developmental change toward more regulated and less intense emotions. Consistent with this view, the aggregate index of infants' full-face negative emotion expressions, interpreted as reflecting relatively unregulated intense emotions, correlated significantly with maternal ratings of difficult temperament. The authors discuss alternative interpretations of the findings in terms of changes in reactivity/arousability and the emerging capacity for self-regulation. (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved

Gender Differences in the Social Cost of Affective Deviance.

PubMed

Brown, Christina M; Olkhov, Yevgeniy M; Bailey, Veronika S; Daniels, Emily R

2015-01-01

The current study tested whether men and women receive different degrees of social punishment for violating norms of emotional expression. Participants watched videos of male and female targets (whose reactions were pre-tested to be equivalent in expressivity and valence) viewing either a positive or negative slideshow, with their emotional reaction to the slideshow manipulated to be affectively congruent, affectively incongruent, or flat. Participants then rated the target on a number of social evaluation measures. Displaying an incongruent emotional expression, relative to a congruent one, harmed judgments of women more than men. Women are expected to be more emotionally expressive than men, making an incongruent expression more deviant for women. These results highlight the importance of social norms in construing another person's emotion displays, which can subsequently determine acceptance or rejection of that person.

Are event-related potentials to dynamic facial expressions of emotion related to individual differences in the accuracy of processing facial expressions and identity?

PubMed

Recio, Guillermo; Wilhelm, Oliver; Sommer, Werner; Hildebrandt, Andrea

2017-04-01

Despite a wealth of knowledge about the neural mechanisms behind emotional facial expression processing, little is known about how they relate to individual differences in social cognition abilities. We studied individual differences in the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by dynamic facial expressions. First, we assessed the latent structure of the ERPs, reflecting structural face processing in the N170, and the allocation of processing resources and reflexive attention to emotionally salient stimuli, in the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive complex (LPC). Then we estimated brain-behavior relationships between the ERP factors and behavioral indicators of facial identity and emotion-processing abilities. Structural models revealed that the participants who formed faster structural representations of neutral faces (i.e., shorter N170 latencies) performed better at face perception (r = -.51) and memory (r = -.42). The N170 amplitude was not related to individual differences in face cognition or emotion processing. The latent EPN factor correlated with emotion perception (r = .47) and memory (r = .32), and also with face perception abilities (r = .41). Interestingly, the latent factor representing the difference in EPN amplitudes between the two neutral control conditions (chewing and blinking movements) also correlated with emotion perception (r = .51), highlighting the importance of tracking facial changes in the perception of emotional facial expressions. The LPC factor for negative expressions correlated with the memory for emotional facial expressions. The links revealed between the latency and strength of activations of brain systems and individual differences in processing socio-emotional information provide new insights into the brain mechanisms involved in social communication.

The expression and recognition of emotions in the voice across five nations: A lens model analysis based on acoustic features.

PubMed

Laukka, Petri; Elfenbein, Hillary Anger; Thingujam, Nutankumar S; Rockstuhl, Thomas; Iraki, Frederick K; Chui, Wanda; Althoff, Jean

2016-11-01

This study extends previous work on emotion communication across cultures with a large-scale investigation of the physical expression cues in vocal tone. In doing so, it provides the first direct test of a key proposition of dialect theory, namely that greater accuracy of detecting emotions from one's own cultural group-known as in-group advantage-results from a match between culturally specific schemas in emotional expression style and culturally specific schemas in emotion recognition. Study 1 used stimuli from 100 professional actors from five English-speaking nations vocally conveying 11 emotional states (anger, contempt, fear, happiness, interest, lust, neutral, pride, relief, sadness, and shame) using standard-content sentences. Detailed acoustic analyses showed many similarities across groups, and yet also systematic group differences. This provides evidence for cultural accents in expressive style at the level of acoustic cues. In Study 2, listeners evaluated these expressions in a 5 × 5 design balanced across groups. Cross-cultural accuracy was greater than expected by chance. However, there was also in-group advantage, which varied across emotions. A lens model analysis of fundamental acoustic properties examined patterns in emotional expression and perception within and across groups. Acoustic cues were used relatively similarly across groups both to produce and judge emotions, and yet there were also subtle cultural differences. Speakers appear to have a culturally nuanced schema for enacting vocal tones via acoustic cues, and perceivers have a culturally nuanced schema in judging them. Consistent with dialect theory's prediction, in-group judgments showed a greater match between these schemas used for emotional expression and perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Event-Related Potentials of Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processing of Emotional Faces

PubMed Central

Moradi, Afsane; Mehrinejad, Seyed Abolghasem; Ghadiri, Mohammad; Rezaei, Farzin

2017-01-01

Introduction: Emotional stimulus is processed automatically in a bottom-up way or can be processed voluntarily in a top-down way. Imaging studies have indicated that bottom-up and top-down processing are mediated through different neural systems. However, temporal differentiation of top-down versus bottom-up processing of facial emotional expressions has remained to be clarified. The present study aimed to explore the time course of these processes as indexed by the emotion-specific P100 and late positive potential (LPP) event-related potential (ERP) components in a group of healthy women. Methods: Fourteen female students of Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran aged 18–30 years, voluntarily participated in the study. The subjects completed 2 overt and covert emotional tasks during ERP acquisition. Results: The results indicated that fearful expressions significantly produced greater P100 amplitude compared to other expressions. Moreover, the P100 findings showed an interaction between emotion and processing conditions. Further analysis indicated that within the overt condition, fearful expressions elicited more P100 amplitude compared to other emotional expressions. Also, overt conditions created significantly more LPP latencies and amplitudes compared to covert conditions. Conclusion: Based on the results, early perceptual processing of fearful face expressions is enhanced in top-down way compared to bottom-up way. It also suggests that P100 may reflect an attentional bias toward fearful emotions. However, no such differentiation was observed within later processing stages of face expressions, as indexed by the ERP LPP component, in a top-down versus bottom-up way. Overall, this study provides a basis for further exploring of bottom-up and top-down processes underlying emotion and may be typically helpful for investigating the temporal characteristics associated with impaired emotional processing in psychiatric disorders. PMID:28446947

The similiarity of facial expressions in response to emotion-inducing films in reared-apart twins.

PubMed

Kendler, K S; Halberstadt, L J; Butera, F; Myers, J; Bouchard, T; Ekman, P

2008-10-01

While the role of genetic factors in self-report measures of emotion has been frequently studied, we know little about the degree to which genetic factors influence emotional facial expressions. Twenty-eight pairs of monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart were shown three emotion-inducing films and their facial responses recorded. These recordings were blindly scored by trained raters. Ranked correlations between twins were calculated controlling for age and sex. Twin pairs were significantly correlated for facial expressions of general positive emotions, happiness, surprise and anger, but not for general negative emotions, sadness, or disgust or average emotional intensity. MZ pairs (n=18) were more correlated than DZ pairs (n=10) for most but not all emotional expressions. Since these twin pairs had minimal contact with each other prior to testing, these results support significant genetic effects on the facial display of at least some human emotions in response to standardized stimuli. The small sample size resulted in estimated twin correlations with very wide confidence intervals.

Emotion in the wilds of nature: The coherence and contagion of fear during threatening group-based outdoors experiences.

PubMed

Anderson, Craig L; Monroy, Maria; Keltner, Dacher

2018-04-01

Emotional expressions communicate information about the individual's internal state and evoke responses in others that enable coordinated action. The current work investigated the informative and evocative properties of fear vocalizations in a sample of youth from underserved communities and military veterans while white-water rafting. Video-taped footage of participants rafting through white-water rapids was coded for vocal and facial expressions of fear, amusement, pride, and awe, yielding more than 1,300 coded expressions, which were then related to measures of subjective emotion and cortisol response. Consistent with informative properties of emotional expressions, fear vocalizations were positively and significantly related to facial expressions of fear, subjective reports of fear, and individuals' cortisol levels measured after the rafting trip. It is important to note that this coherent pattern was unique to fear vocalizations; vocalizations of amusement, pride, and awe were not significantly related to fear expressions in the face, subjective reports of fear, or cortisol levels. Demonstrating the evocative properties of emotional expression, fear vocalizations of individuals appeared to evoke fear vocalizations in other people in their raft, and cortisol levels of individuals within rafts similarly converged at the end of the trip. We discuss how the study of spontaneous emotion expressions in naturalistic settings can help address basic yet controversial questions about emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceiving emotional expressions in others: Activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses of explicit evaluation, passive perception and incidental perception of emotions.

PubMed

Dricu, Mihai; Frühholz, Sascha

2016-12-01

We conducted a series of activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses to determine the commonalities and distinctions between separate levels of emotion perception, namely incidental perception, passive perception, and explicit evaluation of emotional expressions. Pooling together more than 180 neuroimaging experiments using facial, vocal or body expressions, our results are threefold. First, explicitly evaluating the emotions of others recruits brain regions associated with the sensory processing of expressions, such as the inferior occipital gyrus, middle fusiform gyrus and the superior temporal gyrus, and brain regions involved in low-level and high-level mindreading, namely the posterior superior temporal sulcus, the inferior frontal cortex and dorsomedial frontal cortex. Second, we show that only the sensory regions were also consistently active during the passive perception of emotional expressions. Third, we show that the brain regions involved in mindreading were active during the explicit evaluation of both facial and vocal expressions. We discuss these results in light of the existing literature and conclude by proposing a cognitive model for perceiving and evaluating the emotions of others. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automatic integration of social information in emotion recognition.

PubMed

Mumenthaler, Christian; Sander, David

2015-04-01

This study investigated the automaticity of the influence of social inference on emotion recognition. Participants were asked to recognize dynamic facial expressions of emotion (fear or anger in Experiment 1 and blends of fear and surprise or of anger and disgust in Experiment 2) in a target face presented at the center of a screen while a subliminal contextual face appearing in the periphery expressed an emotion (fear or anger) or not (neutral) and either looked at the target face or not. Results of Experiment 1 revealed that recognition of the target emotion of fear was improved when a subliminal angry contextual face gazed toward-rather than away from-the fearful face. We replicated this effect in Experiment 2, in which facial expression blends of fear and surprise were more often and more rapidly categorized as expressing fear when the subliminal contextual face expressed anger and gazed toward-rather than away from-the target face. With the contextual face appearing for 30 ms in total, including only 10 ms of emotion expression, and being immediately masked, our data provide the first evidence that social influence on emotion recognition can occur automatically. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's understanding of facial expression of emotion: II. Drawing of emotion-faces.

PubMed

Missaghi-Lakshman, M; Whissell, C

1991-06-01

67 children from Grades 2, 4, and 7 drew faces representing the emotional expressions of fear, anger, surprise, disgust, happiness, and sadness. The children themselves and 29 adults later decoded the drawings in an emotion-recognition task. Children were the more accurate decoders, and their accuracy and the accuracy of adults increased significantly for judgments of 7th-grade drawings. The emotions happy and sad were most accurately decoded. There were no significant differences associated with sex. In their drawings, children utilized a symbol system that seems to be based on a highlighting or exaggeration of features of the innately governed facial expression of emotion.

A wearable device for emotional recognition using facial expression and physiological response.

PubMed

Jangho Kwon; Da-Hye Kim; Wanjoo Park; Laehyun Kim

2016-08-01

This paper introduces a glasses-typed wearable system to detect user's emotions using facial expression and physiological responses. The system is designed to acquire facial expression through a built-in camera and physiological responses such as photoplethysmogram (PPG) and electrodermal activity (EDA) in unobtrusive way. We used video clips for induced emotions to test the system suitability in the experiment. The results showed a few meaningful properties that associate emotions with facial expressions and physiological responses captured by the developed wearable device. We expect that this wearable system with a built-in camera and physiological sensors may be a good solution to monitor user's emotional state in daily life.

Compound facial expressions of emotion: from basic research to clinical applications

PubMed Central

Du, Shichuan; Martinez, Aleix M.

2015-01-01

Emotions are sometimes revealed through facial expressions. When these natural facial articulations involve the contraction of the same muscle groups in people of distinct cultural upbringings, this is taken as evidence of a biological origin of these emotions. While past research had identified facial expressions associated with a single internally felt category (eg, the facial expression of happiness when we feel joyful), we have recently studied facial expressions observed when people experience compound emotions (eg, the facial expression of happy surprise when we feel joyful in a surprised way, as, for example, at a surprise birthday party). Our research has identified 17 compound expressions consistently produced across cultures, suggesting that the number of facial expressions of emotion of biological origin is much larger than previously believed. The present paper provides an overview of these findings and shows evidence supporting the view that spontaneous expressions are produced using the same facial articulations previously identified in laboratory experiments. We also discuss the implications of our results in the study of psychopathologies, and consider several open research questions. PMID:26869845

Recognizing Emotion in Faces: Developmental Effects of Child Abuse and Neglect.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pollak, Seth D.; Cicchetti, Dante; Hornung, Katherine; Reed, Alex

2000-01-01

Two experiments assessed recognition of emotion among physically abused and neglected preschoolers. Results showed that neglected children had more difficulty discriminating emotional expressions that control or abused children. Abused children displayed response bias for angry facial expressions. Control children viewed discrete emotions as…

Australian Children's Understanding of Display Rules

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Choy, Grace

2009-01-01

Cultural display rules govern the manifestation of emotional expressions. In compliance with display rules, the facial expressions displayed (i.e. apparent emotion) may be incongruent with the emotion experienced (i.e. real emotion). This study investigates Australian Caucasian children's understanding of display rules. A sample of 80 four year…

Clear signals or mixed messages: inter-individual emotion congruency modulates brain activity underlying affective body perception

PubMed Central

de Gelder, B.

2016-01-01

The neural basis of emotion perception has mostly been investigated with single face or body stimuli. However, in daily life one may also encounter affective expressions by groups, e.g. an angry mob or an exhilarated concert crowd. In what way is brain activity modulated when several individuals express similar rather than different emotions? We investigated this question using an experimental design in which we presented two stimuli simultaneously, with same or different emotional expressions. We hypothesized that, in the case of two same-emotion stimuli, brain activity would be enhanced, while in the case of two different emotions, one emotion would interfere with the effect of the other. The results showed that the simultaneous perception of different affective body expressions leads to a deactivation of the amygdala and a reduction of cortical activity. It was revealed that the processing of fearful bodies, compared with different-emotion bodies, relied more strongly on saliency and action triggering regions in inferior parietal lobe and insula, while happy bodies drove the occipito-temporal cortex more strongly. We showed that this design could be used to uncover important differences between brain networks underlying fearful and happy emotions. The enhancement of brain activity for unambiguous affective signals expressed by several people simultaneously supports adaptive behaviour in critical situations. PMID:27025242

Practice nurses mental health provide space to patients to discuss unpleasant emotions.

PubMed

Griep, E C M; Noordman, J; van Dulmen, S

2016-03-01

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?: A core skill of practice nurses' mental health is to recognize and explore patients' unpleasant emotions. Patients rarely express their unpleasant emotions directly and spontaneously, but instead give indirect signs that something is worrying them. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE?: Patients with mild psychosocial and psychological problems provide signs of worrying or express a clear unpleasant emotion in 94% of consultations with a practice nurse mental health. Nurses' responses to patients' signs of worrying or clear unpleasant emotions were mostly characterized by providing space for patients to talk about these emotions, by using minimal responses. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE?: Practice nurses' mental health have passive listening skills, and to a lesser extent, use active listening techniques. Accurate emotion detection and the ability to pick out emotional signs during consultations must also be considered as an important skill for health providers to improve patient-centred communication. Patients with physical problems are known to express their emotional concerns in an implicit way only. Whether the same counts for patients presenting mental health problems in primary care is unknown. This study aims to examine how patients with mild psychosocial and psychological complaints express their concerns during consultations with the practice nurse mental health and how practice nurses respond to these expressions. Fifteen practice nurses mental health working in Dutch general practices participated in the study. Their consultations with 116 patients with mild psychosocial or psychological complaints were video recorded. patients' explicitly expressed emotional concerns and more implicit expressions of underlying emotional problems (cues) as well as nurses' responses to these expressions were rated using the Verona Coding Definition of Emotional Sequences. Almost all consultations contained at least one cue or concern (94%). Nurses' responses were mostly characterized by providing space for patients to talk about their cue or concern in a non-explicit way (62%), by using minimal responses (42%). Practice nurses mental health have passive listening skills, and to a lesser extent, use active listening techniques. However, there are no strict rules which way of responding is the best and patients value responses differently. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Spontaneous Facial Actions Map onto Emotional Experiences in a Non-social Context: Toward a Component-Based Approach

PubMed Central

Namba, Shushi; Kabir, Russell S.; Miyatani, Makoto; Nakao, Takashi

2017-01-01

While numerous studies have examined the relationships between facial actions and emotions, they have yet to account for the ways that specific spontaneous facial expressions map onto emotional experiences induced without expressive intent. Moreover, previous studies emphasized that a fine-grained investigation of facial components could establish the coherence of facial actions with actual internal states. Therefore, this study aimed to accumulate evidence for the correspondence between spontaneous facial components and emotional experiences. We reinvestigated data from previous research which secretly recorded spontaneous facial expressions of Japanese participants as they watched film clips designed to evoke four different target emotions: surprise, amusement, disgust, and sadness. The participants rated their emotional experiences via a self-reported questionnaire of 16 emotions. These spontaneous facial expressions were coded using the Facial Action Coding System, the gold standard for classifying visible facial movements. We corroborated each facial action that was present in the emotional experiences by applying stepwise regression models. The results found that spontaneous facial components occurred in ways that cohere to their evolutionary functions based on the rating values of emotional experiences (e.g., the inner brow raiser might be involved in the evaluation of novelty). This study provided new empirical evidence for the correspondence between each spontaneous facial component and first-person internal states of emotion as reported by the expresser. PMID:28522979

Food-Induced Emotional Resonance Improves Emotion Recognition.

PubMed

Pandolfi, Elisa; Sacripante, Riccardo; Cardini, Flavia

2016-01-01

The effect of food substances on emotional states has been widely investigated, showing, for example, that eating chocolate is able to reduce negative mood. Here, for the first time, we have shown that the consumption of specific food substances is not only able to induce particular emotional states, but more importantly, to facilitate recognition of corresponding emotional facial expressions in others. Participants were asked to perform an emotion recognition task before and after eating either a piece of chocolate or a small amount of fish sauce-which we expected to induce happiness or disgust, respectively. Our results showed that being in a specific emotional state improves recognition of the corresponding emotional facial expression. Indeed, eating chocolate improved recognition of happy faces, while disgusted expressions were more readily recognized after eating fish sauce. In line with the embodied account of emotion understanding, we suggest that people are better at inferring the emotional state of others when their own emotional state resonates with the observed one.

Food-Induced Emotional Resonance Improves Emotion Recognition

PubMed Central

Pandolfi, Elisa; Sacripante, Riccardo; Cardini, Flavia

2016-01-01

The effect of food substances on emotional states has been widely investigated, showing, for example, that eating chocolate is able to reduce negative mood. Here, for the first time, we have shown that the consumption of specific food substances is not only able to induce particular emotional states, but more importantly, to facilitate recognition of corresponding emotional facial expressions in others. Participants were asked to perform an emotion recognition task before and after eating either a piece of chocolate or a small amount of fish sauce—which we expected to induce happiness or disgust, respectively. Our results showed that being in a specific emotional state improves recognition of the corresponding emotional facial expression. Indeed, eating chocolate improved recognition of happy faces, while disgusted expressions were more readily recognized after eating fish sauce. In line with the embodied account of emotion understanding, we suggest that people are better at inferring the emotional state of others when their own emotional state resonates with the observed one. PMID:27973559

Deeper than skin deep - The effect of botulinum toxin-A on emotion processing.

PubMed

Baumeister, J-C; Papa, G; Foroni, F

2016-08-01

The effect of facial botulinum Toxin-A (BTX) injections on the processing of emotional stimuli was investigated. The hypothesis, that BTX would interfere with processing of slightly emotional stimuli and less with very emotional or neutral stimuli, was largely confirmed. BTX-users rated slightly emotional sentences and facial expressions, but not very emotional or neutral ones, as less emotional after the treatment. Furthermore, they became slower at categorizing slightly emotional facial expressions under time pressure. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Decoding of Emotion through Facial Expression, Prosody and Verbal Content in Children and Adolescents with Asperger's Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lindner, Jennifer L.; Rosen, Lee A.

2006-01-01

This study examined differences in the ability to decode emotion through facial expression, prosody, and verbal content between 14 children with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) and 16 typically developing peers. The ability to decode emotion was measured by the Perception of Emotion Test (POET), which portrayed the emotions of happy, angry, sad, and…

Teachers' Negative Experiences and Expressions of Emotion: Being True to Yourself or Keeping You in Your Place?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kitching, Karl

2009-01-01

This paper examines teachers' experiences and displays of negative emotion as a means of partially exploring how identities at work might be formed and regulated. It uses the concepts of emotional labour and subjectivation to interrogate the negative emotions teachers may experience and/or express at work. It suggests that emotion display rules…

Lateralisation effect in comprehension of emotional facial expression: a comparison between EEG alpha band power and behavioural inhibition (BIS) and activation (BAS) systems.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Mazza, Guido

2010-05-01

Asymmetry in comprehension of facial expression of emotions was explored in the present study by analysing alpha band variation within the right and left cortical sides. Second, the behavioural activation system (BAS) and behavioural inhibition system (BIS) were considered as an explicative factor to verify the effect of a motivational/emotional variable on alpha activity. A total of 19 participants looked at an ample range of facial expressions of emotions (anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness, and neutral) in random order. The results demonstrated that anterior frontal sites were more active than central and parietal sites in response to facial stimuli. Moreover, right and left side responses varied as a function of emotional types, with an increased right frontal activity for negative, aversive emotions vs an increased left response for positive emotion. Finally, whereas higher BIS participants generated more right hemisphere activation for some negative emotions (such as fear, anger, surprise, and disgust), BAS participants were more responsive to positive emotion (happiness) within the left hemisphere. Motivational significance of facial expressions was considered to elucidate cortical differences in participants' responses to emotional types.

Emotional expressions beyond facial muscle actions. A call for studying autonomic signals and their impact on social perception

PubMed Central

Kret, Mariska E.

2015-01-01

Humans are well adapted to quickly recognize and adequately respond to another’s emotions. Different theories propose that mimicry of emotional expressions (facial or otherwise) mechanistically underlies, or at least facilitates, these swift adaptive reactions. When people unconsciously mimic their interaction partner’s expressions of emotion, they come to feel reflections of those companions’ emotions, which in turn influence the observer’s own emotional and empathic behavior. The majority of research has focused on facial actions as expressions of emotion. However, the fact that emotions are not just expressed by facial muscles alone is often still ignored in emotion perception research. In this article, I therefore argue for a broader exploration of emotion signals from sources beyond the face muscles that are more automatic and difficult to control. Specifically, I will focus on the perception of implicit sources such as gaze and tears and autonomic responses such as pupil-dilation, eyeblinks and blushing that are subtle yet visible to observers and because they can hardly be controlled or regulated by the sender, provide important “veridical” information. Recently, more research is emerging about the mimicry of these subtle affective signals including pupil-mimicry. I will here review this literature and suggest avenues for future research that will eventually lead to a better comprehension of how these signals help in making social judgments and understand each other’s emotions. PMID:26074855

"Mad Scared" versus "I Was Sad": Emotional expression and response in urban adolescent males.

PubMed

Reigeluth, Christopher S; Pollastri, Alisha R; Cardemil, Esteban V; Addis, Michael E

2016-06-01

Decades of masculinity research have concluded that society places higher demands on males to adhere to norms for low emotional expression; yet, countless studies find that emotional expression is integral to well-being. Unfortunately, this contradiction places boys and men in a tenuous position as they must navigate a bombardment of societal messages about the importance of emotional stoicism and invincibility. For urban adolescents, the situation is more complicated as they encounter environmental stressors that place greater emphasis on projecting a tough façade. Thus, our primary aim was to assess to what degree dyads of close adolescent male friends from urban, low-income neighborhoods are able to engage in emotional expression and response and to explore some of the underlying mechanisms and interpersonal processes. Qualitative findings from our sample suggest that urban boys exhibit a wide range of behaviors when participating in dyadic emotional disclosure and response, including being highly emotionally expressive and supportive in the context of close male friendship. Copyright © 2016 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The visual discrimination of negative facial expressions by younger and older adults.

PubMed

Mienaltowski, Andrew; Johnson, Ellen R; Wittman, Rebecca; Wilson, Anne-Taylor; Sturycz, Cassandra; Norman, J Farley

2013-04-05

Previous research has demonstrated that older adults are not as accurate as younger adults at perceiving negative emotions in facial expressions. These studies rely on emotion recognition tasks that involve choosing between many alternatives, creating the possibility that age differences emerge for cognitive rather than perceptual reasons. In the present study, an emotion discrimination task was used to investigate younger and older adults' ability to visually discriminate between negative emotional facial expressions (anger, sadness, fear, and disgust) at low (40%) and high (80%) expressive intensity. Participants completed trials blocked by pairs of emotions. Discrimination ability was quantified from the participants' responses using signal detection measures. In general, the results indicated that older adults had more difficulty discriminating between low intensity expressions of negative emotions than did younger adults. However, younger and older adults did not differ when discriminating between anger and sadness. These findings demonstrate that age differences in visual emotion discrimination emerge when signal detection measures are used but that these differences are not uniform and occur only in specific contexts.

Hiding true emotions: micro-expressions in eyes retrospectively concealed by mouth movements

PubMed Central

Iwasaki, Miho; Noguchi, Yasuki

2016-01-01

When we encounter someone we dislike, we may momentarily display a reflexive disgust expression, only to follow-up with a forced smile and greeting. Our daily lives are replete with a mixture of true and fake expressions. Nevertheless, are these fake expressions really effective at hiding our true emotions? Here we show that brief emotional changes in the eyes (micro-expressions, thought to reflect true emotions) can be successfully concealed by follow-up mouth movements (e.g. a smile). In the same manner as backward masking, mouth movements of a face inhibited conscious detection of all types of micro-expressions in that face, even when viewers paid full attention to the eye region. This masking works only in a backward direction, however, because no disrupting effect was observed when the mouth change preceded the eye change. These results provide scientific evidence for everyday behaviours like smiling to dissemble, and further clarify a major reason for the difficulty we face in discriminating genuine from fake emotional expressions. PMID:26915796

Emotional voice and emotional body postures influence each other independently of visual awareness.

PubMed

Stienen, Bernard M C; Tanaka, Akihiro; de Gelder, Beatrice

2011-01-01

Multisensory integration may occur independently of visual attention as previously shown with compound face-voice stimuli. We investigated in two experiments whether the perception of whole body expressions and the perception of voices influence each other when observers are not aware of seeing the bodily expression. In the first experiment participants categorized masked happy and angry bodily expressions while ignoring congruent or incongruent emotional voices. The onset between target and mask varied from -50 to +133 ms. Results show that the congruency between the emotion in the voice and the bodily expressions influences audiovisual perception independently of the visibility of the stimuli. In the second experiment participants categorized the emotional voices combined with masked bodily expressions as fearful or happy. This experiment showed that bodily expressions presented outside visual awareness still influence prosody perception. Our experiments show that audiovisual integration between bodily expressions and affective prosody can take place outside and independent of visual awareness.

Hiding true emotions: micro-expressions in eyes retrospectively concealed by mouth movements.

PubMed

Iwasaki, Miho; Noguchi, Yasuki

2016-02-26

When we encounter someone we dislike, we may momentarily display a reflexive disgust expression, only to follow-up with a forced smile and greeting. Our daily lives are replete with a mixture of true and fake expressions. Nevertheless, are these fake expressions really effective at hiding our true emotions? Here we show that brief emotional changes in the eyes (micro-expressions, thought to reflect true emotions) can be successfully concealed by follow-up mouth movements (e.g. a smile). In the same manner as backward masking, mouth movements of a face inhibited conscious detection of all types of micro-expressions in that face, even when viewers paid full attention to the eye region. This masking works only in a backward direction, however, because no disrupting effect was observed when the mouth change preceded the eye change. These results provide scientific evidence for everyday behaviours like smiling to dissemble, and further clarify a major reason for the difficulty we face in discriminating genuine from fake emotional expressions.

Perceiving emotions in neutral faces: expression processing is biased by affective person knowledge.

PubMed

Suess, Franziska; Rabovsky, Milena; Abdel Rahman, Rasha

2015-04-01

According to a widely held view, basic emotions such as happiness or anger are reflected in facial expressions that are invariant and uniquely defined by specific facial muscle movements. Accordingly, expression perception should not be vulnerable to influences outside the face. Here, we test this assumption by manipulating the emotional valence of biographical knowledge associated with individual persons. Faces of well-known and initially unfamiliar persons displaying neutral expressions were associated with socially relevant negative, positive or comparatively neutral biographical information. The expressions of faces associated with negative information were classified as more negative than faces associated with neutral information. Event-related brain potential modulations in the early posterior negativity, a component taken to reflect early sensory processing of affective stimuli such as emotional facial expressions, suggest that negative affective knowledge can bias the perception of faces with neutral expressions toward subjectively displaying negative emotions. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Emotional content modulates response inhibition and perceptual processing.

PubMed

Yang, Suyong; Luo, Wenbo; Zhu, Xiangru; Broster, Lucas S; Chen, Taolin; Li, Jinzhen; Luo, Yuejia

2014-11-01

In this study, event-related potentials were used to investigate the effect of emotion on response inhibition. Participants performed an emotional go/no-go task that required responses to human faces associated with a "go" valence (i.e., emotional, neutral) and response inhibition to human faces associated with a "no-go" valence. Emotional content impaired response inhibition, as evidenced by decreased response accuracy and N2 amplitudes in no-go trials. More importantly, emotional expressions elicited larger N170 amplitudes than neutral expressions, and this effect was larger in no-go than in go trials, indicating that the perceptual processing of emotional expression had priority in inhibitory trials. In no-go trials, correlation analysis showed that increased N170 amplitudes were associated with decreased N2 amplitudes. Taken together, our findings suggest that emotional content impairs response inhibition due to the prioritization of emotional content processing. Copyright © 2014 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Single trial classification for the categories of perceived emotional facial expressions: an event-related fMRI study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Song, Sutao; Huang, Yuxia; Long, Zhiying; Zhang, Jiacai; Chen, Gongxiang; Wang, Shuqing

2016-03-01

Recently, several studies have successfully applied multivariate pattern analysis methods to predict the categories of emotions. These studies are mainly focused on self-experienced emotions, such as the emotional states elicited by music or movie. In fact, most of our social interactions involve perception of emotional information from the expressions of other people, and it is an important basic skill for humans to recognize the emotional facial expressions of other people in a short time. In this study, we aimed to determine the discriminability of perceived emotional facial expressions. In a rapid event-related fMRI design, subjects were instructed to classify four categories of facial expressions (happy, disgust, angry and neutral) by pressing different buttons, and each facial expression stimulus lasted for 2s. All participants performed 5 fMRI runs. One multivariate pattern analysis method, support vector machine was trained to predict the categories of facial expressions. For feature selection, ninety masks defined from anatomical automatic labeling (AAL) atlas were firstly generated and each were treated as the input of the classifier; then, the most stable AAL areas were selected according to prediction accuracies, and comprised the final feature sets. Results showed that: for the 6 pair-wise classification conditions, the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were all above chance prediction, among which, happy vs. neutral , angry vs. disgust achieved the lowest results. These results suggested that specific neural signatures of perceived emotional facial expressions may exist, and happy vs. neutral, angry vs. disgust might be more similar in information representation in the brain.

Multisensory perception of the six basic emotions is modulated by attentional instruction and unattended modality

PubMed Central

Takagi, Sachiko; Hiramatsu, Saori; Tabei, Ken-ichi; Tanaka, Akihiro

2015-01-01

Previous studies have shown that the perception of facial and vocal affective expressions interacts with each other. Facial expressions usually dominate vocal expressions when we perceive the emotions of face–voice stimuli. In most of these studies, participants were instructed to pay attention to the face or voice. Few studies compared the perceived emotions with and without specific instructions regarding the modality to which attention should be directed. Also, these studies used combinations of the face and voice which expresses two opposing emotions, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the emotion perception is modulated by instructions to pay attention to the face or voice using the six basic emotions. Also we examine the modality dominance between the face and voice for each emotion category. Before the experiment, we recorded faces and voices which expresses the six basic emotions and orthogonally combined these faces and voices. Consequently, the emotional valence of visual and auditory information was either congruent or incongruent. In the experiment, there were unisensory and multisensory sessions. The multisensory session was divided into three blocks according to whether an instruction was given to pay attention to a given modality (face attention, voice attention, and no instruction). Participants judged whether the speaker expressed happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, or surprise. Our results revealed that instructions to pay attention to one modality and congruency of the emotions between modalities modulated the modality dominance, and the modality dominance is differed for each emotion category. In particular, the modality dominance for anger changed according to each instruction. Analyses also revealed that the modality dominance suggested by the congruency effect can be explained in terms of the facilitation effect and the interference effect. PMID:25698945

Helping Yourself by Offering Help: Mediators of Expressive Helping in Survivors of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant.

PubMed

Williamson, Timothy J; Stanton, Annette L; Austin, Jane E; Valdimarsdottir, Heiddis B; Wu, Lisa M; Krull, Jennifer L; Rini, Christine M

2017-10-01

A randomized experiment by Rini et al. (Health Psychol. 33(12):1541-1551, 2014) demonstrated that expressive helping, which involves three expressive writing sessions regarding hematopoietic stem cell transplant, followed by one writing session directed toward helping other stem cell transplant recipients, reduced psychological distress and bothersome physical symptoms among stem cell transplant recipients with elevated survivorship problems, relative to a neutral writing control condition. The current study evaluated whether word use reflective of emotional expression, cognitive processing, and change in perspective mediates the effects of expressive helping. The essays of 67 stem cell transplant recipients with high survivorship problems were analyzed with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Multiple mediation modeling was used to test the hypothesized mechanisms of expressive helping on distress and bothersome physical symptoms. Relative to the control condition, expressive helping produced significant reductions in psychological distress and marginal reductions in physical symptom bother in the analyzed subset of participants from the parent study. Results indicated that positive emotion word use significantly mediated effects of expressive helping on reduced distress, but only for participants who used average (compared to above or below average) rates of negative emotion words. Cognitive processing and change in perspective did not significantly mediate benefits of expressive helping. Expressive helping carried its positive effects on distress through participants' higher expression of positive emotions when coupled with moderate rates of negative emotions. Findings highlight the benefit of expressing both positive and negative emotions in stressful situations.

How Context Influences Our Perception of Emotional Faces: A Behavioral Study on the Kuleshov Effect

PubMed Central

Calbi, Marta; Heimann, Katrin; Barratt, Daniel; Siri, Francesca; Umiltà, Maria A.; Gallese, Vittorio

2017-01-01

Facial expressions are of major importance in understanding the mental and emotional states of others. So far, most studies on the perception and comprehension of emotions have used isolated facial expressions as stimuli; for example, photographs of actors displaying facial expressions corresponding to one of the so called ‘basic emotions.’ However, our real experience during social interactions is different: facial expressions of emotion are mostly perceived in a wider context, constituted by body language, the surrounding environment, and our beliefs and expectations. Already in the early twentieth century, the Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov argued that such context, established by intermediate shots of strong emotional content, could significantly change our interpretation of facial expressions in film. Prior experiments have shown behavioral effects pointing in this direction, but have only used static images as stimuli. Our study used a more ecological design with participants watching film sequences of neutral faces, crosscut with scenes of strong emotional content (evoking happiness or fear, plus neutral stimuli as a baseline condition). The task was to rate the emotion displayed by a target person’s face in terms of valence, arousal, and category. Results clearly demonstrated the presence of a significant effect in terms of both valence and arousal in the fear condition only. Moreover, participants tended to categorize the target person’s neutral facial expression choosing the emotion category congruent with the preceding context. Our results highlight the context-sensitivity of emotions and the importance of studying them under ecologically valid conditions. PMID:29046652

Emotion perception across cultures: the role of cognitive mechanisms

PubMed Central

Engelmann, Jan B.; Pogosyan, Marianna

2012-01-01

Despite consistently documented cultural differences in the perception of facial expressions of emotion, the role of culture in shaping cognitive mechanisms that are central to emotion perception has received relatively little attention in past research. We review recent developments in cross-cultural psychology that provide particular insights into the modulatory role of culture on cognitive mechanisms involved in interpretations of facial expressions of emotion through two distinct routes: display rules and cognitive styles. Investigations of emotion intensity perception have demonstrated that facial expressions with varying levels of intensity of positive affect are perceived and categorized differently across cultures. Specifically, recent findings indicating significant levels of differentiation between intensity levels of facial expressions among American participants, as well as deviations from clear categorization of high and low intensity expressions among Japanese and Russian participants, suggest that display rules shape mental representations of emotions, such as intensity levels of emotion prototypes. Furthermore, a series of recent studies using eye tracking as a proxy for overt attention during face perception have identified culture-specific cognitive styles, such as the propensity to attend to very specific features of the face. Together, these results suggest a cascade of cultural influences on cognitive mechanisms involved in interpretations of facial expressions of emotion, whereby cultures impart specific behavioral practices that shape the way individuals process information from the environment. These cultural influences lead to differences in cognitive styles due to culture-specific attentional biases and emotion prototypes, which partially account for the gradient of cultural agreements and disagreements obtained in past investigations of emotion perception. PMID:23486743

Emotion perception across cultures: the role of cognitive mechanisms.

PubMed

Engelmann, Jan B; Pogosyan, Marianna

2013-01-01

Despite consistently documented cultural differences in the perception of facial expressions of emotion, the role of culture in shaping cognitive mechanisms that are central to emotion perception has received relatively little attention in past research. We review recent developments in cross-cultural psychology that provide particular insights into the modulatory role of culture on cognitive mechanisms involved in interpretations of facial expressions of emotion through two distinct routes: display rules and cognitive styles. Investigations of emotion intensity perception have demonstrated that facial expressions with varying levels of intensity of positive affect are perceived and categorized differently across cultures. Specifically, recent findings indicating significant levels of differentiation between intensity levels of facial expressions among American participants, as well as deviations from clear categorization of high and low intensity expressions among Japanese and Russian participants, suggest that display rules shape mental representations of emotions, such as intensity levels of emotion prototypes. Furthermore, a series of recent studies using eye tracking as a proxy for overt attention during face perception have identified culture-specific cognitive styles, such as the propensity to attend to very specific features of the face. Together, these results suggest a cascade of cultural influences on cognitive mechanisms involved in interpretations of facial expressions of emotion, whereby cultures impart specific behavioral practices that shape the way individuals process information from the environment. These cultural influences lead to differences in cognitive styles due to culture-specific attentional biases and emotion prototypes, which partially account for the gradient of cultural agreements and disagreements obtained in past investigations of emotion perception.

Emotional concerns in follow-up consultations between paediatric oncologists and adolescent survivors: a video-based observational study.

PubMed

Mellblom, A V; Finset, A; Korsvold, L; Loge, J H; Ruud, E; Lie, H C

2014-12-01

The present study aimed to explore (a) to what extent adolescent cancer survivors express emotional concerns during follow-up consultations, (b) the content of these expressions, and (c) the responses to their concerns by the paediatric haemato-oncologists (oncologists). Sixty-six follow-up consultations between adolescent patients (aged 12-20 years old; mean = 16) and oncologists (n = 10) were video recorded. Emotional concerns were coded using the Verona coding definitions of emotional sequences (VR-CoDES). The content of the concerns was analysed using thematic analysis. Emotional concerns (n = 115) were identified in 50% of the consultations. Of the concerns, 87% were expressed implicitly as hints to the underlying emotion (cues) rather than explicitly (concerns). The oncologists elicited 66.9% of these expressions. Four main categories of emotional concerns were identified in the thematic analysis: physical (31%), psychological (29%), social (17%), and cancer related (23%). The majority (76.5%) of the oncologists' responses to the cues and/or concerns provided space for further disclosure. The oncologists responded less explicitly to the emotional aspects of physical and cancer-related issues in comparison with the cues or concerns of psychological origin. More cues and concerns were expressed when parents were not present in the consultation. In this study, almost half of the adolescent patients presented emotional concerns, and a subgroup presented many concerns; these were mainly expressed when initiated by the oncologists. Oncologists should therefore be attentive to hints to underlying emotions to help the adolescent bring forward his or her concerns. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Emotional Experience, Expression, and Regulation of High-Quality Japanese Elementary School Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hosotani, Rika; Imai-Matsumura, Kyoko

2011-01-01

The present study investigates the emotional experience, expression, and regulation processes of high-quality Japanese elementary school teachers while they interact with children, in terms of teachers' emotional competence. Qualitative analysis of interview data demonstrated that teachers had various emotional experiences including self-elicited…

Event-Related Brain Potential Correlates of Emotional Face Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eimer, Martin; Holmes, Amanda

2007-01-01

Results from recent event-related brain potential (ERP) studies investigating brain processes involved in the detection and analysis of emotional facial expression are reviewed. In all experiments, emotional faces were found to trigger an increased ERP positivity relative to neutral faces. The onset of this emotional expression effect was…

Caregiver Emotional Expressiveness, Child Emotion Regulation, and Child Behavior Problems among Head Start Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCoy, Dana Charles; Raver, C. Cybele

2011-01-01

The present study examined the relationships between caregivers' self-reported positive and negative emotional expressiveness, observer assessments of children's emotion regulation, and teachers' reports of children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors in a sample of 97 primarily African American and Hispanic Head Start families. Results…

Visual Search for Faces with Emotional Expressions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frischen, Alexandra; Eastwood, John D.; Smilek, Daniel

2008-01-01

The goal of this review is to critically examine contradictory findings in the study of visual search for emotionally expressive faces. Several key issues are addressed: Can emotional faces be processed preattentively and guide attention? What properties of these faces influence search efficiency? Is search moderated by the emotional state of the…

(Implicitly) judging a book by its cover: the power of pride and shame expressions in shaping judgments of social status.

PubMed

Shariff, Azim F; Tracy, Jessica L; Markusoff, Jeffrey L

2012-09-01

How do we decide who merits social status? According to functionalist theories of emotion, the nonverbal expressions of pride and shame play a key role, functioning as automatically perceived status signals. In this view, observers automatically make status inferences about expressers on the basis of these expressions, even when contradictory contextual information about the expressers' status is available. In four studies, the authors tested whether implicit and explicit status perceptions are influenced by pride and shame expressions even when these expressions' status-related messages are contradicted by contextual information. Results indicate that emotion expressions powerfully influence implicit and explicit status inferences, at times neutralizing or even overriding situational knowledge. These findings demonstrate the irrepressible communicative power of emotion displays and indicate that status judgments can be informed as much (and often more) by automatic responses to nonverbal expressions of emotion as by rational, contextually bound knowledge.

Development and validation of an Argentine set of facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Vaiman, Marcelo; Wagner, Mónica Anna; Caicedo, Estefanía; Pereno, Germán Leandro

2017-02-01

Pictures of facial expressions of emotion are used in a wide range of experiments. The last decade has seen an increase in the number of studies presenting local sets of emotion stimuli. However, only a few existing sets contain pictures of Latin Americans, despite the growing attention emotion research is receiving in this region. Here we present the development and validation of the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Expresiones de Emociones Faciales (UNCEEF), a Facial Action Coding System (FACS)-verified set of pictures of Argentineans expressing the six basic emotions, plus neutral expressions. FACS scores, recognition rates, Hu scores, and discrimination indices are reported. Evidence of convergent validity was obtained using the Pictures of Facial Affect in an Argentine sample. However, recognition accuracy was greater for UNCEEF. The importance of local sets of emotion pictures is discussed.

[Emotional display rules of Japanese and Koreans].

PubMed

Lee, Ye-jin; Matsumoto, Yoshiyuki

2011-12-01

Hypothetical stories designed to arouse feelings of happiness, sadness, or anger were presented to Japanese (n = 310) and Koreans (n = 286) university students. They were asked to rate the intensity of the emotion experienced, and to select the corresponding facial expression to display in an individual situation and in a social situation. Analyses of covariance were conducted on the rating scores of facial expression using the intensities of emotion as the covariance, except for happiness where the within-class regression coefficients were not homogeneous. The results showed that Japanese and Koreans shared the emotional display rules about the expressions of emotions in individual situations more than in social situations. Japanese thought that they should suppress emotions more than Koreans did. Moreover, the differences in facial expressions between Japanese and Koreans were greater in the individual situations than in the social situations.

Emotion rendering in music: range and characteristic values of seven musical variables.

PubMed

Bresin, Roberto; Friberg, Anders

2011-10-01

Many studies on the synthesis of emotional expression in music performance have focused on the effect of individual performance variables on perceived emotional quality by making a systematical variation of variables. However, most of the studies have used a predetermined small number of levels for each variable, and the selection of these levels has often been done arbitrarily. The main aim of this research work is to improve upon existing methodologies by taking a synthesis approach. In a production experiment, 20 performers were asked to manipulate values of 7 musical variables simultaneously (tempo, sound level, articulation, phrasing, register, timbre, and attack speed) for communicating 5 different emotional expressions (neutral, happy, scary, peaceful, sad) for each of 4 scores. The scores were compositions communicating four different emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, calmness). Emotional expressions and music scores were presented in combination and in random order for each performer for a total of 5 × 4 stimuli. The experiment allowed for a systematic investigation of the interaction between emotion of each score and intended expressed emotions by performers. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), repeated measures, with factors emotion and score was conducted on the participants' values separately for each of the seven musical factors. There are two main results. The first one is that musical variables were manipulated in the same direction as reported in previous research on emotional expressive music performance. The second one is the identification for each of the five emotions the mean values and ranges of the five musical variables tempo, sound level, articulation, register, and instrument. These values resulted to be independent from the particular score and its emotion. The results presented in this study therefore allow for both the design and control of emotionally expressive computerized musical stimuli that are more ecologically valid than stimuli without performance variations. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved.

Parents' Emotion Expression as a Predictor of Child's Social Competence: Children with or without Intellectual Disability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, S.; Baker, B.

2011-01-01

Background: Parents' expression of positive emotion towards children who are typically developing (TD) is generally associated with better social development. However, the association between parents' negative emotion expression and social development can be positive or negative depending upon a number of factors, including the child's emotion…

Darwin and Emotion Expression

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hess, Ursula; Thibault, Pascal

2009-01-01

In his book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," Charles Darwin (1872/1965) defended the argument that emotion expressions are evolved and adaptive (at least at some point in the past) and serve an important communicative function. The ideas he developed in his book had an important impact on the field and spawned rich domains of…

Socializing Infants toward a Cultural Understanding of Expressing Negative Affect: A Bakhtinian Informed Discursive Psychology Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Demuth, Carolin

2013-01-01

This article addresses the socialization of emotion expression in infancy. It argues that in order to adequately understand emotion development we need to consider the appraisal of emotion expression through caregivers in mundane, everyday interactions. Drawing on sociocultural and Bakhtinian theorizing, it claims that caregivers' appraisals of…

Fathers' Parenting Hassles and Coping: Associations with Emotional Expressiveness and Their Sons' Socioemotional Competence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foster, Phillip A.; Reese-Weber, Marla; Kahn, Jeffrey H.

2007-01-01

The present study examined fathers' daily parenting hassles and coping strategies to (a) determine their association with fathers' emotional expressiveness and (b) predict their sons' development of socioemotional competence. Fathers of 148 preschool-aged boys reported on their parenting hassles, coping strategies, and emotional expressiveness;…

Children's Knowledge of Display Rules for Emotional Expression and Control.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Doubleday, Catherine; And Others

An important task for children is to acquire their culture's rules for emotional display. Accurate knowledge of display rules prescribing, for example, safe targets for anger or indelicate situations for excitement helps regulate expressive behavior and mediate the impact of emotional expression on the self and others. In this study, children's…

Spontaneous and posed facial expression in Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Smith, M C; Smith, M K; Ellgring, H

1996-09-01

Spontaneous and posed emotional facial expressions in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD, n = 12) were compared with those of healthy age-matched controls (n = 12). The intensity and amount of facial expression in PD patients were expected to be reduced for spontaneous but not posed expressions. Emotional stimuli were video clips selected from films, 2-5 min in duration, designed to elicit feelings of happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, or anger. Facial movements were coded using Ekman and Friesen's (1978) Facial Action Coding System (FACS). In addition, participants rated their emotional experience on 9-point Likert scales. The PD group showed significantly less overall facial reactivity than did controls when viewing the films. The predicted Group X Condition (spontaneous vs. posed) interaction effect on smile intensity was found when PD participants with more severe disease were compared with those with milder disease and with controls. In contrast, ratings of emotional experience were similar for both groups. Depression was positively associated with emotion rating but not with measures of facial activity. Spontaneous facial expression appears to be selectively affected in PD, whereas posed expression and emotional experience remain relatively intact.

Intact Rapid Facial Mimicry as well as Generally Reduced Mimic Responses in Stable Schizophrenia Patients

PubMed Central

Chechko, Natalya; Pagel, Alena; Otte, Ellen; Koch, Iring; Habel, Ute

2016-01-01

Spontaneous emotional expressions (rapid facial mimicry) perform both emotional and social functions. In the current study, we sought to test whether there were deficits in automatic mimic responses to emotional facial expressions in patients (15 of them) with stable schizophrenia compared to 15 controls. In a perception-action interference paradigm (the Simon task; first experiment), and in the context of a dual-task paradigm (second experiment), the task-relevant stimulus feature was the gender of a face, which, however, displayed a smiling or frowning expression (task-irrelevant stimulus feature). We measured the electromyographical activity in the corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscle regions in response to either compatible or incompatible stimuli (i.e., when the required response did or did not correspond to the depicted facial expression). The compatibility effect based on interactions between the implicit processing of a task-irrelevant emotional facial expression and the conscious production of an emotional facial expression did not differ between the groups. In stable patients (in spite of a reduced mimic reaction), we observed an intact capacity to respond spontaneously to facial emotional stimuli. PMID:27303335

Disappointment expression evokes collective guilt and collective action in intergroup conflict: the moderating role of legitimacy perceptions.

PubMed

Solak, Nevin; Reifen Tagar, Michal; Cohen-Chen, Smadar; Saguy, Tamar; Halperin, Eran

2017-09-01

Research on intergroup emotions has largely focused on the experience of emotions and surprisingly little attention has been given to the expression of emotions. Drawing on the social-functional approach to emotions, we argue that in the context of intergroup conflicts, outgroup members' expression of disappointment with one's ingroup induces the complementary emotion of collective guilt and correspondingly a collective action protesting ingroup actions against the outgroup. In Study 1 conducted immediately after the 2014 Gaza war, Jewish-Israeli participants received information about outgroup's (Palestinians) expression of emotions (disappointment, fear, or none). As predicted, outgroup's expression of disappointment increased collective guilt and willingness to participate in collective action, but only among those who saw the intergroup situation as illegitimate. Moreover, collective guilt mediated the relationship between disappointment expression and collective action, moderated, again, by legitimacy perception. In Study 2, we replicated these results in the context of racial tension between Black and White Americans in the US. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of the findings.

The contemptuous separation: Facial expressions of emotion and breakups in young adulthood

PubMed Central

Heshmati, Saeideh; Sbarra, David A.; Mason, Ashley E.

2017-01-01

The importance of studying specific and expressed emotions after a stressful life event is well known, yet few studies have moved beyond assessing self-reported emotional responses to a romantic breakup. This study examined associations between computer-recognized facial expressions and self-reported breakup-related distress among recently separated college-aged young adults (N = 135; 37 men) on four visits across 9 weeks. Participants’ facial expressions were coded using the Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox while participants spoke about their breakups. Of the seven expressed emotions studied, only Contempt showed a unique association with breakup-related distress over time. At baseline, greater Contempt was associated with less breakup-related distress; however, over time, greater Contempt was associated with greater breakup-related distress. PMID:29249896

The contemptuous separation: Facial expressions of emotion and breakups in young adulthood.

PubMed

Heshmati, Saeideh; Sbarra, David A; Mason, Ashley E

2017-06-01

The importance of studying specific and expressed emotions after a stressful life event is well known, yet few studies have moved beyond assessing self-reported emotional responses to a romantic breakup. This study examined associations between computer-recognized facial expressions and self-reported breakup-related distress among recently separated college-aged young adults ( N = 135; 37 men) on four visits across 9 weeks. Participants' facial expressions were coded using the Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox while participants spoke about their breakups. Of the seven expressed emotions studied, only Contempt showed a unique association with breakup-related distress over time. At baseline, greater Contempt was associated with less breakup-related distress; however, over time, greater Contempt was associated with greater breakup-related distress.

Facial Expression Generation from Speaker's Emotional States in Daily Conversation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mori, Hiroki; Ohshima, Koh

A framework for generating facial expressions from emotional states in daily conversation is described. It provides a mapping between emotional states and facial expressions, where the former is represented by vectors with psychologically-defined abstract dimensions, and the latter is coded by the Facial Action Coding System. In order to obtain the mapping, parallel data with rated emotional states and facial expressions were collected for utterances of a female speaker, and a neural network was trained with the data. The effectiveness of proposed method is verified by a subjective evaluation test. As the result, the Mean Opinion Score with respect to the suitability of generated facial expression was 3.86 for the speaker, which was close to that of hand-made facial expressions.

Gender Differences in Emotion Expression in Low-Income Adolescents Under Stress

PubMed Central

Panjwani, Naaila; Chaplin, Tara M.; Sinha, Rajita; Mayes, Linda C.

2015-01-01

Gender roles in mainstream U.S. culture suggest that girls express more happiness, sadness, anxiety, and shame/embarrassment than boys, while boys express more anger and externalizing emotions, such as contempt. However, gender roles and emotion expression may be different in low-income and ethnically diverse families, as children and parents are often faced with greater environmental stressors and may have different gender expectations. This study examined gender differences in emotion expression in low-income adolescents, an understudied population. One hundred and seventy nine adolescents (aged 14-17) participated in the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Trained coders rated adolescents’ expressions of happiness, sadness, anxiety, shame/embarrassment, anger, and contempt during the TSST using a micro-analytic coding system. Analyses showed that, consistent with gender roles, girls expressed higher levels of happiness and shame than boys; however, contrary to traditional gender roles, girls showed higher levels of contempt than boys. Also, in contrast to cultural stereotypes, there were no differences in anger between boys and girls. Findings suggest gender-role inconsistent displays of externalizing emotions in low-income adolescents under acute stress, and may reflect different emotion socialization experiences in this group. PMID:29056804

Gender Differences in Emotion Expression in Low-Income Adolescents Under Stress.

PubMed

Panjwani, Naaila; Chaplin, Tara M; Sinha, Rajita; Mayes, Linda C

2016-06-01

Gender roles in mainstream U.S. culture suggest that girls express more happiness, sadness, anxiety, and shame/embarrassment than boys, while boys express more anger and externalizing emotions, such as contempt. However, gender roles and emotion expression may be different in low-income and ethnically diverse families, as children and parents are often faced with greater environmental stressors and may have different gender expectations. This study examined gender differences in emotion expression in low-income adolescents, an understudied population. One hundred and seventy nine adolescents (aged 14-17) participated in the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Trained coders rated adolescents' expressions of happiness, sadness, anxiety, shame/embarrassment, anger, and contempt during the TSST using a micro-analytic coding system. Analyses showed that, consistent with gender roles, girls expressed higher levels of happiness and shame than boys; however, contrary to traditional gender roles, girls showed higher levels of contempt than boys. Also, in contrast to cultural stereotypes, there were no differences in anger between boys and girls. Findings suggest gender-role inconsistent displays of externalizing emotions in low-income adolescents under acute stress, and may reflect different emotion socialization experiences in this group.

Attending to emotions is sharing of emotions - A multidisciplinary perspective to social attention and emotional sharing. Comment on Zahavi and Rochat (2015).

PubMed

Bader, Oren

2016-05-01

Attending to bodily expression of emotions plays an important role in the human social world. It provides subjects with valuable information, constructs opportunities to act, and importantly, as Daniel Stern pointed out, it is involved in the constitution of the direct experience of others. Whether mutual or one-sided, these direct experiences, in which the subject can share the perspectives and attitudes of other subjects, always comprise one person's bodily expression of emotions that is available to another person. In this article I suggest that attending to other subjects' expressed emotions involves a special (social) mode of attention and emotional sharing. This suggestion challenges Dan Zahavi's view that confines the sharing of emotions solely to reciprocal experiences. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Child Affective Facial Expression (CAFE) set: validity and reliability from untrained adults

PubMed Central

LoBue, Vanessa; Thrasher, Cat

2014-01-01

Emotional development is one of the largest and most productive areas of psychological research. For decades, researchers have been fascinated by how humans respond to, detect, and interpret emotional facial expressions. Much of the research in this area has relied on controlled stimulus sets of adults posing various facial expressions. Here we introduce a new stimulus set of emotional facial expressions into the domain of research on emotional development—The Child Affective Facial Expression set (CAFE). The CAFE set features photographs of a racially and ethnically diverse group of 2- to 8-year-old children posing for six emotional facial expressions—angry, fearful, sad, happy, surprised, and disgusted—and a neutral face. In the current work, we describe the set and report validity and reliability data on the set from 100 untrained adult participants. PMID:25610415

The Perception of Threat from Emotions in Predicting Binge Eating Behaviours in People Who Are Obese and Seeking Treatment for Their Weight.

PubMed

Fox, J R E; Msetfi, R M; Johnson, R S; Haigh, E

2016-09-01

The affect regulation theory suggests that people binge eat to regulate negative emotional states. In this study, we used a basic emotions perspective to consider the role of perceived threat of emotions, emotional suppression and reduced emotional expressiveness in predicting binge eating behaviours in people who are obese. Treatment-seeking participants with obesity (N = 51, body mass index range from 30.8 to 60.2 kg m -2 ) completed measures of 'perception of threat from emotion' as well as 'emotional expressiveness' and binge eating. The results demonstrated that perceived threat of sadness predicted binge eating (β = .55, p < .05). Additionally, a mediation analysis revealed that reduced emotional expressiveness mediated the relationship between perceived threat of fear and binge eating (β = .25, 95%). These findings are contextualized within a theoretical perspective that suggests that individuals who binge eat are threatened by certain emotional states and they use binge eating to suppress certain, but not all, emotional states. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Considering basic emotions within binge eating should be a part of a psychological assessment and treatment. This should consider how emotions could often be perceived as being threatening and their expression is limited. It is possible that the emotions of fear and sadness appear to be particularly threatening within binge eating/obese populations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Expressive inhibition in response to stress: implications for emotional processing following trauma.

PubMed

Clapp, Joshua D; Patton, Samantha C; Beck, J Gayle

2015-01-01

Expressive inhibition--the willful restriction of expressed emotion--is documented in individuals reporting trauma-related distress, but its impact on global affective functioning remains unclear. Theoretical models propose that chronic activation of negative emotion and deliberate restriction of affect operate synergistically to produce trauma-related emotional deficits. The current project examined the impact of these factors on subjective experience and physiological activation following exposure to an analog trauma. University students (N=192; Mage=20, 57% female, 42% White/Non-Hispanic) viewed a graphic film depicting scenes of a televised suicide. Participants then viewed either a sadness- or humor-eliciting film under instructions to inhibit [nsadness=45, nhumor=52] or naturally express emotion [nsadness=48, nhumor=47]. Expressive inhibition was associated with restricted amusement specifically among participants viewing the humor film. Inhibition also produced attenuated sympathetic and parasympathetic recovery, irrespective of film assignment. Evidence of disruptions in emotional processing supports models identifying inhibition as a possible mechanism in post-trauma affect dysregulation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotion expression in human punishment behavior.

PubMed

Xiao, Erte; Houser, Daniel

2005-05-17

Evolutionary theory reveals that punishment is effective in promoting cooperation and maintaining social norms. Although it is accepted that emotions are connected to punishment decisions, there remains substantial debate over why humans use costly punishment. Here we show experimentally that constraints on emotion expression can increase the use of costly punishment. We report data from ultimatum games, where a proposer offers a division of a sum of money and a responder decides whether to accept the split, or reject and leave both players with nothing. Compared with the treatment in which expressing emotions directly to proposers is prohibited, rejection of unfair offers is significantly less frequent when responders can convey their feelings to the proposer concurrently with their decisions. These data support the view that costly punishment might itself be used to express negative emotions and suggest that future studies will benefit by recognizing that human demand for emotion expression can have significant behavioral consequences in social environments, including families, courts, companies, and markets.

Expressive inhibition in response to stress: Implications for emotional processing following trauma

PubMed Central

Clapp, Joshua D.; Patton, Samantha C.; Beck, J. Gayle

2015-01-01

Expressive inhibition - the willful restriction of expressed emotion - is documented in individuals reporting trauma-related distress, but its impact on global affective functioning remains unclear. Theoretical models propose that chronic activation of negative emotion and deliberate restriction of affect operate synergistically to produce trauma-related emotional deficits. The current project examined the impact of these factors on subjective experience and physiological activation following exposure to an analog trauma. University students (N = 192; Mage = 20, 57% female, 42% White/Non-Hispanic) viewed a graphic film depicting scenes of a televised suicide. Participants then viewed either a sadness- or humor-eliciting film under instructions to inhibit [nsadness = 45, nhumor = 52] or naturally express emotion [nsadness = 48, nhumor = 47]. Expressive inhibition was associated with restricted amusement specifically among participants viewing the humor film. Inhibition also produced attenuated sympathetic and parasympathetic recovery, irrespective of film assignment. Evidence of disruptions in emotional processing supports models identifying inhibition as a possible mechanism in post-trauma affect dysregulation. PMID:25576773

Emotional Expression and Psychological Adjustment to Prostate Cancer: A Brief Intervention for Patients and Their Partners

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-02-01

34AD_ Award Number: DAMD17-00-1-0017 TITLE: Emotional Expression and Psychological Adjustment to Prostate Cancer: A Brief Intervention for Patients...Jan 05) 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5. FUI•DING NUMBERS Emotional Expression and Psychological Adjustment DAMD17-00-1-0017 to Prostate Cancer: A Brief...Distribution Unlimited 13. ABSTRACT (Maximum 200 Words) The current study examines the effects of a psychological intervention that encourages emotional

The role of family expressed emotion and perceived social support in predicting addiction relapse.

PubMed

Atadokht, Akbar; Hajloo, Nader; Karimi, Masoud; Narimani, Mohammad

2015-03-01

Emotional conditions governing the family and patients' perceived social support play important roles in the treatment or relapse process of the chronic disease. The current study aimed to investigate the role of family expressed emotion and perceived social support in prediction of addiction relapse. The descriptive-correlation method was used in the current study. The study population consisted of the individuals referred to the addiction treatment centers in Ardabil from October 2013 to January 2014. The subjects (n = 80) were randomly selected using cluster sampling method. To collect data, expressed emotion test by Cole and Kazaryan, and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) were used, and the obtained data was analyzed using the Pearson's correlation coefficient and multiple regression analyses. Results showed a positive relationship between family expressed emotions and the frequency of relapse (r = 0.26, P = 0.011) and a significant negative relationship between perceived social support and the frequency of relapse (r = -0.34, P = 0.001). Multiple regression analysis also showed that perceived social support from family and the family expressed emotions significantly explained 12% of the total variance of relapse frequency. These results have implications for addicted people, their families and professionals working in addiction centers to use the emotional potential of families especially their expressed emotions and the perceived social support of addicts to increase the success rate of addiction treatment.

Influences of parent and child negative emotionality on young children's everyday behaviors.

PubMed

Slatcher, Richard B; Trentacosta, Christopher J

2012-10-01

Negative emotionality is linked to unfavorable life outcomes, but studies have yet to examine negative emotionality of parents and children as predictors of children's problem behaviors and negative emotion word use in everyday life. This study used a novel naturalistic recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder to investigate the separate and interactive influences of parent and child negative emotionality on daily child behaviors in a sample of 35 preschool-aged children over two time points separated by 1 year. Fathers' negative emotionality predicted children's whining at Time 1; mothers' negative emotionality predicted children's negative emotion word use at Time 1 and increases in children's arguing/fighting from Time 1 to Time 2. Parents' ratings of child negative emotionality also were associated with increases in children's arguing/fighting from Time 1 to Time 2, and child negative emotionality moderated the association between mothers' negative emotionality and children's arguing/fighting. Further, children with mothers high in negative emotionality displayed higher levels of problem behaviors when their mothers self-reported low levels of positive emotional expressiveness and/or high levels of negative emotional expressiveness. These findings offer preliminary evidence linking parent and child negative emotionality to everyday child behaviors and suggest that emotional expressiveness may play a key role in moderating the links between maternal negative emotionality and child behavioral problems.

Objectifying Facial Expressivity Assessment of Parkinson's Patients: Preliminary Study

PubMed Central

Patsis, Georgios; Jiang, Dongmei; Sahli, Hichem; Kerckhofs, Eric; Vandekerckhove, Marie

2014-01-01

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) can exhibit a reduction of spontaneous facial expression, designated as “facial masking,” a symptom in which facial muscles become rigid. To improve clinical assessment of facial expressivity of PD, this work attempts to quantify the dynamic facial expressivity (facial activity) of PD by automatically recognizing facial action units (AUs) and estimating their intensity. Spontaneous facial expressivity was assessed by comparing 7 PD patients with 8 control participants. To voluntarily produce spontaneous facial expressions that resemble those typically triggered by emotions, six emotions (amusement, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear) were elicited using movie clips. During the movie clips, physiological signals (facial electromyography (EMG) and electrocardiogram (ECG)) and frontal face video of the participants were recorded. The participants were asked to report on their emotional states throughout the experiment. We first examined the effectiveness of the emotion manipulation by evaluating the participant's self-reports. Disgust-induced emotions were significantly higher than the other emotions. Thus we focused on the analysis of the recorded data during watching disgust movie clips. The proposed facial expressivity assessment approach captured differences in facial expressivity between PD patients and controls. Also differences between PD patients with different progression of Parkinson's disease have been observed. PMID:25478003

Eye-Gaze Analysis of Facial Emotion Recognition and Expression in Adolescents with ASD.

PubMed

Wieckowski, Andrea Trubanova; White, Susan W

2017-01-01

Impaired emotion recognition and expression in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may contribute to observed social impairment. The aim of this study was to examine the role of visual attention directed toward nonsocial aspects of a scene as a possible mechanism underlying recognition and expressive ability deficiency in ASD. One recognition and two expression tasks were administered. Recognition was assessed in force-choice paradigm, and expression was assessed during scripted and free-choice response (in response to emotional stimuli) tasks in youth with ASD (n = 20) and an age-matched sample of typically developing youth (n = 20). During stimulus presentation prior to response in each task, participants' eye gaze was tracked. Youth with ASD were less accurate at identifying disgust and sadness in the recognition task. They fixated less to the eye region of stimuli showing surprise. A group difference was found during the free-choice response task, such that those with ASD expressed emotion less clearly but not during the scripted task. Results suggest altered eye gaze to the mouth region but not the eye region as a candidate mechanism for decreased ability to recognize or express emotion. Findings inform our understanding of the association between social attention and emotion recognition and expression deficits.

Vocal contagion of emotions in non-human animals

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

Communicating emotions to conspecifics (emotion expression) allows the regulation of social interactions (e.g. approach and avoidance). Moreover, when emotions are transmitted from one individual to the next, leading to state matching (emotional contagion), information transfer and coordination between group members are facilitated. Despite the high potential for vocalizations to influence the affective state of surrounding individuals, vocal contagion of emotions has been largely unexplored in non-human animals. In this paper, I review the evidence for discrimination of vocal expression of emotions, which is a necessary step for emotional contagion to occur. I then describe possible proximate mechanisms underlying vocal contagion of emotions, propose criteria to assess this phenomenon and review the existing evidence. The literature so far shows that non-human animals are able to discriminate and be affected by conspecific and also potentially heterospecific (e.g. human) vocal expression of emotions. Since humans heavily rely on vocalizations to communicate (speech), I suggest that studying vocal contagion of emotions in non-human animals can lead to a better understanding of the evolution of emotional contagion and empathy. PMID:29491174

Music Communicates Affects, Not Basic Emotions – A Constructionist Account of Attribution of Emotional Meanings to Music

PubMed Central

Cespedes-Guevara, Julian; Eerola, Tuomas

2018-01-01

Basic Emotion theory has had a tremendous influence on the affective sciences, including music psychology, where most researchers have assumed that music expressivity is constrained to a limited set of basic emotions. Several scholars suggested that these constrains to musical expressivity are explained by the existence of a shared acoustic code to the expression of emotions in music and speech prosody. In this article we advocate for a shift from this focus on basic emotions to a constructionist account. This approach proposes that the phenomenon of perception of emotions in music arises from the interaction of music’s ability to express core affects and the influence of top-down and contextual information in the listener’s mind. We start by reviewing the problems with the concept of Basic Emotions, and the inconsistent evidence that supports it. We also demonstrate how decades of developmental and cross-cultural research on music and emotional speech have failed to produce convincing findings to conclude that music expressivity is built upon a set of biologically pre-determined basic emotions. We then examine the cue-emotion consistencies between music and speech, and show how they support a parsimonious explanation, where musical expressivity is grounded on two dimensions of core affect (arousal and valence). Next, we explain how the fact that listeners reliably identify basic emotions in music does not arise from the existence of categorical boundaries in the stimuli, but from processes that facilitate categorical perception, such as using stereotyped stimuli and close-ended response formats, psychological processes of construction of mental prototypes, and contextual information. Finally, we outline our proposal of a constructionist account of perception of emotions in music, and spell out the ways in which this approach is able to make solve past conflicting findings. We conclude by providing explicit pointers about the methodological choices that will be vital to move beyond the popular Basic Emotion paradigm and start untangling the emergence of emotional experiences with music in the actual contexts in which they occur. PMID:29541041

Music Communicates Affects, Not Basic Emotions - A Constructionist Account of Attribution of Emotional Meanings to Music.

PubMed

Cespedes-Guevara, Julian; Eerola, Tuomas

2018-01-01

Basic Emotion theory has had a tremendous influence on the affective sciences, including music psychology, where most researchers have assumed that music expressivity is constrained to a limited set of basic emotions. Several scholars suggested that these constrains to musical expressivity are explained by the existence of a shared acoustic code to the expression of emotions in music and speech prosody. In this article we advocate for a shift from this focus on basic emotions to a constructionist account. This approach proposes that the phenomenon of perception of emotions in music arises from the interaction of music's ability to express core affects and the influence of top-down and contextual information in the listener's mind. We start by reviewing the problems with the concept of Basic Emotions, and the inconsistent evidence that supports it. We also demonstrate how decades of developmental and cross-cultural research on music and emotional speech have failed to produce convincing findings to conclude that music expressivity is built upon a set of biologically pre-determined basic emotions. We then examine the cue-emotion consistencies between music and speech, and show how they support a parsimonious explanation, where musical expressivity is grounded on two dimensions of core affect (arousal and valence). Next, we explain how the fact that listeners reliably identify basic emotions in music does not arise from the existence of categorical boundaries in the stimuli, but from processes that facilitate categorical perception, such as using stereotyped stimuli and close-ended response formats, psychological processes of construction of mental prototypes, and contextual information. Finally, we outline our proposal of a constructionist account of perception of emotions in music, and spell out the ways in which this approach is able to make solve past conflicting findings. We conclude by providing explicit pointers about the methodological choices that will be vital to move beyond the popular Basic Emotion paradigm and start untangling the emergence of emotional experiences with music in the actual contexts in which they occur.

Women process multisensory emotion expressions more efficiently than men.

PubMed

Collignon, O; Girard, S; Gosselin, F; Saint-Amour, D; Lepore, F; Lassonde, M

2010-01-01

Despite claims in the popular press, experiments investigating whether female are more efficient than male observers at processing expression of emotions produced inconsistent findings. In the present study, participants were asked to categorize fear and disgust expressions displayed auditorily, visually, or audio-visually. Results revealed an advantage of women in all the conditions of stimulus presentation. We also observed more nonlinear probabilistic summation in the bimodal conditions in female than male observers, indicating greater neural integration of different sensory-emotional informations. These findings indicate robust differences between genders in the multisensory perception of emotion expression.

Young infants' generalization of emotional expressions: effects of familiarity.

PubMed

Walker-Andrews, Arlene S; Krogh-Jespersen, Sheila; Mayhew, Estelle M Y; Coffield, Caroline N

2011-08-01

From birth, infants are exposed to a wealth of emotional information in their interactions. Much research has been done to investigate the development of emotion perception, and factors influencing that development. The current study investigates the role of familiarity on 3.5-month-old infants' generalization of emotional expressions. Infants were assigned to one of two habituation sequences: in one sequence, infants were visually habituated to parental expressions of happy or sad. At test, infants viewed either a continuation of the habituation sequence, their mother depicting a novel expression, an unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, or an unfamiliar female depicting a novel expression. In the second sequence, a new sample of infants was matched to the infants in the first sequence. These infants viewed the same habituation and test sequences, but the actors were unfamiliar to them. Only those infants who viewed their own mothers and fathers during the habituation sequence increased looking. They dishabituated looking to maternal novel expressions, the unfamiliar female's novel expression, and the unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, especially when sad parental expressions were followed by an expression change to happy or to a change in person. Infants are guided in their recognition of emotional expressions by the familiarity of their parents, before generalizing to others. 2011 APA, all rights reserved

Do proposed facial expressions of contempt, shame, embarrassment, and compassion communicate the predicted emotion?

PubMed

Widen, Sherri C; Christy, Anita M; Hewett, Kristen; Russell, James A

2011-08-01

Shame, embarrassment, compassion, and contempt have been considered candidates for the status of basic emotions on the grounds that each has a recognisable facial expression. In two studies (N=88, N=60) on recognition of these four facial expressions, observers showed moderate agreement on the predicted emotion when assessed with forced choice (58%; 42%), but low agreement when assessed with free labelling (18%; 16%). Thus, even though some observers endorsed the predicted emotion when it was presented in a list, over 80% spontaneously interpreted these faces in a way other than the predicted emotion.

Recognition profile of emotions in natural and virtual faces.

PubMed

Dyck, Miriam; Winbeck, Maren; Leiberg, Susanne; Chen, Yuhan; Gur, Ruben C; Gur, Rurben C; Mathiak, Klaus

2008-01-01

Computer-generated virtual faces become increasingly realistic including the simulation of emotional expressions. These faces can be used as well-controlled, realistic and dynamic stimuli in emotion research. However, the validity of virtual facial expressions in comparison to natural emotion displays still needs to be shown for the different emotions and different age groups. Thirty-two healthy volunteers between the age of 20 and 60 rated pictures of natural human faces and faces of virtual characters (avatars) with respect to the expressed emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutral. Results indicate that virtual emotions were recognized comparable to natural ones. Recognition differences in virtual and natural faces depended on specific emotions: whereas disgust was difficult to convey with the current avatar technology, virtual sadness and fear achieved better recognition results than natural faces. Furthermore, emotion recognition rates decreased for virtual but not natural faces in participants over the age of 40. This specific age effect suggests that media exposure has an influence on emotion recognition. Virtual and natural facial displays of emotion may be equally effective. Improved technology (e.g. better modelling of the naso-labial area) may lead to even better results as compared to trained actors. Due to the ease with which virtual human faces can be animated and manipulated, validated artificial emotional expressions will be of major relevance in future research and therapeutic applications.

Recognition Profile of Emotions in Natural and Virtual Faces

PubMed Central

Dyck, Miriam; Winbeck, Maren; Leiberg, Susanne; Chen, Yuhan; Gur, Rurben C.; Mathiak, Klaus

2008-01-01

Background Computer-generated virtual faces become increasingly realistic including the simulation of emotional expressions. These faces can be used as well-controlled, realistic and dynamic stimuli in emotion research. However, the validity of virtual facial expressions in comparison to natural emotion displays still needs to be shown for the different emotions and different age groups. Methodology/Principal Findings Thirty-two healthy volunteers between the age of 20 and 60 rated pictures of natural human faces and faces of virtual characters (avatars) with respect to the expressed emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutral. Results indicate that virtual emotions were recognized comparable to natural ones. Recognition differences in virtual and natural faces depended on specific emotions: whereas disgust was difficult to convey with the current avatar technology, virtual sadness and fear achieved better recognition results than natural faces. Furthermore, emotion recognition rates decreased for virtual but not natural faces in participants over the age of 40. This specific age effect suggests that media exposure has an influence on emotion recognition. Conclusions/Significance Virtual and natural facial displays of emotion may be equally effective. Improved technology (e.g. better modelling of the naso-labial area) may lead to even better results as compared to trained actors. Due to the ease with which virtual human faces can be animated and manipulated, validated artificial emotional expressions will be of major relevance in future research and therapeutic applications. PMID:18985152

Self-Relevance Appraisal Influences Facial Reactions to Emotional Body Expressions

PubMed Central

Grèzes, Julie; Philip, Léonor; Chadwick, Michèle; Dezecache, Guillaume; Soussignan, Robert; Conty, Laurence

2013-01-01

People display facial reactions when exposed to others' emotional expressions, but exactly what mechanism mediates these facial reactions remains a debated issue. In this study, we manipulated two critical perceptual features that contribute to determining the significance of others' emotional expressions: the direction of attention (toward or away from the observer) and the intensity of the emotional display. Electromyographic activity over the corrugator muscle was recorded while participants observed videos of neutral to angry body expressions. Self-directed bodies induced greater corrugator activity than other-directed bodies; additionally corrugator activity was only influenced by the intensity of anger expresssed by self-directed bodies. These data support the hypothesis that rapid facial reactions are the outcome of self-relevant emotional processing. PMID:23405230

I Think We're Alone Now: Solitary Social Behaviors in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PubMed

Zane, Emily; Neumeyer, Kayla; Mertens, Julia; Chugg, Amanda; Grossman, Ruth B

2017-10-10

Research into emotional responsiveness in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has yielded mixed findings. Some studies report uniform, flat and emotionless expressions in ASD; others describe highly variable expressions that are as or even more intense than those of typically developing (TD) individuals. Variability in findings is likely due to differences in study design: some studies have examined posed (i.e., not spontaneous expressions) and others have examined spontaneous expressions in social contexts, during which individuals with ASD-by nature of the disorder-are likely to behave differently than their TD peers. To determine whether (and how) spontaneous facial expressions and other emotional responses are different from TD individuals, we video-recorded the spontaneous responses of children and adolescents with and without ASD (between the ages of 10 and 17 years) as they watched emotionally evocative videos in a non-social context. Researchers coded facial expressions for intensity, and noted the presence of laughter and other responsive vocalizations. Adolescents with ASD displayed more intense, frequent and varied spontaneous facial expressions than their TD peers. They also produced significantly more emotional vocalizations, including laughter. Individuals with ASD may display their emotions more frequently and more intensely than TD individuals when they are unencumbered by social pressure. Differences in the interpretation of the social setting and/or understanding of emotional display rules may also contribute to differences in emotional behaviors between groups.

The Internalization Theory of Emotions: A Cultural Historical Approach to the Development of Emotions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holodynski, Manfred

2013-01-01

Starting with an overview of theoretical approaches to emotion from an activity-oriented stance, this article applies Vygotsky's three general principles of development, sign mediation, and internalization to the development of emotional expressions as a culturally evolved sign system. The possible twofold function of expression signs as a means…

When Clerks Meet Customers: A Test of Variables Related to Emotional Expressions on the Job.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rafaeli, Anat

Although many modern occupations require employees to express particular types of emotions while doing their jobs, little empirical evidence exists about factors related to emotional behavior on the job. This study investigated the relationship between emotional displays (smiling, greeting, thanking, eye contact) of sales clerks and variables of…

Musical Understanding, Musical Works, and Emotional Expression: Implications for Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elliott, David J.

2005-01-01

What do musicians, critics, and listeners mean when they use emotion-words to describe a piece of instrumental music? How can "pure" musical sounds "express" emotions such as joyfulness, sadness, anguish, optimism, and anger? Sounds are not living organisms; sounds cannot feel emotions. Yet many people around the world believe they hear emotions…

Post-Institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European Children: Heterogeneity in the Development of Emotion Understanding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Camras, Linda A.; Perlman, Susan B.; Fries, Alison B. Wismer; Pollak, Seth D.

2006-01-01

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children participated in two emotion understanding tasks. In one task, children selected facial expressions corresponding to four emotion labels (happy, sad, angry, scared). The second task required children to match facial expressions to stories describing situations for these emotions. While…

Misinterpretation of Facial Expressions of Emotion in Verbal Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eack, Shaun M.; Mazefsky, Carla A.; Minshew, Nancy J.

2015-01-01

Facial emotion perception is significantly affected in autism spectrum disorder, yet little is known about how individuals with autism spectrum disorder misinterpret facial expressions that result in their difficulty in accurately recognizing emotion in faces. This study examined facial emotion perception in 45 verbal adults with autism spectrum…

The Sex Differences in Regulating Unpleasant Emotion by Expressive Suppression: Extraversion Matters

PubMed Central

Cai, Ayan; Lou, Yixue; Long, Quanshan; Yuan, Jiajin

2016-01-01

Males are known for more suppression of emotional displays than females. However, when the emotion regulation effect of expressive suppression is greater in males, and how this sex difference varies with emotion display-related personality (e.g., extraversion), are undetermined. Event-related potentials were recorded while male and female participants different in extraversion were required to attend to or suppress emotional expression to negative pictures. Sex and extraversion did not modulate self-reported emotional experience. However, late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes showed an extraversion-moderated sex difference in the 2000–3000 ms and the 3000–4000 ms time epochs. LPP amplitudes were decreased during suppression versus viewing conditions in ambivert males, while this effect was absent in ambivert females. However, the LPP amplitudes of extraverts were similar for suppression and viewing conditions, irrespective of sex and timing. Regardless of early, middle, or late time windows, LPP amplitudes were positively related to self-reported emotion. These results suggest a male advantage for using expressive suppression for emotion regulation in non-extraverted, ambivert individuals. PMID:27458408

The Sex Differences in Regulating Unpleasant Emotion by Expressive Suppression: Extraversion Matters.

PubMed

Cai, Ayan; Lou, Yixue; Long, Quanshan; Yuan, Jiajin

2016-01-01

Males are known for more suppression of emotional displays than females. However, when the emotion regulation effect of expressive suppression is greater in males, and how this sex difference varies with emotion display-related personality (e.g., extraversion), are undetermined. Event-related potentials were recorded while male and female participants different in extraversion were required to attend to or suppress emotional expression to negative pictures. Sex and extraversion did not modulate self-reported emotional experience. However, late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes showed an extraversion-moderated sex difference in the 2000-3000 ms and the 3000-4000 ms time epochs. LPP amplitudes were decreased during suppression versus viewing conditions in ambivert males, while this effect was absent in ambivert females. However, the LPP amplitudes of extraverts were similar for suppression and viewing conditions, irrespective of sex and timing. Regardless of early, middle, or late time windows, LPP amplitudes were positively related to self-reported emotion. These results suggest a male advantage for using expressive suppression for emotion regulation in non-extraverted, ambivert individuals.

The role of maternal emotion regulation in overreactive and lax discipline.

PubMed

Lorber, Michael F

2012-08-01

The roles of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression as intentional methods mothers use to regulate their own emotion were investigated in relation to mothers' experience and expression of negative emotion and their overreactive and lax discipline practices. Eighty-two mothers of toddlers completed questionnaires that measured these constructs. Emotion regulation strategies were more consistently associated with overreactive than with lax discipline. More suppression in discipline encounters was associated with less overreactivity, an association partially mediated by expressed negative emotion. Reappraisal, both globally and in the context of discipline encounters, was inversely associated with overreactive discipline. The association of global reappraisal and overreactivity was mediated in parallel by experienced and expressed negative emotion. Surprisingly, global reappraisal, relative to reappraisal in discipline encounters, appears to have more consistent implications for mothers' emotion and parenting practices in discipline encounters. A reconceptualization of the nature of reappraisal in discipline encounters is suggested. The study is the first to systematically apply methods and concepts from the better-developed basic research literature on adults' emotion regulation to the domain of parenting. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

Physiological and cognitive consequences of suppressing and expressing emotion in dyadic interactions.

PubMed

Peters, Brett J; Overall, Nickola C; Jamieson, Jeremy P

2014-10-01

Engaging in emotional suppression typically has negative consequences. However, relatively little is known about response-focused emotion regulation processes in dyadic interactions. We hypothesized that interacting with suppressive partners would be more threatening than interacting with expressive partners. To test predictions, two participants independently watched a negatively-valenced video and then discussed their emotional responses. One participant (the regulator) was assigned to express/suppress affective signals during the interaction. Their partner was given no special instructions prior to the interaction. Engaging in suppression versus expression elicited physiological responses consistent with threat-sympathetic arousal and increased vasoconstriction-in anticipation of and during dyadic interactions. Partners of emotional suppressors also exhibited more threat responses during the interaction, but not before, compared to partners of emotional expressors. Partner and interaction appraisals mirrored physiological findings. Emotional suppressors found the task more uncomfortable and intense while their partners reported them as being poor communicators. This work broadens our understanding of connections between emotion regulation, physiological responses, and cognitive processes in dyads. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Smiling on the Inside: The Social Benefits of Suppressing Positive Emotions in Outperformance Situations.

PubMed

Schall, Marina; Martiny, Sarah E; Goetz, Thomas; Hall, Nathan C

2016-05-01

Although expressing positive emotions is typically socially rewarded, in the present work, we predicted that people suppress positive emotions and thereby experience social benefits when outperformed others are present. We tested our predictions in three experimental studies with high school students. In Studies 1 and 2, we manipulated the type of social situation (outperformance vs. non-outperformance) and assessed suppression of positive emotions. In both studies, individuals reported suppressing positive emotions more in outperformance situations than in non-outperformance situations. In Study 3, we manipulated the social situation (outperformance vs. non-outperformance) as well as the videotaped person's expression of positive emotions (suppression vs. expression). The findings showed that when outperforming others, individuals were indeed evaluated more positively when they suppressed rather than expressed their positive emotions, and demonstrate the importance of the specific social situation with respect to the effects of suppression. © 2016 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Subliminal and Supraliminal Processing of Facial Expression of Emotions: Brain Oscillation in the Left/Right Frontal Area

PubMed Central

Balconi, Michela; Ferrari, Chiara

2012-01-01

The unconscious effects of an emotional stimulus have been highlighted by a vast amount of research, whereover it remains questionable whether it is possible to assign a specific function to cortical brain oscillations in the unconscious perception of facial expressions of emotions. Alpha band variation was monitored within the right- and left-cortical side when subjects consciously (supraliminal stimulation) or unconsciously (subliminal stimulation) processed facial patterns. Twenty subjects looked at six facial expressions of emotions (anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness, and neutral) under two different conditions: supraliminal (200 ms) vs. subliminal (30 ms) stimulation (140 target-mask pairs for each condition). The results showed that conscious/unconscious processing and the significance of the stimulus can modulate the alpha power. Moreover, it was found that there was an increased right frontal activity for negative emotions vs. an increased left response for positive emotion. The significance of facial expressions was adduced to elucidate cortical different responses to emotional types. PMID:24962767

Human brain spots emotion in non humanoid robots

PubMed Central

Foucher, Aurélie; Jouvent, Roland; Nadel, Jacqueline

2011-01-01

The computation by which our brain elaborates fast responses to emotional expressions is currently an active field of brain studies. Previous studies have focused on stimuli taken from everyday life. Here, we investigated event-related potentials in response to happy vs neutral stimuli of human and non-humanoid robots. At the behavioural level, emotion shortened reaction times similarly for robotic and human stimuli. Early P1 wave was enhanced in response to happy compared to neutral expressions for robotic as well as for human stimuli, suggesting that emotion from robots is encoded as early as human emotion expression. Congruent with their lower faceness properties compared to human stimuli, robots elicited a later and lower N170 component than human stimuli. These findings challenge the claim that robots need to present an anthropomorphic aspect to interact with humans. Taken together, such results suggest that the early brain processing of emotional expressions is not bounded to human-like arrangements embodying emotion. PMID:20194513

Subliminal and supraliminal processing of facial expression of emotions: brain oscillation in the left/right frontal area.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Ferrari, Chiara

2012-03-26

The unconscious effects of an emotional stimulus have been highlighted by a vast amount of research, whereover it remains questionable whether it is possible to assign a specific function to cortical brain oscillations in the unconscious perception of facial expressions of emotions. Alpha band variation was monitored within the right- and left-cortical side when subjects consciously (supraliminal stimulation) or unconsciously (subliminal stimulation) processed facial patterns. Twenty subjects looked at six facial expressions of emotions (anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness, and neutral) under two different conditions: supraliminal (200 ms) vs. subliminal (30 ms) stimulation (140 target-mask pairs for each condition). The results showed that conscious/unconscious processing and the significance of the stimulus can modulate the alpha power. Moreover, it was found that there was an increased right frontal activity for negative emotions vs. an increased left response for positive emotion. The significance of facial expressions was adduced to elucidate cortical different responses to emotional types.

What does music express? Basic emotions and beyond.

PubMed

Juslin, Patrik N

2013-01-01

Numerous studies have investigated whether music can reliably convey emotions to listeners, and-if so-what musical parameters might carry this information. Far less attention has been devoted to the actual contents of the communicative process. The goal of this article is thus to consider what types of emotional content are possible to convey in music. I will argue that the content is mainly constrained by the type of coding involved, and that distinct types of content are related to different types of coding. Based on these premises, I suggest a conceptualization in terms of "multiple layers" of musical expression of emotions. The "core" layer is constituted by iconically-coded basic emotions. I attempt to clarify the meaning of this concept, dispel the myths that surround it, and provide examples of how it can be heuristic in explaining findings in this domain. However, I also propose that this "core" layer may be extended, qualified, and even modified by additional layers of expression that involve intrinsic and associative coding. These layers enable listeners to perceive more complex emotions-though the expressions are less cross-culturally invariant and more dependent on the social context and/or the individual listener. This multiple-layer conceptualization of expression in music can help to explain both similarities and differences between vocal and musical expression of emotions.

Facial Expression Enhances Emotion Perception Compared to Vocal Prosody: Behavioral and fMRI Studies.

PubMed

Zhang, Heming; Chen, Xuhai; Chen, Shengdong; Li, Yansong; Chen, Changming; Long, Quanshan; Yuan, Jiajin

2018-05-09

Facial and vocal expressions are essential modalities mediating the perception of emotion and social communication. Nonetheless, currently little is known about how emotion perception and its neural substrates differ across facial expression and vocal prosody. To clarify this issue, functional MRI scans were acquired in Study 1, in which participants were asked to discriminate the valence of emotional expression (angry, happy or neutral) from facial, vocal, or bimodal stimuli. In Study 2, we used an affective priming task (unimodal materials as primers and bimodal materials as target) and participants were asked to rate the intensity, valence, and arousal of the targets. Study 1 showed higher accuracy and shorter response latencies in the facial than in the vocal modality for a happy expression. Whole-brain analysis showed enhanced activation during facial compared to vocal emotions in the inferior temporal-occipital regions. Region of interest analysis showed a higher percentage signal change for facial than for vocal anger in the superior temporal sulcus. Study 2 showed that facial relative to vocal priming of anger had a greater influence on perceived emotion for bimodal targets, irrespective of the target valence. These findings suggest that facial expression is associated with enhanced emotion perception compared to equivalent vocal prosodies.

Do Dynamic Facial Expressions Convey Emotions to Children Better than Do Static Ones?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Widen, Sherri C.; Russell, James A.

2015-01-01

Past research has shown that children recognize emotions from facial expressions poorly and improve only gradually with age, but the stimuli in such studies have been static faces. Because dynamic faces include more information, it may well be that children more readily recognize emotions from dynamic facial expressions. The current study of…

On English Speakers' Ability to Communicate Emotion in Mandarin

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jian, Hua-Li

2015-01-01

The ability of Mandarin learners to express emotion in Mandarin has received little attention. This study examines how English L1 users express emotions in Mandarin and how this expression differs from that of Mandarin L1 users. Scenarios were adopted to elicit joy, anger, sadness, fear, and neutrality. Both groups articulated anger, joy, and fear…

The Relationship between Processing Facial Identity and Emotional Expression in 8-Month-Old Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schwarzer, Gudrun; Jovanovic, Bianca

2010-01-01

In Experiment 1, it was investigated whether infants process facial identity and emotional expression independently or in conjunction with one another. Eight-month-old infants were habituated to two upright or two inverted faces varying in facial identity and emotional expression. Infants were tested with a habituation face, a switch face, and a…

Differential Fairness Decisions and Brain Responses after Expressed Emotions of Others in Boys with Autism Spectrum Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klapwijk, Eduard T.; Aghajani, Moji; Lelieveld, Gert-Jan; van Lang, Natasja D. J.; Popma, Arne; van der Wee, Nic J. A.; Colins, Olivier F.; Vermeiren, Robert R. J. M.

2017-01-01

Little is known about how emotions expressed by others influence social decisions and associated brain responses in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We investigated the neural mechanisms underlying fairness decisions in response to explicitly expressed emotions of others in boys with ASD and typically developing (TD) boys. Participants with ASD…

Clinically Relevant Changes in Emotional Expression in Children with ADHD Treated with Lisdexamfetamine Dimesylate

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Katic, Alain; Ginsberg, Lawrence; Jain, Rakesh; Adeyi, Ben; Dirks, Bryan; Babcock, Thomas; Scheckner, Brian; Richards, Cynthia; Lasser, Robert; Turgay, Atilla; Findling, Robert L.

2012-01-01

Objective: To describe clinically relevant effects of lisdexamfetamine dimesylate (LDX) on emotional expression (EE) in children with ADHD. Method: Children with ADHD participated in a 7-week, open-label, LDX dose-optimization study. Expression and Emotion Scale for Children (EESC) change scores were analyzed post hoc using two methods to…

The Role of Code-Switching in Emotional Expression and Autobiographical Memory Recall: Implications for Bilingual Counseling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pang, Lan-Sze

2009-01-01

The purpose of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the emotional expression in the narration of autobiographical stories of Chinese international students in their respective languages (i.e., Mandarin and English). It addressed the methodological limitations of previous research on bilinguals' emotional expression and…

Parenting styles, parental response to child emotion, and family emotional responsiveness are related to child emotional eating.

PubMed

Topham, Glade L; Hubbs-Tait, Laura; Rutledge, Julie M; Page, Melanie C; Kennedy, Tay S; Shriver, Lenka H; Harrist, Amanda W

2011-04-01

The aim of the present study was to examine the relations of parenting style, parent response to negative child emotion, and family emotional expressiveness and support to child emotional eating. Mothers (N=450) completed questionnaires and their 6-8-year-old children (N=450) were interviewed. Results showed that emotional eating was negatively predicted by authoritative parenting style and family open expression of affection and emotion, and positively predicted by parent minimizing response to child negative emotion. Results suggest the need for early prevention/intervention efforts directed to these parenting and family variables. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pitching Emotions: The Interpersonal Effects of Emotions in Professional Baseball.

PubMed

Cheshin, Arik; Heerdink, Marc W; Kossakowski, Jolanda J; Van Kleef, Gerben A

2016-01-01

Sports games are inherently emotional situations, but surprisingly little is known about the social consequences of these emotions. We examined the interpersonal effects of emotional expressions in professional baseball. Specifically, we investigated whether pitchers' facial displays influence how pitches are assessed and responded to. Using footage from the Major League Baseball World Series finals, we isolated incidents where the pitcher's face was visible before a pitch. A pre-study indicated that participants consistently perceived anger, happiness, and worry in pitchers' facial displays. An independent sample then predicted pitch characteristics and batter responses based on the same perceived emotional displays. Participants expected pitchers perceived as happy to throw more accurate balls, pitchers perceived as angry to throw faster and more difficult balls, and pitchers perceived as worried to throw slower and less accurate balls. Batters were expected to approach (swing) when faced with a pitcher perceived as happy and to avoid (no swing) when faced with a pitcher perceived as worried. Whereas previous research focused on using emotional expressions as information regarding past and current situations, our work suggests that people also use perceived emotional expressions to predict future behavior. Our results attest to the impact perceived emotional expressions can have on professional sports.

Clear signals or mixed messages: inter-individual emotion congruency modulates brain activity underlying affective body perception.

PubMed

de Borst, A W; de Gelder, B

2016-08-01

The neural basis of emotion perception has mostly been investigated with single face or body stimuli. However, in daily life one may also encounter affective expressions by groups, e.g. an angry mob or an exhilarated concert crowd. In what way is brain activity modulated when several individuals express similar rather than different emotions? We investigated this question using an experimental design in which we presented two stimuli simultaneously, with same or different emotional expressions. We hypothesized that, in the case of two same-emotion stimuli, brain activity would be enhanced, while in the case of two different emotions, one emotion would interfere with the effect of the other. The results showed that the simultaneous perception of different affective body expressions leads to a deactivation of the amygdala and a reduction of cortical activity. It was revealed that the processing of fearful bodies, compared with different-emotion bodies, relied more strongly on saliency and action triggering regions in inferior parietal lobe and insula, while happy bodies drove the occipito-temporal cortex more strongly. We showed that this design could be used to uncover important differences between brain networks underlying fearful and happy emotions. The enhancement of brain activity for unambiguous affective signals expressed by several people simultaneously supports adaptive behaviour in critical situations. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Do the Big Five personality traits predict individual differences in the left cheek bias for emotion perception?

PubMed

Galea, Samantha; Lindell, Annukka K

2016-01-01

Like language, emotion is a lateralized function. Because the right hemisphere typically dominates emotion processing, people express stronger emotion on the left side of their face. This prompts a left cheek bias: we offer the left cheek to express emotion and rate left cheek portraits more emotionally expressive than right cheek portraits. Though the majority of the population show this left cheek bias (60-70%), individual differences exist but remain largely unexplained. Given that people with higher self-rated emotional expressivity show a stronger left cheek bias, personality variables associated with increased emotional expressivity and emotional intelligence, such as extraversion and openness, may help account for individual differences. The present study thus examined whether the Big Five traits predict left cheek preferences. Participants (M = 58, F = 116) completed the NEO-Five Factor Personality Inventory (NEO-FFI) [Costa, P. T. J., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO PI-R professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources] and viewed pairs of left and right cheek images (half mirror-reversed); participants made forced-choice decisions, indicating which image in each pair looked happier. Hierarchical regression indicated that neither trait extraversion nor openness predicted left cheek selections, with NEO-FFI personality subscales accounting for negligible variance in preferences. As the Big Five traits have been discounted, exploration of other potential contributors to individual differences in the left cheek bias is clearly needed.

Emotions facilitate the communication of ambiguous group memberships.

PubMed

Tskhay, Konstantin O; Rule, Nicholas O

2015-12-01

It is well known that emotions intersect with obvious social categories (e.g., race), influencing both how targets are categorized and the emotions that are read from their faces. Here, we examined the influence of emotional expression on the perception of less obvious group memberships for which, in the absence of obvious and stable physical markers, emotion may serve as a major avenue for group categorization and identification. Specifically, we examined whether emotions are embedded in the mental representations of sexual orientation and political affiliation, and whether people may use emotional expressions to communicate these group memberships to others. Using reverse correlation methods, we found that mental representations of gay and liberal faces were characterized by more positive facial expressions than mental representations of straight and conservative faces (Study 1). Furthermore, participants were evaluated as expressing more positive emotions when enacting self-defined "gay" and "liberal" versus "straight" and "conservative" facial expressions in the lab (Study 2). In addition, neutral faces morphed with happiness were perceived as more gay than when morphed with anger, and when compared to unmorphed controls (Study 3). Finally, we found that affect facilitated perceptions of sexual orientation and political affiliation in naturalistic settings (Study 4). Together, these studies suggest that emotion is a defining characteristic of person construal that people tend to use both when signaling their group memberships and when receiving those signals to categorize others. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Patient-provider communication about the emotional cues and concerns of adolescent and young adult patients and their family members when receiving a diagnosis of cancer.

PubMed

Korsvold, Live; Mellblom, Anneli V; Lie, Hanne C; Ruud, Ellen; Loge, Jon Håvard; Finset, Arnstein

2016-10-01

This study aimed to examine how emotional cues/concerns are expressed and responded to in medical consultations with adolescent and young adults (AYA), an understudied patient group, at the time of cancer diagnosis. Nine consultations in which AYA patients aged 12-25 years were informed about their cancer diagnosis and treatment plans were audio recorded. Expressions of emotional cues/concerns and physicians' responses were identified and coded using The Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences (VR-CoDES). A total of 135 emotional cues/concerns (range: 2-26, median: 13) were identified. Cues or concerns that were expressed by patients and relatives following questions from physicians were more often explicit than patient-initiated cues/concerns. Questions about medical and practical issues could often be understood as ways of expressing emotional cues. When patients or relatives expressed less explicit verbal cues about underlying concerns, physicians often responded by presenting medical information without commenting on the emotional aspect indicated by the cue. The communication was dominated by information-giving, but the questions from patients and relatives and their responses to the information often had emotional connotations. Patients' requests for information may include an emotional aspect. These preliminary findings should be tested in a larger sample. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facial Emotion Recognition in Bipolar Disorder and Healthy Aging.

PubMed

Altamura, Mario; Padalino, Flavia A; Stella, Eleonora; Balzotti, Angela; Bellomo, Antonello; Palumbo, Rocco; Di Domenico, Alberto; Mammarella, Nicola; Fairfield, Beth

2016-03-01

Emotional face recognition is impaired in bipolar disorder, but it is not clear whether this is specific for the illness. Here, we investigated how aging and bipolar disorder influence dynamic emotional face recognition. Twenty older adults, 16 bipolar patients, and 20 control subjects performed a dynamic affective facial recognition task and a subsequent rating task. Participants pressed a key as soon as they were able to discriminate whether the neutral face was assuming a happy or angry facial expression and then rated the intensity of each facial expression. Results showed that older adults recognized happy expressions faster, whereas bipolar patients recognized angry expressions faster. Furthermore, both groups rated emotional faces more intensely than did the control subjects. This study is one of the first to compare how aging and clinical conditions influence emotional facial recognition and underlines the need to consider the role of specific and common factors in emotional face recognition.

The forced-choice paradigm and the perception of facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Frank, M G; Stennett, J

2001-01-01

The view that certain facial expressions of emotion are universally agreed on has been challenged by studies showing that the forced-choice paradigm may have artificially forced agreement. This article addressed this methodological criticism by offering participants the opportunity to select a none of these terms are correct option from a list of emotion labels in a modified forced-choice paradigm. The results show that agreement on the emotion label for particular facial expressions is still greater than chance, that artifactual agreement on incorrect emotion labels is obviated, that participants select the none option when asked to judge a novel expression, and that adding 4 more emotion labels does not change the pattern of agreement reported in universality studies. Although the original forced-choice format may have been prone to artifactual agreement, the modified forced-choice format appears to remedy that problem.

Differentiating facial incongruity and flatness in schizophrenia, using structured light camera data.

PubMed

Tron, Talia; Peled, Abraham; Grinsphoon, Alexander; Weinshall, Daphna

2016-08-01

Incongruity between emotional experience and its outwardly expression is one of the prominent symptoms in schizophrenia. Though widely reported and used in clinical evaluation, this symptom is inadequately defined in the literature and may be confused with mere affect flattening. In this study we used structured-light depth camera and dedicated software to automatically measure facial activity of schizophrenia patients and healthy individuals during an emotionally evocative task. We defined novel measures for the congruence of emotional experience and emotional expression and for Flat Affect, compared them between patients and controls, and examined their consistency with clinical evaluation. We found incongruity in schizophrenia to be manifested in a less specific range of facial expressions in response to similar emotional stimuli, while the emotional experience remains intact. Our study also suggests that when taking into consideration affect flatness, no contextually inappropriate facial expressions are evident.

Communicating shared knowledge in infancy.

PubMed

Egyed, Katalin; Király, Ildikó; Gergely, György

2013-07-01

Object-directed emotion expressions provide two types of information: They can convey the expressers' person-specific subjective disposition toward objects, or they can be used communicatively as referential symbolic devices to convey culturally shared valence-related knowledge about referents that can be generalized to other individuals. By presenting object-directed emotion expressions in communicative versus noncommunicative contexts, we demonstrated that 18-month-olds can flexibly assign either a person-centered interpretation or an object-centered interpretation to referential emotion displays. When addressed by ostensive signals of communication, infants generalized their object-centered interpretation of the emotion display to other individuals as well, whereas in the noncommunicative emotion-expression context, they attributed to the emoting agent a person-specific subjective dispositional attitude without generalizing this attribution as relevant to other individuals. The findings indicate that, as proposed by natural pedagogy theory, infants are prepared to learn shared cultural knowledge from nonverbal communicative demonstrations addressed to them at a remarkably early age.

The effects of emotion on memory for music and vocalisations.

PubMed

Aubé, William; Peretz, Isabelle; Armony, Jorge L

2013-01-01

Music is a powerful tool for communicating emotions which can elicit memories through associative mechanisms. However, it is currently unknown whether emotion can modulate memory for music without reference to a context or personal event. We conducted three experiments to investigate the effect of basic emotions (fear, happiness, and sadness) on recognition memory for music, using short, novel stimuli explicitly created for research purposes, and compared them with nonlinguistic vocalisations. Results showed better memory accuracy for musical clips expressing fear and, to some extent, happiness. In the case of nonlinguistic vocalisations we confirmed a memory advantage for all emotions tested. A correlation between memory accuracy for music and vocalisations was also found, particularly in the case of fearful expressions. These results confirm that emotional expressions, particularly fearful ones, conveyed by music can influence memory as has been previously shown for other forms of expressions, such as faces and vocalisations.

Impaired recognition of happy facial expressions in bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Lawlor-Savage, Linette; Sponheim, Scott R; Goghari, Vina M

2014-08-01

The ability to accurately judge facial expressions is important in social interactions. Individuals with bipolar disorder have been found to be impaired in emotion recognition; however, the specifics of the impairment are unclear. This study investigated whether facial emotion recognition difficulties in bipolar disorder reflect general cognitive, or emotion-specific, impairments. Impairment in the recognition of particular emotions and the role of processing speed in facial emotion recognition were also investigated. Clinically stable bipolar patients (n = 17) and healthy controls (n = 50) judged five facial expressions in two presentation types, time-limited and self-paced. An age recognition condition was used as an experimental control. Bipolar patients' overall facial recognition ability was unimpaired. However, patients' specific ability to judge happy expressions under time constraints was impaired. Findings suggest a deficit in happy emotion recognition impacted by processing speed. Given the limited sample size, further investigation with a larger patient sample is warranted.

Path Models of Vocal Emotion Communication

PubMed Central

Bänziger, Tanja; Hosoya, Georg; Scherer, Klaus R.

2015-01-01

We propose to use a comprehensive path model of vocal emotion communication, encompassing encoding, transmission, and decoding processes, to empirically model data sets on emotion expression and recognition. The utility of the approach is demonstrated for two data sets from two different cultures and languages, based on corpora of vocal emotion enactment by professional actors and emotion inference by naïve listeners. Lens model equations, hierarchical regression, and multivariate path analysis are used to compare the relative contributions of objectively measured acoustic cues in the enacted expressions and subjective voice cues as perceived by listeners to the variance in emotion inference from vocal expressions for four emotion families (fear, anger, happiness, and sadness). While the results confirm the central role of arousal in vocal emotion communication, the utility of applying an extended path modeling framework is demonstrated by the identification of unique combinations of distal cues and proximal percepts carrying information about specific emotion families, independent of arousal. The statistical models generated show that more sophisticated acoustic parameters need to be developed to explain the distal underpinnings of subjective voice quality percepts that account for much of the variance in emotion inference, in particular voice instability and roughness. The general approach advocated here, as well as the specific results, open up new research strategies for work in psychology (specifically emotion and social perception research) and engineering and computer science (specifically research and development in the domain of affective computing, particularly on automatic emotion detection and synthetic emotion expression in avatars). PMID:26325076

Facial expression primes and implicit regulation of negative emotion.

PubMed

Yoon, HeungSik; Kim, Shin Ah; Kim, Sang Hee

2015-06-17

An individual's responses to emotional information are influenced not only by the emotional quality of the information, but also by the context in which the information is presented. We hypothesized that facial expressions of happiness and anger would serve as primes to modulate subjective and neural responses to subsequently presented negative information. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a functional MRI study in which the brains of healthy adults were scanned while they performed an emotion-rating task. During the task, participants viewed a series of negative and neutral photos, one at a time; each photo was presented after a picture showing a face expressing a happy, angry, or neutral emotion. Brain imaging results showed that compared with neutral primes, happy facial primes increased activation during negative emotion in the dorsal anterior cingulated cortex and the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which are typically implicated in conflict detection and implicit emotion control, respectively. Conversely, relative to neutral primes, angry primes activated the right middle temporal gyrus and the left supramarginal gyrus during the experience of negative emotion. Activity in the amygdala in response to negative emotion was marginally reduced after exposure to happy primes compared with angry primes. Relative to neutral primes, angry facial primes increased the subjectively experienced intensity of negative emotion. The current study results suggest that prior exposure to facial expressions of emotions modulates the subsequent experience of negative emotion by implicitly activating the emotion-regulation system.

Culture shapes 7-month-olds' perceptual strategies in discriminating facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Geangu, Elena; Ichikawa, Hiroko; Lao, Junpeng; Kanazawa, So; Yamaguchi, Masami K; Caldara, Roberto; Turati, Chiara

2016-07-25

Emotional facial expressions are thought to have evolved because they play a crucial role in species' survival. From infancy, humans develop dedicated neural circuits [1] to exhibit and recognize a variety of facial expressions [2]. But there is increasing evidence that culture specifies when and how certain emotions can be expressed - social norms - and that the mature perceptual mechanisms used to transmit and decode the visual information from emotional signals differ between Western and Eastern adults [3-5]. Specifically, the mouth is more informative for transmitting emotional signals in Westerners and the eye region for Easterners [4], generating culture-specific fixation biases towards these features [5]. During development, it is recognized that cultural differences can be observed at the level of emotional reactivity and regulation [6], and to the culturally dominant modes of attention [7]. Nonetheless, to our knowledge no study has explored whether culture shapes the processing of facial emotional signals early in development. The data we report here show that, by 7 months, infants from both cultures visually discriminate facial expressions of emotion by relying on culturally distinct fixation strategies, resembling those used by the adults from the environment in which they develop [5]. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotional recognition from dynamic facial, vocal and musical expressions following traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Drapeau, Joanie; Gosselin, Nathalie; Peretz, Isabelle; McKerral, Michelle

2017-01-01

To assess emotion recognition from dynamic facial, vocal and musical expressions in sub-groups of adults with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) of different severities and identify possible common underlying mechanisms across domains. Forty-one adults participated in this study: 10 with moderate-severe TBI, nine with complicated mild TBI, 11 with uncomplicated mild TBI and 11 healthy controls, who were administered experimental (emotional recognition, valence-arousal) and control tasks (emotional and structural discrimination) for each domain. Recognition of fearful faces was significantly impaired in moderate-severe and in complicated mild TBI sub-groups, as compared to those with uncomplicated mild TBI and controls. Effect sizes were medium-large. Participants with lower GCS scores performed more poorly when recognizing fearful dynamic facial expressions. Emotion recognition from auditory domains was preserved following TBI, irrespective of severity. All groups performed equally on control tasks, indicating no perceptual disorders. Although emotional recognition from vocal and musical expressions was preserved, no correlation was found across auditory domains. This preliminary study may contribute to improving comprehension of emotional recognition following TBI. Future studies of larger samples could usefully include measures of functional impacts of recognition deficits for fearful facial expressions. These could help refine interventions for emotional recognition following a brain injury.

Gaze Dynamics in the Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotion.

PubMed

Barabanschikov, Vladimir A

2015-01-01

We studied preferably fixated parts and features of human face in the process of recognition of facial expressions of emotion. Photographs of facial expressions were used. Participants were to categorize these as basic emotions; during this process, eye movements were registered. It was found that variation in the intensity of an expression is mirrored in accuracy of emotion recognition; it was also reflected by several indices of oculomotor function: duration of inspection of certain areas of the face, its upper and bottom or right parts, right and left sides; location, number and duration of fixations, viewing trajectory. In particular, for low-intensity expressions, right side of the face was found to be attended predominantly (right-side dominance); the right-side dominance effect, was, however, absent for expressions of high intensity. For both low- and high-intensity expressions, upper face part was predominantly fixated, though with greater fixation of high-intensity expressions. The majority of trials (70%), in line with findings in previous studies, revealed a V-shaped pattern of inspection trajectory. No relationship, between accuracy of recognition of emotional expressions, was found, though, with either location and duration of fixations or pattern of gaze directedness in the face. © The Author(s) 2015.

The costs of parental pressure to express emotions: conditional regard and autonomy support as predictors of emotion regulation and intimacy.

PubMed

Roth, Guy; Assor, Avi

2012-08-01

This research focuses on offspring's perceptions of their parents' usage of conditional regard and autonomy-supportive practices in response to the offspring's experiences of negative emotion. Participants were 174 college students (60% were females). As predicted from self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), students' perceptions of parents as hinging their regard on students' expression or suppression of negative emotions predicted a maladaptive pattern of emotion regulation and intimacy capacity. In contrast, autonomy-supportive parenting predicted more adaptive emotion regulation and intimacy patterns. Also as predicted, emotion-regulation mode mediated the relations between parental practices and intimacy capacity. The innovative aspect of the study is the finding that parents who use conditional regard to encourage children's expression (sharing) of negative emotions may actually undermine their children's socioemotional capacities. Copyright © 2011 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Categorising intersectional targets: An "either/and" approach to race- and gender-emotion congruity.

PubMed

Smith, Jacqueline S; LaFrance, Marianne; Dovidio, John F

2017-01-01

Research on the interaction of emotional expressions with social category cues in face processing has focused on whether specific emotions are associated with single-category identities, thus overlooking the influence of intersectional identities. Instead, we examined how quickly people categorise intersectional targets by their race, gender, or emotional expression. In Experiment 1, participants categorised Black and White faces displaying angry, happy, or neutral expressions by either race or gender. Emotion influenced responses to men versus women only when gender was made salient by the task. Similarly, emotion influenced responses to Black versus White targets only when participants categorised by race. In Experiment 2, participants categorised faces by emotion so that neither category was more salient. As predicted, responses to Black women differed from those to both Black men and White women. Thus, examining race and gender separately is insufficient to understanding how emotion and social category cues are processed.

Interactions between facial emotion and identity in face processing: evidence based on redundancy gains.

PubMed

Yankouskaya, Alla; Booth, David A; Humphreys, Glyn

2012-11-01

Interactions between the processing of emotion expression and form-based information from faces (facial identity) were investigated using the redundant-target paradigm, in which we specifically tested whether identity and emotional expression are integrated in a superadditive manner (Miller, Cognitive Psychology 14:247-279, 1982). In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed emotion and face identity judgments on faces with sad or angry emotional expressions. Responses to redundant targets were faster than responses to either single target when a universal emotion was conveyed, and performance violated the predictions from a model assuming independent processing of emotion and face identity. Experiment 4 showed that these effects were not modulated by varying interstimulus and nontarget contingencies, and Experiment 5 demonstrated that the redundancy gains were eliminated when faces were inverted. Taken together, these results suggest that the identification of emotion and facial identity interact in face processing.

Perception of emotion in abstract artworks: a multidisciplinary approach.

PubMed

Melcher, David; Bacci, Francesca

2013-01-01

There is a long-standing and fundamental debate regarding how emotion can be expressed by fine art. Some artists and theorists have claimed that certain features of paintings, such as color, line, form, and composition, can consistently express an "objective" emotion, while others have argued that emotion perception is subjective and depends more on expertise of the observer. Here, we discuss two studies in which we have found evidence for consistency in observer ratings of emotion for abstract artworks. We have developed a stimulus set of abstract art images to test emotional priming, both between different painting images and between paintings and faces. The ratings were also used in a computational vision analysis of the visual features underlying emotion expression. Overall, these findings suggest that there is a strong bottom-up and objective aspect to perception of emotion in abstract artworks that may tap into basic visual mechanisms. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Reduced Recognition of Dynamic Facial Emotional Expressions and Emotion-Specific Response Bias in Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Evers, Kris; Steyaert, Jean; Noens, Ilse; Wagemans, Johan

2015-01-01

Emotion labelling was evaluated in two matched samples of 6-14-year old children with and without an autism spectrum disorder (ASD; N = 45 and N = 50, resp.), using six dynamic facial expressions. The Emotion Recognition Task proved to be valuable demonstrating subtle emotion recognition difficulties in ASD, as we showed a general poorer emotion…

Expressive flexibility in combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.

PubMed

Rodin, Rebecca; Bonanno, George A; Rahman, Nadia; Kouri, Nicole A; Bryant, Richard A; Marmar, Charles R; Brown, Adam D

2017-01-01

A growing body of evidence suggests that the ability to flexibly express and suppress emotions ("expressive flexibility") supports successful adaptation to trauma and loss. However, studies have yet to examine whether individuals that meet criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression exhibit alterations in expressive flexibility. The present study aims to test whether lower levels of expressive flexibility are associated with PTSD and depression in combat-exposed veterans. Fifty-nine combat veterans with and without PTSD completed self-report measures assessing symptoms of depression, PTSD, and combat exposure. Participants also completed an expressive flexibility task in which they were asked to either enhance or suppress their expressions of emotion while viewing affective images on a computer screen. Expressive flexibility was assessed by both expressive enhancement ability and expressive suppression ability. Repeated measures ANOVA's showed that both PTSD and depression were associated with lower levels of emotional enhancement ability. In addition, a series of linear regressions demonstrated that lower levels of emotional enhancement ability were associated with greater symptom severity of PTSD and depression. The ability to suppress emotional responses did not differ among individuals with and without PTSD or depression. of the study include a cross-sectional design, precluding causality; the lack of a non-trauma exposed group and predominantly male participants limit the generalizability to other populations. Alterations in expressive flexibility is a previously unrecognized affective mechanism associated with PTSD and depression. Clinical strategies aimed at enhancing emotional expression may aid in the treatment of these disorders. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The emotional body and time perception.

PubMed

Droit-Volet, Sylvie; Gil, Sandrine

2016-01-01

We examined the effects of emotional bodily expressions on the perception of time. Participants were shown bodily expressions of fear, happiness and sadness in a temporal bisection task featuring different stimulus duration ranges. Stimulus durations were judged to be longer for bodily expressions of fear than for those of sadness, whereas no significant difference was observed between sad and happy postures. In addition, the magnitude of the lengthening effect of fearful versus sad postures increased with duration range. These results suggest that the perception of fearful bodily expressions increases the level of arousal which, in turn, speeds up the internal clock system underlying the representation of time. The effect of bodily expressions on time perception is thus consistent with findings for other highly arousing emotional stimuli, such as emotional facial expressions.

Stereotypes of emotional expressiveness of northerners and southerners: a cross-cultural test of Montesquieu's hypotheses.

PubMed

Pennebaker, J W; Rimé, B; Blankenship, V E

1996-02-01

Montesquieu argued that residents of warmer climates are more emotionally expressive than those living in cooler ones. More than 2,900 college students from 26 countries completed a brief questionnaire assessing the degree to which they considered Northerners and Southerners within their own countries to be emotionally expressive. In addition, individuals rated themselves on their own degree of expressiveness. In partial confirmation of Montesquieu's hypothesis, it was found that large within-country North-South stereotypes exist. Especially in Old World countries, Northerners are viewed as less emotionally expressive than Southerners. Regression and other analyses revealed that self-ratings of expressiveness were, in fact, related to being from the South and to warmer mean temperatures. Several possible explanations for these effects are discussed.

Measuring emotion regulation and emotional expression in breast cancer patients: A systematic review.

PubMed

Brandão, Tânia; Tavares, Rita; Schulz, Marc S; Matos, Paula Mena

2016-02-01

The important role of emotion regulation and expression in adaptation to breast cancer is now widely recognized. Studies have shown that optimal emotion regulation strategies, including less constrained emotional expression, are associated with better adaptation. Our objective was to systematically review measures used to assess the way women with breast cancer regulate their emotions. This systematic review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Nine different databases were searched. Data were independently extracted and assessed by two researchers. English-language articles that used at least one instrument to measure strategies to regulate emotions in women with breast cancer were included. Of 679 abstracts identified 59 studies were deemed eligible for inclusion. Studies were coded regarding their objectives, methods, and results. We identified 16 instruments used to measure strategies of emotion regulation and expression. The most frequently employed instrument was the Courtauld Emotional Control Scale. Few psychometric proprieties other than internal consistency were reported for most instruments. Many studies did not include important information regarding descriptive characteristics and psychometric properties of the instruments used. The instruments used tap different aspects of emotion regulation. Specific instruments should be explored further with regard to content, validity, and reliability in the context of breast cancer. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Method for Face-Emotion Retrieval Using A Cartoon Emotional Expression Approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kostov, Vlaho; Yanagisawa, Hideyoshi; Johansson, Martin; Fukuda, Shuichi

A simple method for extracting emotion from a human face, as a form of non-verbal communication, was developed to cope with and optimize mobile communication in a globalized and diversified society. A cartoon face based model was developed and used to evaluate emotional content of real faces. After a pilot survey, basic rules were defined and student subjects were asked to express emotion using the cartoon face. Their face samples were then analyzed using principal component analysis and the Mahalanobis distance method. Feature parameters considered as having relations with emotions were extracted and new cartoon faces (based on these parameters) were generated. The subjects evaluated emotion of these cartoon faces again and we confirmed these parameters were suitable. To confirm how these parameters could be applied to real faces, we asked subjects to express the same emotions which were then captured electronically. Simple image processing techniques were also developed to extract these features from real faces and we then compared them with the cartoon face parameters. It is demonstrated via the cartoon face that we are able to express the emotions from very small amounts of information. As a result, real and cartoon faces correspond to each other. It is also shown that emotion could be extracted from still and dynamic real face images using these cartoon-based features.

The Voice of Emotion: Acoustic Properties of Six Emotional Expressions.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baldwin, Carol May

Studies in the perceptual identification of emotional states suggested that listeners seemed to depend on a limited set of vocal cues to distinguish among emotions. Linguistics and speech science literatures have indicated that this small set of cues included intensity, fundamental frequency, and temporal properties such as speech rate and duration. Little research has been done, however, to validate these cues in the production of emotional speech, or to determine if specific dimensions of each cue are associated with the production of a particular emotion for a variety of speakers. This study addressed deficiencies in understanding of the acoustical properties of duration and intensity as components of emotional speech by means of speech science instrumentation. Acoustic data were conveyed in a brief sentence spoken by twelve English speaking adult male and female subjects, half with dramatic training, and half without such training. Simulated expressions included: happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. The study demonstrated that the acoustic property of mean intensity served as an important cue for a vocal taxonomy. Overall duration was rejected as an element for a general taxonomy due to interactions involving gender and role. Findings suggested a gender-related taxonomy, however, based on differences in the ways in which men and women use the duration cue in their emotional expressions. Results also indicated that speaker training may influence greater use of the duration cue in expressions of emotion, particularly for male actors. Discussion of these results provided linkages to (1) practical management of emotional interactions in clinical and interpersonal environments, (2) implications for differences in the ways in which males and females may be socialized to express emotions, and (3) guidelines for future perceptual studies of emotional sensitivity.

Encoding conditions affect recognition of vocally expressed emotions across cultures.

PubMed

Jürgens, Rebecca; Drolet, Matthis; Pirow, Ralph; Scheiner, Elisabeth; Fischer, Julia

2013-01-01

Although the expression of emotions in humans is considered to be largely universal, cultural effects contribute to both emotion expression and recognition. To disentangle the interplay between these factors, play-acted and authentic (non-instructed) vocal expressions of emotions were used, on the assumption that cultural effects may contribute differentially to the recognition of staged and spontaneous emotions. Speech tokens depicting four emotions (anger, sadness, joy, fear) were obtained from German radio archives and re-enacted by professional actors, and presented to 120 participants from Germany, Romania, and Indonesia. Participants in all three countries were poor at distinguishing between play-acted and spontaneous emotional utterances (58.73% correct on average with only marginal cultural differences). Nevertheless, authenticity influenced emotion recognition: across cultures, anger was recognized more accurately when play-acted (z = 15.06, p < 0.001) and sadness when authentic (z = 6.63, p < 0.001), replicating previous findings from German populations. German subjects revealed a slight advantage in recognizing emotions, indicating a moderate in-group advantage. There was no difference between Romanian and Indonesian subjects in the overall emotion recognition. Differential cultural effects became particularly apparent in terms of differential biases in emotion attribution. While all participants labeled play-acted expressions as anger more frequently than expected, German participants exhibited a further bias toward choosing anger for spontaneous stimuli. In contrast to the German sample, Romanian and Indonesian participants were biased toward choosing sadness. These results support the view that emotion recognition rests on a complex interaction of human universals and cultural specificities. Whether and in which way the observed biases are linked to cultural differences in self-construal remains an issue for further investigation.

[Cold-minded thinking? The role of emotional intelligence and emotional stability in Machiavellian decision-making].

PubMed

Szíjjártó, Linda; Bereczkei, Tamás

2013-01-01

Previous studies clearly show that Machiavellians' thinking and behavior are characterized by some kind of cold attitude, a tendency to be detached from the emotional features of a particular situation. However, very little is known what this cold-minded attitude means, and the presence or the absence of what abilities can lead to emotional detachment. Surprisingly, our study has shown that Machiavellians - contrary to what others believe - happen to exhibit more emotional instability than others. They experience more negative emotions, lose their peace of mind faster, and have a hard time tolerating psychological distress. However, they try to conceal their emotional worries in two different ways. On the one hand, they cannot express their emotions as subtly and precisely as others, and on the other, they are much worse at identifying and differentiating their own emotional states. Maybe it is just the deficit in evaluating and expressing emotions that enables them to implement the strategy to enforce their self-interest successfully. The weak ability to identify and comprehend their own emotions may help them stay detached from the emotional temperature of a situation, while the difficulties in expressing their emotions enable them to disguise their true intentions from their partners.

I thought that I heard you laughing: Contextual facial expressions modulate the perception of authentic laughter and crying.

PubMed

Lavan, Nadine; Lima, César F; Harvey, Hannah; Scott, Sophie K; McGettigan, Carolyn

2015-01-01

It is well established that categorising the emotional content of facial expressions may differ depending on contextual information. Whether this malleability is observed in the auditory domain and in genuine emotion expressions is poorly explored. We examined the perception of authentic laughter and crying in the context of happy, neutral and sad facial expressions. Participants rated the vocalisations on separate unipolar scales of happiness and sadness and on arousal. Although they were instructed to focus exclusively on the vocalisations, consistent context effects were found: For both laughter and crying, emotion judgements were shifted towards the information expressed by the face. These modulations were independent of response latencies and were larger for more emotionally ambiguous vocalisations. No effects of context were found for arousal ratings. These findings suggest that the automatic encoding of contextual information during emotion perception generalises across modalities, to purely non-verbal vocalisations, and is not confined to acted expressions.

Do Facebook Status Updates Reflect Subjective Well-Being?

PubMed

Liu, Pan; Tov, William; Kosinski, Michal; Stillwell, David J; Qiu, Lin

2015-07-01

Nowadays, millions of people around the world use social networking sites to express everyday thoughts and feelings. Many researchers have tried to make use of social media to study users' online behaviors and psychological states. However, previous studies show mixed results about whether self-generated contents on Facebook reflect users' subjective well-being (SWB). This study analyzed Facebook status updates to determine the extent to which users' emotional expression predicted their SWB-specifically their self-reported satisfaction with life. It was found that positive emotional expressions on Facebook did not correlate with life satisfaction, whereas negative emotional expressions within the past 9-10 months (but not beyond) were significantly related to life satisfaction. These findings suggest that both the type of emotional expressions and the time frame of status updates determine whether emotional expressions in Facebook status updates can effectively reflect users' SWB. The findings shed light on the characteristics of online social media and improve the understanding of how user-generated contents reflect users' psychological states.

Effects of cultural characteristics on building an emotion classifier through facial expression analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

da Silva, Flávio Altinier Maximiano; Pedrini, Helio

2015-03-01

Facial expressions are an important demonstration of humanity's humors and emotions. Algorithms capable of recognizing facial expressions and associating them with emotions were developed and employed to compare the expressions that different cultural groups use to show their emotions. Static pictures of predominantly occidental and oriental subjects from public datasets were used to train machine learning algorithms, whereas local binary patterns, histogram of oriented gradients (HOGs), and Gabor filters were employed to describe the facial expressions for six different basic emotions. The most consistent combination, formed by the association of HOG filter and support vector machines, was then used to classify the other cultural group: there was a strong drop in accuracy, meaning that the subtle differences of facial expressions of each culture affected the classifier performance. Finally, a classifier was trained with images from both occidental and oriental subjects and its accuracy was higher on multicultural data, evidencing the need of a multicultural training set to build an efficient classifier.

Display rules for anger, sadness, and pain: it depends on who is watching.

PubMed

Zeman, J; Garber, J

1996-06-01

This study examined factors that may influence children's decisions to control or express their emotions including type of emotion (anger, sadness, physical pain), type of audience (mother, father, peer, alone), age, and sex. Children's reported use of display rules, reasons for their decisions, and reported method of expression were examined. Subjects were 32 boys and 32 girls in each of the first (M = 7.25 years old), third (M = 9.33 years old), and fifth grades (M = 11.75 years old). Regardless of the type of emotion experienced, children reported controlling their expression of emotion significantly more in the presence of peers than when they were with either their mother or father or when they were alone. Younger children reported expressing sadness and anger significantly more often than did older children, and girls were more likely than boys to report expressing sadness and pain. Children's primary reason for controlling their emotional expressions was the expectation of a negative interpersonal interaction following disclosure.

Evidence for Anger Saliency during the Recognition of Chimeric Facial Expressions of Emotions in Underage Ebola Survivors

PubMed Central

Ardizzi, Martina; Evangelista, Valentina; Ferroni, Francesca; Umiltà, Maria A.; Ravera, Roberto; Gallese, Vittorio

2017-01-01

One of the crucial features defining basic emotions and their prototypical facial expressions is their value for survival. Childhood traumatic experiences affect the effective recognition of facial expressions of negative emotions, normally allowing the recruitment of adequate behavioral responses to environmental threats. Specifically, anger becomes an extraordinarily salient stimulus unbalancing victims’ recognition of negative emotions. Despite the plethora of studies on this topic, to date, it is not clear whether this phenomenon reflects an overall response tendency toward anger recognition or a selective proneness to the salience of specific facial expressive cues of anger after trauma exposure. To address this issue, a group of underage Sierra Leonean Ebola virus disease survivors (mean age 15.40 years, SE 0.35; years of schooling 8.8 years, SE 0.46; 14 males) and a control group (mean age 14.55, SE 0.30; years of schooling 8.07 years, SE 0.30, 15 males) performed a forced-choice chimeric facial expressions recognition task. The chimeric facial expressions were obtained pairing upper and lower half faces of two different negative emotions (selected from anger, fear and sadness for a total of six different combinations). Overall, results showed that upper facial expressive cues were more salient than lower facial expressive cues. This priority was lost among Ebola virus disease survivors for the chimeric facial expressions of anger. In this case, differently from controls, Ebola virus disease survivors recognized anger regardless of the upper or lower position of the facial expressive cues of this emotion. The present results demonstrate that victims’ performance in the recognition of the facial expression of anger does not reflect an overall response tendency toward anger recognition, but rather the specific greater salience of facial expressive cues of anger. Furthermore, the present results show that traumatic experiences deeply modify the perceptual analysis of philogenetically old behavioral patterns like the facial expressions of emotions. PMID:28690565

Evidence for Anger Saliency during the Recognition of Chimeric Facial Expressions of Emotions in Underage Ebola Survivors.

PubMed

Ardizzi, Martina; Evangelista, Valentina; Ferroni, Francesca; Umiltà, Maria A; Ravera, Roberto; Gallese, Vittorio

2017-01-01

One of the crucial features defining basic emotions and their prototypical facial expressions is their value for survival. Childhood traumatic experiences affect the effective recognition of facial expressions of negative emotions, normally allowing the recruitment of adequate behavioral responses to environmental threats. Specifically, anger becomes an extraordinarily salient stimulus unbalancing victims' recognition of negative emotions. Despite the plethora of studies on this topic, to date, it is not clear whether this phenomenon reflects an overall response tendency toward anger recognition or a selective proneness to the salience of specific facial expressive cues of anger after trauma exposure. To address this issue, a group of underage Sierra Leonean Ebola virus disease survivors (mean age 15.40 years, SE 0.35; years of schooling 8.8 years, SE 0.46; 14 males) and a control group (mean age 14.55, SE 0.30; years of schooling 8.07 years, SE 0.30, 15 males) performed a forced-choice chimeric facial expressions recognition task. The chimeric facial expressions were obtained pairing upper and lower half faces of two different negative emotions (selected from anger, fear and sadness for a total of six different combinations). Overall, results showed that upper facial expressive cues were more salient than lower facial expressive cues. This priority was lost among Ebola virus disease survivors for the chimeric facial expressions of anger. In this case, differently from controls, Ebola virus disease survivors recognized anger regardless of the upper or lower position of the facial expressive cues of this emotion. The present results demonstrate that victims' performance in the recognition of the facial expression of anger does not reflect an overall response tendency toward anger recognition, but rather the specific greater salience of facial expressive cues of anger. Furthermore, the present results show that traumatic experiences deeply modify the perceptual analysis of philogenetically old behavioral patterns like the facial expressions of emotions.

Self-Efficacy for Pain Communication Moderates the Relation Between Ambivalence Over Emotional Expression and Pain Catastrophizing Among Patients With Osteoarthritis.

PubMed

Van Denburg, Alyssa N; Shelby, Rebecca A; Caldwell, David S; O'Sullivan, Madeline L; Keefe, Francis J

2018-04-06

Pain catastrophizing (ie, the tendency to focus on and magnify pain sensations and feel helpless in the face of pain) is one of the most important and consistent psychological predictors of the pain experience. The present study examined, in 60 patients with osteoarthritis pain who were married or partnered: 1) the degree to which ambivalence over emotional expression and negative network orientation were associated with pain catastrophizing, and 2) whether self-efficacy for pain communication moderated these relations. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses revealed a significant main effect for the association between ambivalence over emotional expression and pain catastrophizing; as ambivalence over emotional expression increased, the degree of pain catastrophizing increased. In addition, the interaction between ambivalence over emotional expression and self-efficacy for pain communication was significant, such that as self-efficacy for pain communication increased, the association between ambivalence over emotional expression and pain catastrophizing became weaker. Negative network orientation was not significantly associated with pain catastrophizing. Findings suggest that higher levels of self-efficacy for pain communication may help weaken the effects of ambivalence over emotional expression on pain catastrophizing. In light of these results, patients may benefit from interventions that target pain communication processes and emotion regulation. This article examines interpersonal processes involved in pain catastrophizing. This study has the potential to lead to better understanding of maladaptive pain coping strategies and possibly better prevention and treatment strategies. Copyright © 2018 The American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Moving to continuous facial expression space using the MPEG-4 facial definition parameter (FDP) set

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karpouzis, Kostas; Tsapatsoulis, Nicolas; Kollias, Stefanos D.

2000-06-01

Research in facial expression has concluded that at least six emotions, conveyed by human faces, are universally associated with distinct expressions. Sadness, anger, joy, fear, disgust and surprise are categories of expressions that are recognizable across cultures. In this work we form a relation between the description of the universal expressions and the MPEG-4 Facial Definition Parameter Set (FDP). We also investigate the relation between the movement of basic FDPs and the parameters that describe emotion-related words according to some classical psychological studies. In particular Whissel suggested that emotions are points in a space, which seem to occupy two dimensions: activation and evaluation. We show that some of the MPEG-4 Facial Animation Parameters (FAPs), approximated by the motion of the corresponding FDPs, can be combined by means of a fuzzy rule system to estimate the activation parameter. In this way variations of the six archetypal emotions can be achieved. Moreover, Plutchik concluded that emotion terms are unevenly distributed through the space defined by dimensions like Whissel's; instead they tend to form an approximately circular pattern, called 'emotion wheel,' modeled using an angular measure. The 'emotion wheel' can be defined as a reference for creating intermediate expressions from the universal ones, by interpolating the movement of dominant FDP points between neighboring basic expressions. By exploiting the relation between the movement of the basic FDP point and the activation and angular parameters we can model more emotions than the primary ones and achieve efficient recognition in video sequences.

Specific biases for identifying facial expression of emotion in children and adolescents with conversion disorders.

PubMed

Kozlowska, Kasia; Brown, Kerri J; Palmer, Donna M; Williams, Lea M

2013-04-01

This study aimed to assess how children and adolescents with conversion disorders identify universal facial expressions of emotion and to determine whether identification of emotion in faces relates to subjective emotional distress. Fifty-seven participants (41 girls and 16 boys) aged 8.5 to 18 years with conversion disorders and 57 age- and sex-matched healthy controls completed a computerized task in which their accuracy and reaction times for identifying facial expressions were recorded. To isolate the effect of individual emotional expressions, participants' reaction times for each emotion (fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and happiness) were subtracted from their reaction times for the neutral control face. Participants also completed self-report measures of subjective emotional distress. Children/Adolescents with conversion disorders showed faster reaction times for identifying expressions of sadness (t(112) = -2.2, p = .03; 444 [609] versus 713 [695], p = .03) and slower reactions times for happy expressions (t(99.3) = 2.28, p ≤ .024; -33 [35] versus 174 [51], p = .024), compared with controls (F(33.75, 419.81) = 3.76, p < .001). There were no significant correlations (at the corrected p value of .01) between reaction times and subjective reports of perceived distress (r values ranged from 092 to 0.221; p > .018). There were also no differences in identification accuracy for any emotion (p > .82). The observation of faster reaction times to sad faces in children and adolescents with conversion disorders suggests increased vigilance and motor readiness to emotional signals that are potential threats to self or to close others. These effects may occur before conscious processing.

Effects of exposure to facial expression variation in face learning and recognition.

PubMed

Liu, Chang Hong; Chen, Wenfeng; Ward, James

2015-11-01

Facial expression is a major source of image variation in face images. Linking numerous expressions to the same face can be a huge challenge for face learning and recognition. It remains largely unknown what level of exposure to this image variation is critical for expression-invariant face recognition. We examined this issue in a recognition memory task, where the number of facial expressions of each face being exposed during a training session was manipulated. Faces were either trained with multiple expressions or a single expression, and they were later tested in either the same or different expressions. We found that recognition performance after learning three emotional expressions had no improvement over learning a single emotional expression (Experiments 1 and 2). However, learning three emotional expressions improved recognition compared to learning a single neutral expression (Experiment 3). These findings reveal both the limitation and the benefit of multiple exposures to variations of emotional expression in achieving expression-invariant face recognition. The transfer of expression training to a new type of expression is likely to depend on a relatively extensive level of training and a certain degree of variation across the types of expressions.

Oxytocin enhances pupil dilation and sensitivity to ‘hidden’ emotional expressions

PubMed Central

Wessberg, Johan; Ellingsen, Dan-Mikael; Chelnokova, Olga; Olausson, Håkan; Laeng, Bruno

2013-01-01

Sensing others’ emotions through subtle facial expressions is a highly important social skill. We investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin treatment on the evaluation of explicit and ‘hidden’ emotional expressions and related the results to individual differences in sensitivity to others’ subtle expressions of anger and happiness. Forty healthy volunteers participated in this double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study, which shows that a single dose of intranasal oxytocin (40 IU) enhanced or ‘sharpened’ evaluative processing of others’ positive and negative facial expression for both explicit and hidden emotional information. Our results point to mechanisms that could underpin oxytocin’s prosocial effects in humans. Importantly, individual differences in baseline emotional sensitivity predicted oxytocin’s effects on the ability to sense differences between faces with hidden emotional information. Participants with low emotional sensitivity showed greater oxytocin-induced improvement. These participants also showed larger task-related pupil dilation, suggesting that they also allocated the most attentional resources to the task. Overall, oxytocin treatment enhanced stimulus-induced pupil dilation, consistent with oxytocin enhancement of attention towards socially relevant stimuli. Since pupil dilation can be associated with increased attractiveness and approach behaviour, this effect could also represent a mechanism by which oxytocin increases human affiliation. PMID:22648957

Oxytocin enhances pupil dilation and sensitivity to 'hidden' emotional expressions.

PubMed

Leknes, Siri; Wessberg, Johan; Ellingsen, Dan-Mikael; Chelnokova, Olga; Olausson, Håkan; Laeng, Bruno

2013-10-01

Sensing others' emotions through subtle facial expressions is a highly important social skill. We investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin treatment on the evaluation of explicit and 'hidden' emotional expressions and related the results to individual differences in sensitivity to others' subtle expressions of anger and happiness. Forty healthy volunteers participated in this double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study, which shows that a single dose of intranasal oxytocin (40 IU) enhanced or 'sharpened' evaluative processing of others' positive and negative facial expression for both explicit and hidden emotional information. Our results point to mechanisms that could underpin oxytocin's prosocial effects in humans. Importantly, individual differences in baseline emotional sensitivity predicted oxytocin's effects on the ability to sense differences between faces with hidden emotional information. Participants with low emotional sensitivity showed greater oxytocin-induced improvement. These participants also showed larger task-related pupil dilation, suggesting that they also allocated the most attentional resources to the task. Overall, oxytocin treatment enhanced stimulus-induced pupil dilation, consistent with oxytocin enhancement of attention towards socially relevant stimuli. Since pupil dilation can be associated with increased attractiveness and approach behaviour, this effect could also represent a mechanism by which oxytocin increases human affiliation.

Parental Socialization of Emotion.

PubMed

Eisenberg, Nancy; Cumberland, Amanda; Spinrad, Tracy L

1998-01-01

Recently, there has been a resurgence of research on emotion, including the socialization of emotion. In this article, a heuristic model of factors contributing to the socialization of emotion is presented. Then literature relevant to the socialization of children's emotion and emotion-related behavior by parents is reviewed, including (a) parental reactions to children's emotions, (b) socializers' discussion of emotion, and (c) socializers' expression of emotion. The relevant literature is not conclusive and most of the research is correlational. However, the existing body of data provides initial support for the view that parental socialization practices have effects on children's emotional and social competence and that the socialization process is bidirectional. In particular, parental negative emotionality and negative reactions to children's expression of emotion are associated with children's negative emotionality and low social competence. In addition, possible moderators of effects such as level of emotional arousal are discussed.

Lost for emotion words: What motor and limbic brain activity reveals about autism and semantic theory

PubMed Central

Moseley, Rachel L.; Shtyrov, Yury; Mohr, Bettina; Lombardo, Michael V.; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2015-01-01

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are characterised by deficits in understanding and expressing emotions and are frequently accompanied by alexithymia, a difficulty in understanding and expressing emotion words. Words are differentially represented in the brain according to their semantic category and these difficulties in ASC predict reduced activation to emotion-related words in limbic structures crucial for affective processing. Semantic theories view ‘emotion actions’ as critical for learning the semantic relationship between a word and the emotion it describes, such that emotion words typically activate the cortical motor systems involved in expressing emotion actions such as facial expressions. As ASC are also characterised by motor deficits and atypical brain structure and function in these regions, motor structures would also be expected to show reduced activation during emotion-semantic processing. Here we used event-related fMRI to compare passive processing of emotion words in comparison to abstract verbs and animal names in typically-developing controls and individuals with ASC. Relatively reduced brain activation in ASC for emotion words, but not matched control words, was found in motor areas and cingulate cortex specifically. The degree of activation evoked by emotion words in the motor system was also associated with the extent of autistic traits as revealed by the Autism Spectrum Quotient. We suggest that hypoactivation of motor and limbic regions for emotion word processing may underlie difficulties in processing emotional language in ASC. The role that sensorimotor systems and their connections might play in the affective and social-communication difficulties in ASC is discussed. PMID:25278250

Emotion categorization of body expressions in narrative scenarios

PubMed Central

Volkova, Ekaterina P.; Mohler, Betty J.; Dodds, Trevor J.; Tesch, Joachim; Bülthoff, Heinrich H.

2014-01-01

Humans can recognize emotions expressed through body motion with high accuracy even when the stimuli are impoverished. However, most of the research on body motion has relied on exaggerated displays of emotions. In this paper we present two experiments where we investigated whether emotional body expressions could be recognized when they were recorded during natural narration. Our actors were free to use their entire body, face, and voice to express emotions, but our resulting visual stimuli used only the upper body motion trajectories in the form of animated stick figures. Observers were asked to perform an emotion recognition task on short motion sequences using a large and balanced set of emotions (amusement, joy, pride, relief, surprise, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, shame, and neutral). Even with only upper body motion available, our results show recognition accuracy significantly above chance level and high consistency rates among observers. In our first experiment, that used more classic emotion induction setup, all emotions were well recognized. In the second study that employed narrations, four basic emotion categories (joy, anger, fear, and sadness), three non-basic emotion categories (amusement, pride, and shame) and the “neutral” category were recognized above chance. Interestingly, especially in the second experiment, observers showed a bias toward anger when recognizing the motion sequences for emotions. We discovered that similarities between motion sequences across the emotions along such properties as mean motion speed, number of peaks in the motion trajectory and mean motion span can explain a large percent of the variation in observers' responses. Overall, our results show that upper body motion is informative for emotion recognition in narrative scenarios. PMID:25071623

Expressions of Emotion as Mediated by Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altarriba, Jeanette

2008-01-01

In her thoughtful work regarding various aspects of emotion and emotion related words, Pavlenko explores a variety of perspectives on how we might characterize and conceptualize expressions of emotion. It is a work that is quite rich in breadth--one that leads to a variety of different thoughts on this topic, many of which are amenable to…

Changes in Maternal Expressed Emotion toward Clinically Anxious Children following Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gar, Natalie S.; Hudson, Jennifer L.

2009-01-01

The aim of this study was to determine whether maternal expressed emotion (criticism and emotional overinvolvement) decreased across treatment for childhood anxiety. Mothers of 48 clinically anxious children (aged 6-14 years) were rated on levels of criticism (CRIT) and emotional overinvolvement (EOI), as measured by a Five Minute Speech Sample…

Can Gaze Avoidance Explain Why Individuals with Asperger's Syndrome Can't Recognise Emotions from Facial Expressions?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sawyer, Alyssa C. P.; Williamson, Paul; Young, Robyn L.

2012-01-01

Research has shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties recognising emotions from facial expressions. Since eye contact is important for accurate emotion recognition, and individuals with ASD tend to avoid eye contact, this tendency for gaze aversion has been proposed as an explanation for the emotion recognition…

Thinking Silently in the Woods: Listening to Children Speaking about Emotion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mortari, Luigina

2011-01-01

The emotional side of the mind, which expresses itself through emotions, sentiments and moods, plays an important role in human existence because it conditions our own way of being in the world. On this premise, a qualitative research with children was undertaken in order to facilitate the expression of the emotions. The participants were children…

Emotion Talk in Preschool Same-Sex Friendship Groups: Fluidity over Time and Context.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kyratzis, Amy

2001-01-01

Examined "emotion talk" among 3- and 4-year-old peers in a children's center in different contexts over the academic year. Found that the boys' group evolved norms against expression of being scared with norms downgrading girl characteristics. Boys' and girls' groups showed contextual fluidity in expressing emotion and emotion talk that…

Can gaze avoidance explain why individuals with Asperger's syndrome can't recognise emotions from facial expressions?

PubMed

Sawyer, Alyssa C P; Williamson, Paul; Young, Robyn L

2012-04-01

Research has shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties recognising emotions from facial expressions. Since eye contact is important for accurate emotion recognition, and individuals with ASD tend to avoid eye contact, this tendency for gaze aversion has been proposed as an explanation for the emotion recognition deficit. This explanation was investigated using a newly developed emotion and mental state recognition task. Individuals with Asperger's Syndrome were less accurate at recognising emotions and mental states, but did not show evidence of gaze avoidance compared to individuals without Asperger's Syndrome. This suggests that the way individuals with Asperger's Syndrome look at faces cannot account for the difficulty they have recognising expressions.

Attitudes to emotional expression and personality in predicting post-traumatic stress disorder.

PubMed

Nightingale, J; Williams, R M

2000-09-01

To test hypotheses derived from a suggestion of Williams (1989) that negative attitudes towards emotional expression act as a predisposing or maintaining factor for post-traumatic stress reactions following a traumatic event. The study employed a prospective design in which attitudes to emotional expression, the 'Big Five' personality factors (Costa & McCrae, 1992a) and initial symptoms and injury severity within 1 week of a road traffic accident were used to predict the development of post-traumatic stress disorder 6 weeks post-accident. Sixty victims of road traffic accidents randomly selected from attenders at a large A&E department were assessed by questionnaire and interview. Measures comprised a 4-item scale relating to emotional expression, standardized scales for intrusion and avoidance features of traumatic experiences, and for anxiety and depression and the NEO-FFI Five Factor Personality Inventory. Forty-five of these participants responded to a postal questionnaire follow-up. In this survey the battery was repeated and also included a self-report diagnostic measure of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The percentage of the sample meeting DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for PTSD at 6 weeks post-trauma was 30.8%. A small but significant relationship was found for negative attitudes to emotional expression at 1 week to predict intrusive symptoms and diagnosis at 6 weeks, over and above the independent relationships of initial symptoms, initial injury severity, personality and coping. The emotional expression measure was largely stable between the two points of measurement. More negative attitudes to emotional expression were related to less openness, extraversion and agreeableness personality domains. Some support for the hypotheses was found in relation to the development of PTSD and for the status of attitudes to emotion as a stable trait related to personality factors. The potential importance of attitudes to emotional expression in therapy and other work is discussed.

Emotion and eating psychopathology: links with attitudes toward emotional expression among young women.

PubMed

Meyer, Caroline; Leung, Newman; Barry, Letitia; De Feo, Danielle

2010-03-01

The aim of this study was to determine links between attitudes toward emotional expression and levels of eating psychopathology among young women. Eighty-nine young female volunteers completed the Attitudes Toward Emotional Expression scale (AEE) and the Eating Disorders Examination Questionnaire (EDEQ). There were positive significant associations between AEE subscales and EDEQ scores. In particular, those women who scored high on the EDEQ eating, shape, and weight subscales believe that to display emotion is a sign of weakness. Although those participants with high EDEQ weight concern scores were also likely to believe that they should keep their emotions under control and that others might be rejecting or damaged should they themselves display their emotions. These findings require replication with a clinical sample, however, they suggest that challenging these attitudes is potentially a useful step in facilitating acceptance of emotion and the development of adaptive emotion regulation strategies in those women with high levels of eating psychopathology.

Proactive and reactive control depends on emotional valence: a Stroop study with emotional expressions and words.

PubMed

Kar, Bhoomika Rastogi; Srinivasan, Narayanan; Nehabala, Yagyima; Nigam, Richa

2018-03-01

We examined proactive and reactive control effects in the context of task-relevant happy, sad, and angry facial expressions on a face-word Stroop task. Participants identified the emotion expressed by a face that contained a congruent or incongruent emotional word (happy/sad/angry). Proactive control effects were measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop interference (difference between incongruent and congruent trials) as a function of previous trial emotion and previous trial congruence. Reactive control effects were measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop interference as a function of current trial emotion and previous trial congruence. Previous trial negative emotions exert greater influence on proactive control than the positive emotion. Sad faces in the previous trial resulted in greater reduction in the Stroop interference for happy faces in the current trial. However, current trial angry faces showed stronger adaptation effects compared to happy faces. Thus, both proactive and reactive control mechanisms are dependent on emotional valence of task-relevant stimuli.

Effects of touch on emotional face processing: A study of event-related potentials, facial EMG and cardiac activity.

PubMed

Spapé, M M; Harjunen, Ville; Ravaja, N

2017-03-01

Being touched is known to affect emotion, and even a casual touch can elicit positive feelings and affinity. Psychophysiological studies have recently shown that tactile primes affect visual evoked potentials to emotional stimuli, suggesting altered affective stimulus processing. As, however, these studies approached emotion from a purely unidimensional perspective, it remains unclear whether touch biases emotional evaluation or a more general feature such as salience. Here, we investigated how simple tactile primes modulate event related potentials (ERPs), facial EMG and cardiac response to pictures of facial expressions of emotion. All measures replicated known effects of emotional face processing: Disgust and fear modulated early ERPs, anger increased the cardiac orienting response, and expressions elicited emotion-congruent facial EMG activity. Tactile primes also affected these measures, but priming never interacted with the type of emotional expression. Thus, touch may additively affect general stimulus processing, but it does not bias or modulate immediate affective evaluation. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Memory for faces and voices varies as a function of sex and expressed emotion.

PubMed

S Cortes, Diana; Laukka, Petri; Lindahl, Christina; Fischer, Håkan

2017-01-01

We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection ("remember" hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy.

Memory for faces and voices varies as a function of sex and expressed emotion

PubMed Central

Laukka, Petri; Lindahl, Christina; Fischer, Håkan

2017-01-01

We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection (“remember” hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy. PMID:28570691

Heterogeneity of long-history migration predicts emotion recognition accuracy.

PubMed

Wood, Adrienne; Rychlowska, Magdalena; Niedenthal, Paula M

2016-06-01

Recent work (Rychlowska et al., 2015) demonstrated the power of a relatively new cultural dimension, historical heterogeneity, in predicting cultural differences in the endorsement of emotion expression norms. Historical heterogeneity describes the number of source countries that have contributed to a country's present-day population over the last 500 years. People in cultures originating from a large number of source countries may have historically benefited from greater and clearer emotional expressivity, because they lacked a common language and well-established social norms. We therefore hypothesized that in addition to endorsing more expressive display rules, individuals from heterogeneous cultures will also produce facial expressions that are easier to recognize by people from other cultures. By reanalyzing cross-cultural emotion recognition data from 92 papers and 82 cultures, we show that emotion expressions of people from heterogeneous cultures are more easily recognized by observers from other cultures than are the expressions produced in homogeneous cultures. Heterogeneity influences expression recognition rates alongside the individualism-collectivism of the perceivers' culture, as more individualistic cultures were more accurate in emotion judgments than collectivistic cultures. This work reveals the present-day behavioral consequences of long-term historical migration patterns and demonstrates the predictive power of historical heterogeneity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

The Perception and Decoding of Expressive Emotional Information by Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sanders, Gina

1985-01-01

Hearing and hearing-impaired children between ages 4.5 to 15.5 years in England and Belgium were invited to abstract the concept of emotion from photographs and line drawings of facial expressions and body postures. A further experiment isloated the element of context in the task of decoding expression of emotion, resulting in comparatively…

A Longitudinal Examination of the Relation between Parental Expressed Emotion and Externalizing Behaviors in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bader, Stephanie H.; Barry, Tammy D.

2014-01-01

The current study explored the longitudinal relation between parental expressed emotion, a well-established predictor of symptom relapse in various other disorders (e.g., schizophrenia) with externalizing behaviors in 84 children, ages 8-18 (at Time 2), with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It was found that parental expressed emotion, specifically…

Social Adjustment, Academic Adjustment, and the Ability to Identify Emotion in Facial Expressions of 7-Year-Old Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goodfellow, Stephanie; Nowicki, Stephen, Jr.

2009-01-01

The authors aimed to examine the possible association between (a) accurately reading emotion in facial expressions and (b) social and academic competence among elementary school-aged children. Participants were 840 7-year-old children who completed a test of the ability to read emotion in facial expressions. Teachers rated children's social and…

Importance of nonverbal expression to the emergence of emotive artificial intelligence systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pioggia, Giovanni; Hanson, David; Dinelli, Serena; Di Francesco, Fabio; Francesconi, R.; De Rossi, Danilo

2002-07-01

The nonverbal expression of the emotions, especially in the human face, has rapidly become an area of intense interest in computer science and robotics. Exploring the emotions as a link between external events and behavioural responses, artificial intelligence designers and psychologists are approaching a theoretical understanding of foundational principles which will be key to the physical embodiment of artificial intelligence. In fact, it has been well demonstrated that many important aspects of intelligence are grounded in intimate communication with the physical world- so-called embodied intelligence . It follows naturally, then, that recent advances in emotive artificial intelligence show clear and undeniable broadening in the capacities of biologically-inspired robots to survive and thrive in a social environment. The means by which AI may express its foundling emotions are clearly integral to such capacities. In effect: powerful facial expressions are critical to the development of intelligent, sociable robots. Following discussion the importance of the nonverbal expression of emotions in humans and robots, this paper describes methods used in robotically emulating nonverbal expressions using human-like robotic faces. Furthermore, it describes the potentially revolutionary impact of electroactive polymer (EAP) actuators as artificial muscles for such robotic devices.

Maternal negative emotional expression and discipline in Beijing, China: The moderating role of educational attainment.

PubMed

Cheng, Feng; Wang, Yifang; Wu, Xixian; Su, Zhuqing

2018-03-01

The current study shows that parental punitive discipline places children at risk of developing internalizing and externalizing problems. Although some studies have analyzed the reasons for the use of discipline methods, little to no research has analyzed the moderating effects. In this study, we examine the relationship between maternal negative emotional expression and mothers' use of disciplinary methods (psychological aggression, corporal punishment and physical maltreatment) and the moderating effects of educational attainment in Chinese societies. Five hundred and sixteen mothers with preschool-aged children were recruited to participate in this research. The Chinese versions of the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ) and the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales (CTSPC) were used to measure the mothers' negative emotional expression and discipline, respectively. The results suggested that the mothers' negative emotional expression was positively related to their disciplinary behaviors. Moreover, maternal educational attainment moderated the association between negative emotional expression and discipline. The findings of the current study highlight the importance of considering how mothers' educational backgrounds may interact with their emotions to influence maternal disciplinary behaviors. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Charles Darwin's emotional expression "experiment" and his contribution to modern neuropharmacology.

PubMed

Snyder, Peter J; Kaufman, Rebecca; Harrison, John; Maruff, Paul

2010-04-08

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, Darwin had corresponded with the French physician and physiologist, G. B. A. Duchenne, regarding Duchenne's experimental manipulation of human facial expression of emotion, by applying Galvanic electrical stimulation directly to facial muscles. Duchenne had produced a set of over 60 photographic plates to illustrate his view that there are different muscles in the human face that are separately responsible for each individual emotion. Darwin studied this material very carefully and he received permission from Duchenne in 1871 to reproduce several of these images in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Darwin had doubted Duchenne's view that there were individual muscle groups that mediate the expression of dozens of separable emotions, and he wondered whether there might instead be a fewer set of core emotions that are expressed with great stability worldwide and across cultures. Prompted by his doubts regarding the veracity of Duchenne's model, Darwin conducted what may have been the first-ever single-blind study of the recognition of human facial expression of emotion. This single experiment was a little-known forerunner for an entire modern field of study with contemporary clinical relevance. Moreover, his specific question about cross-cultural recognition of the cardinal emotions in faces is a topic that is being actively studied (in the twenty-first century) with the hope of developing novel biomarkers to aid the discovery of new therapies for the treatment of schizophrenia, autism, and other neuropsychiatric diseases.

Influences of Parent and Child Negative Emotionality on Young Children’s Everyday Behaviors

PubMed Central

Slatcher, Richard B.; Trentacosta, Christopher J.

2012-01-01

Negative emotionality is linked to unfavorable life outcomes, but studies have yet to examine negative emotionality of parents and children as predictors of children’s problem behaviors and negative emotion word use in everyday life. This study used a novel naturalistic recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) to investigate the separate and interactive influences of parent and child negative emotionality on daily child behaviors in a sample of 35 preschool-aged children over two time points separated by one year. Fathers’ negative emotionality predicted children’s whining at Time 1; mothers’ negative emotionality predicted children’s negative emotion word use at Time 1 and increases in children’s arguing/fighting from Time 1 to Time 2. Parents’ ratings of child negative emotionality also were associated with increases in children’s arguing/fighting from Time 1 to Time 2, and child negative emotionality moderated the association between mothers’ negative emotionality and children’s arguing/fighting. Further, children with mothers high in negative emotionality displayed higher levels of problem behaviors when their mothers self-reported low levels of positive emotional expressiveness and/or high levels of negative emotional expressiveness. These findings offer preliminary evidence linking parent and child negative emotionality to everyday child behaviors, and suggest that emotional expressiveness may play a key role in moderating the links between maternal negative emotionality and child behavioral problems. PMID:22390707

[The expression of sadness in a working class bairro in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil].

PubMed

Costa, L A; Pereira, A M

1995-01-01

This paper examines the peculiarities of the expression of emotion in a poor neighborhood from Northeastern Brazil, the bairro of Nordeste de Amaralina, in Salvador, Bahia. Focusing on the expression of sadness, we built a scheme in which to understand how the informants perceive, identify, and deal with this emotion in the course of their daily lives. We attempted to reach an understanding of the wavs people in the bairro interpret sadness. In order to accomplish this goal. we built a semantic network which revealed three main clusters of emotional expression: the inner set, the bodily set, and the interactional set. We came to realize the various superpositions benween the universe of emotional expression and the local concept of person.

Drug effects on responses to emotional facial expressions: recent findings.

PubMed

Miller, Melissa A; Bershad, Anya K; de Wit, Harriet

2015-09-01

Many psychoactive drugs increase social behavior and enhance social interactions, which may, in turn, increase their attractiveness to users. Although the psychological mechanisms by which drugs affect social behavior are not fully understood, there is some evidence that drugs alter the perception of emotions in others. Drugs can affect the ability to detect, attend to, and respond to emotional facial expressions, which in turn may influence their use in social settings. Either increased reactivity to positive expressions or decreased response to negative expressions may facilitate social interaction. This article reviews evidence that psychoactive drugs alter the processing of emotional facial expressions using subjective, behavioral, and physiological measures. The findings lay the groundwork for better understanding how drugs alter social processing and social behavior more generally.

"So Happy I Could Shout!" and "So Happy I Could Cry!" Dimorphous expressions represent and communicate motivational aspects of positive emotions.

PubMed

Aragón, Oriana R; Bargh, John A

2018-03-01

Happiness can be expressed through smiles. Happiness can also be expressed through physical displays that without context, would appear to be sadness (tears, downward turned mouths, and crumpled body postures) and anger (clenched jaws, snarled lips, furrowed brows, and pumped fists). These seemingly incongruent displays of happiness, termed dimorphous expressions, we propose, represent and communicate expressers' motivational orientations. When participants reported their own aggressive expressions in positive or negative contexts, their expressions represented positive or negative emotional experiences respectively, imbued with appetitive orientations (feelings of wanting to go). In contrast, reported sad expressions, in positive or negative contexts, represented positive and negative emotional experiences respectively, imbued with consummatory orientations (feelings of wanting to pause). In six additional experiments, participant observers interpreted that aggression displayed in positive contexts signalled happy-appetitive states, and sadness displayed in positive contexts signalled happy-consummatory states. Implications for the production and interpretation of emotion expressions are discussed.

Caricaturing facial expressions.

PubMed

Calder, A J; Rowland, D; Young, A W; Nimmo-Smith, I; Keane, J; Perrett, D I

2000-08-14

The physical differences between facial expressions (e.g. fear) and a reference norm (e.g. a neutral expression) were altered to produce photographic-quality caricatures. In Experiment 1, participants rated caricatures of fear, happiness and sadness for their intensity of these three emotions; a second group of participants rated how 'face-like' the caricatures appeared. With increasing levels of exaggeration the caricatures were rated as more emotionally intense, but less 'face-like'. Experiment 2 demonstrated a similar relationship between emotional intensity and level of caricature for six different facial expressions. Experiments 3 and 4 compared intensity ratings of facial expression caricatures prepared relative to a selection of reference norms - a neutral expression, an average expression, or a different facial expression (e.g. anger caricatured relative to fear). Each norm produced a linear relationship between caricature and rated intensity of emotion; this finding is inconsistent with two-dimensional models of the perceptual representation of facial expression. An exemplar-based multidimensional model is proposed as an alternative account.

Social Anxiety and Positive Emotions: A Prospective Examination of a Self-Regulatory Model with Tendencies to Suppress or Express Emotions as a Moderating Variable

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kashdan, Todd B.; Breen, William E.

2008-01-01

The purpose of the present study was to examine social anxiety as a predictor of positive emotions using a short-term prospective design. We examined whether the effects of social anxiety on positive emotions are moderated by tendencies to openly express or suppress emotions. Over the course of a 3-month interval, people with excessive social…

Altering sensorimotor feedback disrupts visual discrimination of facial expressions.

PubMed

Wood, Adrienne; Lupyan, Gary; Sherrin, Steven; Niedenthal, Paula

2016-08-01

Looking at another person's facial expression of emotion can trigger the same neural processes involved in producing the expression, and such responses play a functional role in emotion recognition. Disrupting individuals' facial action, for example, interferes with verbal emotion recognition tasks. We tested the hypothesis that facial responses also play a functional role in the perceptual processing of emotional expressions. We altered the facial action of participants with a gel facemask while they performed a task that involved distinguishing target expressions from highly similar distractors. Relative to control participants, participants in the facemask condition demonstrated inferior perceptual discrimination of facial expressions, but not of nonface stimuli. The findings suggest that somatosensory/motor processes involving the face contribute to the visual perceptual-and not just conceptual-processing of facial expressions. More broadly, our study contributes to growing evidence for the fundamentally interactive nature of the perceptual inputs from different sensory modalities.

Deliberately generated and imitated facial expressions of emotions in people with eating disorders.

PubMed

Dapelo, Marcela Marin; Bodas, Sergio; Morris, Robin; Tchanturia, Kate

2016-02-01

People with eating disorders have difficulties in socio emotional functioning that could contribute to maintaining the functional consequences of the disorder. This study aimed to explore the ability to deliberately generate (i.e., pose) and imitate facial expressions of emotions in women with anorexia (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN), compared to healthy controls (HC). One hundred and three participants (36 AN, 25 BN, and 42 HC) were asked to pose and imitate facial expressions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness. Their facial expressions were recorded and coded. Participants with eating disorders (both AN and BN) were less accurate than HC when posing facial expressions of emotions. Participants with AN were less accurate compared to HC imitating facial expressions, whilst BN participants had a middle range performance. All results remained significant after controlling for anxiety, depression and autistic features. The relatively small number of BN participants recruited for this study. The study findings suggest that people with eating disorders, particularly those with AN, have difficulties posing and imitating facial expressions of emotions. These difficulties could have an impact in social communication and social functioning. This is the first study to investigate the ability to pose and imitate facial expressions of emotions in people with eating disorders, and the findings suggest this area should be further explored in future studies. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Image-based Analysis of Emotional Facial Expressions in Full Face Transplants.

PubMed

Bedeloglu, Merve; Topcu, Çagdas; Akgul, Arzu; Döger, Ela Naz; Sever, Refik; Ozkan, Ozlenen; Ozkan, Omer; Uysal, Hilmi; Polat, Ovunc; Çolak, Omer Halil

2018-01-20

In this study, it is aimed to determine the degree of the development in emotional expression of full face transplant patients from photographs. Hence, a rehabilitation process can be planned according to the determination of degrees as a later work. As envisaged, in full face transplant cases, the determination of expressions can be confused or cannot be achieved as the healthy control group. In order to perform image-based analysis, a control group consist of 9 healthy males and 2 full-face transplant patients participated in the study. Appearance-based Gabor Wavelet Transform (GWT) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) methods are adopted for recognizing neutral and 6 emotional expressions which consist of angry, scared, happy, hate, confused and sad. Feature extraction was carried out by using both methods and combination of these methods serially. In the performed expressions, the extracted features of the most distinct zones in the facial area where the eye and mouth region, have been used to classify the emotions. Also, the combination of these region features has been used to improve classifier performance. Control subjects and transplant patients' ability to perform emotional expressions have been determined with K-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier with region-specific and method-specific decision stages. The results have been compared with healthy group. It has been observed that transplant patients don't reflect some emotional expressions. Also, there were confusions among expressions.

Emotional distress in the Hebrew Bible. Somatic or psychological?

PubMed

Mumford, D B

1992-01-01

A systematic search was made in the Hebrew Bible for expressions of emotional distress. A wide range of somatic and psychological vocabulary was found, especially in the Psalms and other poetic literature. Somatic expressions most frequently involved the heart, bowels, belly, bones, and eyes. Head symptoms were rare. Metaphors referring to the heart were common; other somatic expressions appeared to be descriptions of actual physical sensations. Usually somatic and psychological expressions were paired together, utilising the 'parallelism' of Hebrew verse form. Biblical Hebrew thus incorporated a powerful and sophisticated language of emotional expression.

Perceived intimacy of expressed emotion.

PubMed

Howell, A; Conway, M

1990-08-01

Research on norms for emotional expression and self-disclosure provided the basis for two hypotheses concerning the perceived intimacy of emotional self-disclosure. The first hypothesis was that the perceived intimacy of negative emotional disclosure would be greater than that of positive emotional disclosure; the second was that disclosures of more intense emotional states would be perceived as more intimate than disclosures of less intense emotional states for both negative and positive disclosures. Both hypotheses received support when male students in Canada rated the perceived intimacy of self-disclosures that were equated for topic and that covered a comprehensive sample of emotions and a range of emotional intensities. The effects were observed across all the topics of disclosure examined.

Parents’ emotion expression as a predictor of child’s social competence: children with or without intellectual disability

PubMed Central

Green, S.; Baker, B.

2014-01-01

Background Parents’ expression of positive emotion towards children who are typically developing (TD) is generally associated with better social development. However, the association between parents’ negative emotion expression and social development can be positive or negative depending upon a number of factors, including the child’s emotion regulation abilities. Given the lower emotion regulation capabilities of children with intellectual disability (ID), we hypothesised that parents’ negative emotion expression would be associated with lower social development in children with ID compared to those with TD. Methods Participants were 180 families of children with or without ID enrolled in a longitudinal study. Parents’ positive and negative affect were coded live from naturalistic home interactions at child ages 5–8 years, and child’s social skills were measured by using mother report at child ages 6–9 years. We examined mothers’ and fathers’ emotion expression as a time-varying predictor of social skills across ages 5–9 years. Results Mothers, but not fathers, expressed less positive affect and more negative affect with ID group children. Parents’ positive affect expression was related to social skills only for TD children, with mothers’ positive affect predicting higher social skills. Contrary to expectations, fathers’ positive affect predicted lower social skills. Parents’ negative affect predicted significantly lower social skills for children with ID than for children with TD. Conclusions Findings support the theory that low to moderate levels of negative expression may be less beneficial or detrimental for children with ID compared to children with TD. Implications for further research and intervention are discussed. PMID:21241394

Emotional Faces in Context: Age Differences in Recognition Accuracy and Scanning Patterns

PubMed Central

Noh, Soo Rim; Isaacowitz, Derek M.

2014-01-01

While age-related declines in facial expression recognition are well documented, previous research relied mostly on isolated faces devoid of context. We investigated the effects of context on age differences in recognition of facial emotions and in visual scanning patterns of emotional faces. While their eye movements were monitored, younger and older participants viewed facial expressions (i.e., anger, disgust) in contexts that were emotionally congruent, incongruent, or neutral to the facial expression to be identified. Both age groups had highest recognition rates of facial expressions in the congruent context, followed by the neutral context, and recognition rates in the incongruent context were worst. These context effects were more pronounced for older adults. Compared to younger adults, older adults exhibited a greater benefit from congruent contextual information, regardless of facial expression. Context also influenced the pattern of visual scanning characteristics of emotional faces in a similar manner across age groups. In addition, older adults initially attended more to context overall. Our data highlight the importance of considering the role of context in understanding emotion recognition in adulthood. PMID:23163713

Reading Faces: Differential Lateral Gaze Bias in Processing Canine and Human Facial Expressions in Dogs and 4-Year-Old Children

PubMed Central

Racca, Anaïs; Guo, Kun; Meints, Kerstin; Mills, Daniel S.

2012-01-01

Sensitivity to the emotions of others provides clear biological advantages. However, in the case of heterospecific relationships, such as that existing between dogs and humans, there are additional challenges since some elements of the expression of emotions are species-specific. Given that faces provide important visual cues for communicating emotional state in both humans and dogs, and that processing of emotions is subject to brain lateralisation, we investigated lateral gaze bias in adult dogs when presented with pictures of expressive human and dog faces. Our analysis revealed clear differences in laterality of eye movements in dogs towards conspecific faces according to the emotional valence of the expressions. Differences were also found towards human faces, but to a lesser extent. For comparative purpose, a similar experiment was also run with 4-year-old children and it was observed that they showed differential processing of facial expressions compared to dogs, suggesting a species-dependent engagement of the right or left hemisphere in processing emotions. PMID:22558335

Emotional expressivity and emotion regulation: Relation to academic functioning among elementary school children.

PubMed

Kwon, Kyongboon; Hanrahan, Amanda R; Kupzyk, Kevin A

2017-03-01

We examined emotional expressivity (i.e., happiness, sadness, and anger) and emotion regulation (regulation of exuberance, sadness, and anger) as they relate to academic functioning (motivation, engagement, and achievement). Also, we tested the premise that emotional expressivity and emotion regulation are indirectly associated with achievement through academic motivation and engagement. Participants included 417 elementary school students (Mage = 10 years; 52% female; 60% Black) and their teachers from a Midwestern metropolitan area. We used child and teacher questionnaires, and data were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Regarding emotionality, happiness was positively associated with multiple aspects of academic functioning whereas an inverse association was found for anger; sadness was not associated with academic functioning. Also, happiness and anger were indirectly related to achievement through academic engagement. Emotion regulation was positively associated with multiple aspects of academic functioning; it was also indirectly associated with achievement through engagement. Implications are discussed regarding how social and emotional learning programs in schools can further benefit from research on children's emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Selective attention modulates early human evoked potentials during emotional face-voice processing.

PubMed

Ho, Hao Tam; Schröger, Erich; Kotz, Sonja A

2015-04-01

Recent findings on multisensory integration suggest that selective attention influences cross-sensory interactions from an early processing stage. Yet, in the field of emotional face-voice integration, the hypothesis prevails that facial and vocal emotional information interacts preattentively. Using ERPs, we investigated the influence of selective attention on the perception of congruent versus incongruent combinations of neutral and angry facial and vocal expressions. Attention was manipulated via four tasks that directed participants to (i) the facial expression, (ii) the vocal expression, (iii) the emotional congruence between the face and the voice, and (iv) the synchrony between lip movement and speech onset. Our results revealed early interactions between facial and vocal emotional expressions, manifested as modulations of the auditory N1 and P2 amplitude by incongruent emotional face-voice combinations. Although audiovisual emotional interactions within the N1 time window were affected by the attentional manipulations, interactions within the P2 modulation showed no such attentional influence. Thus, we propose that the N1 and P2 are functionally dissociated in terms of emotional face-voice processing and discuss evidence in support of the notion that the N1 is associated with cross-sensory prediction, whereas the P2 relates to the derivation of an emotional percept. Essentially, our findings put the integration of facial and vocal emotional expressions into a new perspective-one that regards the integration process as a composite of multiple, possibly independent subprocesses, some of which are susceptible to attentional modulation, whereas others may be influenced by additional factors.

Assessment of perception of morphed facial expressions using the Emotion Recognition Task: normative data from healthy participants aged 8-75.

PubMed

Kessels, Roy P C; Montagne, Barbara; Hendriks, Angelique W; Perrett, David I; de Haan, Edward H F

2014-03-01

The ability to recognize and label emotional facial expressions is an important aspect of social cognition. However, existing paradigms to examine this ability present only static facial expressions, suffer from ceiling effects or have limited or no norms. A computerized test, the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT), was developed to overcome these difficulties. In this study, we examined the effects of age, sex, and intellectual ability on emotion perception using the ERT. In this test, emotional facial expressions are presented as morphs gradually expressing one of the six basic emotions from neutral to four levels of intensity (40%, 60%, 80%, and 100%). The task was administered in 373 healthy participants aged 8-75. In children aged 8-17, only small developmental effects were found for the emotions anger and happiness, in contrast to adults who showed age-related decline on anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. Sex differences were present predominantly in the adult participants. IQ only minimally affected the perception of disgust in the children, while years of education were correlated with all emotions but surprise and disgust in the adult participants. A regression-based approach was adopted to present age- and education- or IQ-adjusted normative data for use in clinical practice. Previous studies using the ERT have demonstrated selective impairments on specific emotions in a variety of psychiatric, neurologic, or neurodegenerative patient groups, making the ERT a valuable addition to existing paradigms for the assessment of emotion perception. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

Expressive suppression and neural responsiveness to nonverbal affective cues.

PubMed

Petrican, Raluca; Rosenbaum, R Shayna; Grady, Cheryl

2015-10-01

Optimal social functioning occasionally requires concealment of one's emotions in order to meet one's immediate goals and environmental demands. However, because emotions serve an important communicative function, their habitual suppression disrupts the flow of social exchanges and, thus, incurs significant interpersonal costs. Evidence is accruing that the disruption in social interactions, linked to habitual expressive suppression use, stems not only from intrapersonal, but also from interpersonal causes, since the suppressors' restricted affective displays reportedly inhibit their interlocutors' emotionally expressive behaviors. However, expressive suppression use is not known to lead to clinically significant social impairments. One explanation may be that over the lifespan, individuals who habitually suppress their emotions come to compensate for their interlocutors' restrained expressive behaviors by developing an increased sensitivity to nonverbal affective cues. To probe this issue, the present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan healthy older women while they viewed silent videos of a male social target displaying nonverbal emotional behavior, together with a brief verbal description of the accompanying context, and then judged the target's affect. As predicted, perceivers who reported greater habitual use of expressive suppression showed increased neural processing of nonverbal affective cues. This effect appeared to be coordinated in a top-down manner via cognitive control. Greater neural processing of nonverbal cues among perceivers who habitually suppress their emotions was linked to increased ventral striatum activity, suggestive of increased reward value/personal relevance ascribed to emotionally expressive nonverbal behaviors. These findings thus provide neural evidence broadly consistent with the hypothesized link between habitual use of expressive suppression and compensatory development of increased responsiveness to nonverbal affective cues, while also suggesting one explanation for the suppressors' poorer cognitive performance in social situations. Moreover, our results point to a potential neural mechanism supporting the development and perpetuation of expressive suppression as an emotion regulation strategy. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Expressive suppression and neural responsiveness to nonverbal affective cues

PubMed Central

Petrican, Raluca; Rosenbaum, R. Shayna; Grady, Cheryl

2016-01-01

Optimal social functioning occasionally requires concealment of one’s emotions in order to meet one’s immediate goals and environmental demands. However, because emotions serve an important communicative function, their habitual suppression disrupts the flow of social exchanges and, thus, incurs significant interpersonal costs. Evidence is accruing that the disruption in social interactions, linked to habitual expressive suppression use, stems not only from intrapersonal, but also from interpersonal causes, since the suppressors’ restricted affective displays reportedly inhibit their interlocutors’ emotionally expressive behaviors. However, expressive suppression use is not known to lead to clinically significant social impairments. One explanation may be that over the lifespan, individuals who habitually suppress their emotions come to compensate for their interlocutors’ restrained expressive behaviors by developing an increased sensitivity to nonverbal affective cues. To probe this issue, the present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan healthy older women while they viewed silent videos of a male social target displaying nonverbal emotional behavior, together with a brief verbal description of the accompanying context, and then judged the target’s affect. As predicted, perceivers who reported greater habitual use of expressive suppression showed increased neural processing of nonverbal affective cues. This effect appeared to be coordinated in a top-down manner via cognitive control. Greater neural processing of nonverbal cues among perceivers who habitually suppress their emotions was linked to increased ventral striatum activity, suggestive of increased reward value/personal relevance ascribed to emotionally expressive nonverbal behaviors. These findings thus provide neural evidence broadly consistent with the hypothesized link between habitual use of expressive suppression and compensatory development of increased responsiveness to nonverbal affective cues, while also suggesting one explanation for the suppressors’ poorer cognitive performance in social situations. Moreover, our results point to a potential neural mechanism supporting the development and perpetuation of expressive suppression as an emotion regulation strategy. PMID:26365712

Effects of facial emotion recognition remediation on visual scanning of novel face stimuli.

PubMed

Marsh, Pamela J; Luckett, Gemma; Russell, Tamara; Coltheart, Max; Green, Melissa J

2012-11-01

Previous research shows that emotion recognition in schizophrenia can be improved with targeted remediation that draws attention to important facial features (eyes, nose, mouth). Moreover, the effects of training have been shown to last for up to one month after training. The aim of this study was to investigate whether improved emotion recognition of novel faces is associated with concomitant changes in visual scanning of these same novel facial expressions. Thirty-nine participants with schizophrenia received emotion recognition training using Ekman's Micro-Expression Training Tool (METT), with emotion recognition and visual scanpath (VSP) recordings to face stimuli collected simultaneously. Baseline ratings of interpersonal and cognitive functioning were also collected from all participants. Post-METT training, participants showed changes in foveal attention to the features of facial expressions of emotion not used in METT training, which were generally consistent with the information about important features from the METT. In particular, there were changes in how participants looked at the features of facial expressions of emotion surprise, disgust, fear, happiness, and neutral, demonstrating that improved emotion recognition is paralleled by changes in the way participants with schizophrenia viewed novel facial expressions of emotion. However, there were overall decreases in foveal attention to sad and neutral faces that indicate more intensive instruction might be needed for these faces during training. Most importantly, the evidence shows that participant gender may affect training outcomes. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Parental Socialization of Emotion

PubMed Central

Cumberland, Amanda; Spinrad, Tracy L.

2006-01-01

Recently, there has been a resurgence of research on emotion, including the socialization of emotion. In this article, a heuristic model of factors contributing to the socialization of emotion is presented. Then literature relevant to the socialization of children’s emotion and emotion-related behavior by parents is reviewed, including (a) parental reactions to children’s emotions, (b) socializers’ discussion of emotion, and (c) socializers’ expression of emotion. The relevant literature is not conclusive and most of the research is correlational. However, the existing body of data provides initial support for the view that parental socialization practices have effects on children’s emotional and social competence and that the socialization process is bidirectional. In particular, parental negative emotionality and negative reactions to children’s expression of emotion are associated with children’s negative emotionality and low social competence. In addition, possible moderators of effects such as level of emotional arousal are discussed. PMID:16865170

Fear across the senses: brain responses to music, vocalizations and facial expressions

PubMed Central

Angulo-Perkins, Arafat; Peretz, Isabelle; Concha, Luis; Armony, Jorge L.

2015-01-01

Intrinsic emotional expressions such as those communicated by faces and vocalizations have been shown to engage specific brain regions, such as the amygdala. Although music constitutes another powerful means to express emotions, the neural substrates involved in its processing remain poorly understood. In particular, it is unknown whether brain regions typically associated with processing ‘biologically relevant’ emotional expressions are also recruited by emotional music. To address this question, we conducted an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study in 47 healthy volunteers in which we directly compared responses to basic emotions (fear, sadness and happiness, as well as neutral) expressed through faces, non-linguistic vocalizations and short novel musical excerpts. Our results confirmed the importance of fear in emotional communication, as revealed by significant blood oxygen level-dependent signal increased in a cluster within the posterior amygdala and anterior hippocampus, as well as in the posterior insula across all three domains. Moreover, subject-specific amygdala responses to fearful music and vocalizations were correlated, consistent with the proposal that the brain circuitry involved in the processing of musical emotions might be shared with the one that have evolved for vocalizations. Overall, our results show that processing of fear expressed through music, engages some of the same brain areas known to be crucial for detecting and evaluating threat-related information. PMID:24795437

Fear across the senses: brain responses to music, vocalizations and facial expressions.

PubMed

Aubé, William; Angulo-Perkins, Arafat; Peretz, Isabelle; Concha, Luis; Armony, Jorge L

2015-03-01

Intrinsic emotional expressions such as those communicated by faces and vocalizations have been shown to engage specific brain regions, such as the amygdala. Although music constitutes another powerful means to express emotions, the neural substrates involved in its processing remain poorly understood. In particular, it is unknown whether brain regions typically associated with processing 'biologically relevant' emotional expressions are also recruited by emotional music. To address this question, we conducted an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study in 47 healthy volunteers in which we directly compared responses to basic emotions (fear, sadness and happiness, as well as neutral) expressed through faces, non-linguistic vocalizations and short novel musical excerpts. Our results confirmed the importance of fear in emotional communication, as revealed by significant blood oxygen level-dependent signal increased in a cluster within the posterior amygdala and anterior hippocampus, as well as in the posterior insula across all three domains. Moreover, subject-specific amygdala responses to fearful music and vocalizations were correlated, consistent with the proposal that the brain circuitry involved in the processing of musical emotions might be shared with the one that have evolved for vocalizations. Overall, our results show that processing of fear expressed through music, engages some of the same brain areas known to be crucial for detecting and evaluating threat-related information. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Cognitive penetrability and emotion recognition in human facial expressions

PubMed Central

Marchi, Francesco

2015-01-01

Do our background beliefs, desires, and mental images influence our perceptual experience of the emotions of others? In this paper, we will address the possibility of cognitive penetration (CP) of perceptual experience in the domain of social cognition. In particular, we focus on emotion recognition based on the visual experience of facial expressions. After introducing the current debate on CP, we review examples of perceptual adaptation for facial expressions of emotion. This evidence supports the idea that facial expressions are perceptually processed as wholes. That is, the perceptual system integrates lower-level facial features, such as eyebrow orientation, mouth angle etc., into facial compounds. We then present additional experimental evidence showing that in some cases, emotion recognition on the basis of facial expression is sensitive to and modified by the background knowledge of the subject. We argue that such sensitivity is best explained as a difference in the visual experience of the facial expression, not just as a modification of the judgment based on this experience. The difference in experience is characterized as the result of the interference of background knowledge with the perceptual integration process for faces. Thus, according to the best explanation, we have to accept CP in some cases of emotion recognition. Finally, we discuss a recently proposed mechanism for CP in the face-based recognition of emotion. PMID:26150796

3D Face Model Dataset: Automatic Detection of Facial Expressions and Emotions for Educational Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chickerur, Satyadhyan; Joshi, Kartik

2015-01-01

Emotion detection using facial images is a technique that researchers have been using for the last two decades to try to analyze a person's emotional state given his/her image. Detection of various kinds of emotion using facial expressions of students in educational environment is useful in providing insight into the effectiveness of tutoring…

Relationships between Adolescents' Preferred Sources of Help and Emotional Distress, Ambivalence over Emotional Expression, and Causal Attribution of Symptoms: A Singapore Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Boon-Ooi

2009-01-01

Past research has shown that many adolescents with depression and anxiety disorders do not consult mental health professionals. This study examines how emotional distress, ambivalence over emotional expression, and causal attribution of depressive and anxious symptoms are related to adolescents' preferred sources of help for these symptoms. 300…

Emotion Recognition in Animated Compared to Human Stimuli in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brosnan, Mark; Johnson, Hilary; Grawmeyer, Beate; Chapman, Emma; Benton, Laura

2015-01-01

There is equivocal evidence as to whether there is a deficit in recognising emotional expressions in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study compared emotion recognition in ASD in three types of emotion expression media (still image, dynamic image, auditory) across human stimuli (e.g. photo of a human face) and animated stimuli (e.g. cartoon…

Dopamine and Serotonin Transporter Genotypes Moderate Sensitivity to Maternal Expressed Emotion: The Case of Conduct and Emotional Problems in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sonuga-Barke, Edmund J. S.; Oades, Robert D.; Psychogiou, Lamprini; Chen, Wai; Franke, Barbara; Buitelaar, Jan; Banaschewski, Tobias; Ebstein, Richard P.; Gil, Michael; Anney, Richard; Miranda, Ana; Roeyers, Herbert; Rothenberger, Aribert; Sergeant, Joseph; Steinhausen, Hans Christoph; Thompson, Margaret; Asherson, Philip; Faraone, Stephen V.

2009-01-01

Background: Mothers' positive emotions expressed about their children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are associated with a reduced likelihood of comorbid conduct problems (CP). We examined whether this association with CP, and one with emotional problems (EMO), is moderated by variants within three genes, previously reported…

Preschool Teachers' Emotional Socialization Responses to 4-6 Year-Old Turkish Preschoolers' Emotional Expressions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kilic, Sukran

2015-01-01

The goal of the present study was to investigate preschool teachers' emotion socialization responses to Turkish preschoolers' emotional expressions based on children's age and gender. The participants in the current study were 12 preschool full time teachers from 4 preschool and 288 preschoolers ranging in age from 4 to 6 years in Aksaray. In…

Interactions between perceived emotions and executive attention in an interpersonal game

PubMed Central

Madrid, Eduardo; Tudela, Pío

2013-01-01

The emotions displayed by others can be cues to predict their behavior. Happy expressions are usually linked to positive consequences, whereas angry faces are associated with probable negative outcomes. However, there are situations in which the expectations we generate do not hold. Here, control mechanisms must be put in place. We designed an interpersonal game in which participants received good or bad economic offers from several partners. A cue indicated whether the emotion of their partner could be trusted or not. Trustworthy partners with happy facial expressions were cooperative, and angry partners did not cooperate. Untrustworthy partners cooperated when their expression was angry and did not cooperate when they displayed a happy emotion. Event-Related Potential (ERP) results showed that executive attention already influenced the frontal N1. The brain initially processed emotional expressions regardless of their contextual meaning but by the N300, associated to affective evaluation, emotion was modulated by control mechanisms. Our results suggest a cascade of processing that starts with the instantiation of executive attention, continues by a default processing of emotional features and is then followed by an interaction between executive attention and emotional factors before decision-making and motor stages. PMID:22842814

Specific Impairments in the Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions in Parkinson’s Disease

PubMed Central

Clark, Uraina S.; Neargarder, Sandy; Cronin-Golomb, Alice

2008-01-01

Studies investigating the ability to recognize emotional facial expressions in non-demented individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have yielded equivocal findings. A possible reason for this variability may lie in the confounding of emotion recognition with cognitive task requirements, a confound arising from the lack of a control condition using non-emotional stimuli. The present study examined emotional facial expression recognition abilities in 20 non-demented patients with PD and 23 control participants relative to their performances on a non-emotional landscape categorization test with comparable task requirements. We found that PD participants were normal on the control task but exhibited selective impairments in the recognition of facial emotion, specifically for anger (driven by those with right hemisphere pathology) and surprise (driven by those with left hemisphere pathology), even when controlling for depression level. Male but not female PD participants further displayed specific deficits in the recognition of fearful expressions. We suggest that the neural substrates that may subserve these impairments include the ventral striatum, amygdala, and prefrontal cortices. Finally, we observed that in PD participants, deficiencies in facial emotion recognition correlated with higher levels of interpersonal distress, which calls attention to the significant psychosocial impact that facial emotion recognition impairments may have on individuals with PD. PMID:18485422

The effect of sleep deprivation on vocal expression of emotion in adolescents and adults.

PubMed

McGlinchey, Eleanor L; Talbot, Lisa S; Chang, Keng-Hao; Kaplan, Katherine A; Dahl, Ronald E; Harvey, Allison G

2011-09-01

Investigate the impact of sleep deprivation on vocal expression of emotion. Within-group repeated measures analysis involving sleep deprivation and rested conditions. Experimental laboratory setting. Fifty-five healthy participants (24 females), including 38 adolescents aged 11-15 y and 17 adults aged 30-60 y. A multimethod approach was used to examine vocal expression of emotion in interviews conducted at 22:30 and 06:30. On that night, participants slept a maximum of 2 h. Interviews were analyzed for vocal expression of emotion via computerized text analysis, human rater judgments, and computerized acoustic properties. Computerized text analysis and human rater judgments indicated decreases in positive emotion in all participants at 06:30 relative to 22:30, and adolescents displayed a significantly greater decrease in positive emotion via computerized text analysis relative to adults. Increases in negative emotion were observed among all participants using human rater judgments. Results for the computerized acoustic properties indicated decreases in pitch, bark energy (intensity) in certain high frequency bands, and vocal sharpness (reduction in high frequency bands > 1000 Hz). These findings support the importance of sleep for healthy emotional functioning in adults, and further suggest that adolescents are differentially vulnerable to the emotional consequences of sleep deprivation.