Performance of a Working Face Recognition Machine using Cortical Thought Theory

DTIC Science & Technology

1984-12-04

been considered (2). Recommendations from Bledsoe’s study included research on facial - recognition systems that are "completely automatic (remove the...C. L. Location of some facial features . computer, Palo Alto: Panoramic Research, Aug 1966. 2. Bledsoe, W. W. Man-machine facial recognition : Is...34 image?" It would seem - that the location and size of the features left in this contrast-expanded image contain the essential information of facial

Feature Selection on Hyperspectral Data for Dismount Skin Analysis

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-03-27

19 2.4.1 Melanosome Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.4.2 Facial Recognition using...require compliant interaction in order to establish their identification. Previously, traditional facial recognition systems have been enhanced by HSI by...calculated as a fundamental method to differentiate between people [38]. In addition, the area of facial recognition has benefited from the rich spectral

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.

More Pronounced Deficits in Facial Emotion Recognition for Schizophrenia than Bipolar Disorder

PubMed Central

Goghari, Vina M; Sponheim, Scott R

2012-01-01

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are typically separated in diagnostic systems. Behavioural, cognitive, and brain abnormalities associated with each disorder nonetheless overlap. We evaluated the diagnostic specificity of facial emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to determine whether select aspects of emotion recognition differed for the two disorders. The investigation used an experimental task that included the same facial images in an emotion recognition condition and an age recognition condition (to control for processes associated with general face recognition) in 27 schizophrenia patients, 16 bipolar I patients, and 30 controls. Schizophrenia and bipolar patients exhibited both shared and distinct aspects of facial emotion recognition deficits. Schizophrenia patients had deficits in recognizing angry facial expressions compared to healthy controls and bipolar patients. Compared to control participants, both schizophrenia and bipolar patients were more likely to mislabel facial expressions of anger as fear. Given that schizophrenia patients exhibited a deficit in emotion recognition for angry faces, which did not appear due to generalized perceptual and cognitive dysfunction, improving recognition of threat-related expression may be an important intervention target to improve social functioning in schizophrenia. PMID:23218816

The Systems Engineering Design of a Smart Forward Operating Base Surveillance System for Forward Operating Base Protection

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-06-01

fixed sensors located along the perimeter of the FOB. The video is analyzed for facial recognition to alert the Network Operations Center (NOC...the UAV is processed on board for facial recognition and video for behavior analysis is sent directly to the Network Operations Center (NOC). Video...captured by the fixed sensors are sent directly to the NOC for facial recognition and behavior analysis processing. The multi- directional signal

Facial Emotions Recognition using Gabor Transform and Facial Animation Parameters with Neural Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harit, Aditya; Joshi, J. C., Col; Gupta, K. K.

2018-03-01

The paper proposed an automatic facial emotion recognition algorithm which comprises of two main components: feature extraction and expression recognition. The algorithm uses a Gabor filter bank on fiducial points to find the facial expression features. The resulting magnitudes of Gabor transforms, along with 14 chosen FAPs (Facial Animation Parameters), compose the feature space. There are two stages: the training phase and the recognition phase. Firstly, for the present 6 different emotions, the system classifies all training expressions in 6 different classes (one for each emotion) in the training stage. In the recognition phase, it recognizes the emotion by applying the Gabor bank to a face image, then finds the fiducial points, and then feeds it to the trained neural architecture.

The review and results of different methods for facial recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Le, Yifan

2017-09-01

In recent years, facial recognition draws much attention due to its wide potential applications. As a unique technology in Biometric Identification, facial recognition represents a significant improvement since it could be operated without cooperation of people under detection. Hence, facial recognition will be taken into defense system, medical detection, human behavior understanding, etc. Several theories and methods have been established to make progress in facial recognition: (1) A novel two-stage facial landmark localization method is proposed which has more accurate facial localization effect under specific database; (2) A statistical face frontalization method is proposed which outperforms state-of-the-art methods for face landmark localization; (3) It proposes a general facial landmark detection algorithm to handle images with severe occlusion and images with large head poses; (4) There are three methods proposed on Face Alignment including shape augmented regression method, pose-indexed based multi-view method and a learning based method via regressing local binary features. The aim of this paper is to analyze previous work of different aspects in facial recognition, focusing on concrete method and performance under various databases. In addition, some improvement measures and suggestions in potential applications will be put forward.

Proposal of Self-Learning and Recognition System of Facial Expression

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ogawa, Yukihiro; Kato, Kunihito; Yamamoto, Kazuhiko

We describe realization of more complicated function by using the information acquired from some equipped unripe functions. The self-learning and recognition system of the human facial expression, which achieved under the natural relation between human and robot, are proposed. The robot with this system can understand human facial expressions and behave according to their facial expressions after the completion of learning process. The system modelled after the process that a baby learns his/her parents’ facial expressions. Equipping the robot with a camera the system can get face images and equipping the CdS sensors on the robot’s head the robot can get the information of human action. Using the information of these sensors, the robot can get feature of each facial expression. After self-learning is completed, when a person changed his facial expression in front of the robot, the robot operates actions under the relevant facial expression.

Emotional System for Military Target Identification

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-10-01

algorithm [23], and used it to solve a facial recognition problem. In other works [24,25], we explored the potential of using emotional neural...other application areas, such as security ( facial recognition ) and medical (blood cell identification), can be also efficiently used in military...Application of an emotional neural network to facial recognition . Neural Computing and Applications, 18(4), 309-320. [25] Khashman, A. (2009). Blood cell

Utilizing Current Commercial-off-the-Shelf Facial Recognition and Public Live Video Streaming to Enhance National Security

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-09-01

biometrics technologies. 14. SUBJECT TERMS Facial recognition, systems engineering, live video streaming, security cameras, national security ...national security by sharing biometric facial recognition data in real-time utilizing infrastructures currently in place. It should be noted that the...9/11),law enforcement (LE) and Intelligence community (IC)authorities responsible for protecting citizens from threats against national security

Intelligent Facial Recognition Systems: Technology advancements for security applications

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Beer, C.L.

1993-07-01

Insider problems such as theft and sabotage can occur within the security and surveillance realm of operations when unauthorized people obtain access to sensitive areas. A possible solution to these problems is a means to identify individuals (not just credentials or badges) in a given sensitive area and provide full time personnel accountability. One approach desirable at Department of Energy facilities for access control and/or personnel identification is an Intelligent Facial Recognition System (IFRS) that is non-invasive to personnel. Automatic facial recognition does not require the active participation of the enrolled subjects, unlike most other biological measurement (biometric) systems (e.g.,more » fingerprint, hand geometry, or eye retinal scan systems). It is this feature that makes an IFRS attractive for applications other than access control such as emergency evacuation verification, screening, and personnel tracking. This paper discusses current technology that shows promising results for DOE and other security applications. A survey of research and development in facial recognition identified several companies and universities that were interested and/or involved in the area. A few advanced prototype systems were also identified. Sandia National Laboratories is currently evaluating facial recognition systems that are in the advanced prototype stage. The initial application for the evaluation is access control in a controlled environment with a constant background and with cooperative subjects. Further evaluations will be conducted in a less controlled environment, which may include a cluttered background and subjects that are not looking towards the camera. The outcome of the evaluations will help identify areas of facial recognition systems that need further development and will help to determine the effectiveness of the current systems for security applications.« less

Multi-layer sparse representation for weighted LBP-patches based facial expression recognition.

PubMed

Jia, Qi; Gao, Xinkai; Guo, He; Luo, Zhongxuan; Wang, Yi

2015-03-19

In this paper, a novel facial expression recognition method based on sparse representation is proposed. Most contemporary facial expression recognition systems suffer from limited ability to handle image nuisances such as low resolution and noise. Especially for low intensity expression, most of the existing training methods have quite low recognition rates. Motivated by sparse representation, the problem can be solved by finding sparse coefficients of the test image by the whole training set. Deriving an effective facial representation from original face images is a vital step for successful facial expression recognition. We evaluate facial representation based on weighted local binary patterns, and Fisher separation criterion is used to calculate the weighs of patches. A multi-layer sparse representation framework is proposed for multi-intensity facial expression recognition, especially for low-intensity expressions and noisy expressions in reality, which is a critical problem but seldom addressed in the existing works. To this end, several experiments based on low-resolution and multi-intensity expressions are carried out. Promising results on publicly available databases demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach.

Facial Expression Recognition using Multiclass Ensemble Least-Square Support Vector Machine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lawi, Armin; Sya'Rani Machrizzandi, M.

2018-03-01

Facial expression is one of behavior characteristics of human-being. The use of biometrics technology system with facial expression characteristics makes it possible to recognize a person’s mood or emotion. The basic components of facial expression analysis system are face detection, face image extraction, facial classification and facial expressions recognition. This paper uses Principal Component Analysis (PCA) algorithm to extract facial features with expression parameters, i.e., happy, sad, neutral, angry, fear, and disgusted. Then Multiclass Ensemble Least-Squares Support Vector Machine (MELS-SVM) is used for the classification process of facial expression. The result of MELS-SVM model obtained from our 185 different expression images of 10 persons showed high accuracy level of 99.998% using RBF kernel.

[Developmental change in facial recognition by premature infants during infancy].

PubMed

Konishi, Yukihiko; Kusaka, Takashi; Nishida, Tomoko; Isobe, Kenichi; Itoh, Susumu

2014-09-01

Premature infants are thought to be at increased risk for developmental disorders. We evaluated facial recognition by premature infants during early infancy, as this ability has been reported to be impaired commonly in developmentally disabled children. In premature infants and full-term infants at the age of 4 months (4 corrected months for premature infants), visual behaviors while performing facial recognition tasks were determined and analyzed using an eye-tracking system (Tobii T60 manufactured by Tobii Technologics, Sweden). Both types of infants had a preference towards normal facial expressions; however, no preference towards the upper face was observed in premature infants. Our study suggests that facial recognition ability in premature infants may develop differently from that in full-term infants.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Sensors

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-05-01

to development of UAS and UA sensor capabilities UNCLASSIFIED Small UA EO/IR Sensors • EO – Requirement for a facial recognition capability while...UNCLASSIFIED Tactical UA EO/IR Sensors • EO – Requirement for a facial recognition capability while remaining undetected. (NIIRS 8+) • IR – Requirement for...Operational & Theater UA EO/IR Sensors • EO – Requirement for a facial recognition capability while remaining undetected. (NIIRS 8+) • IR – Requirement

Support vector machine-based facial-expression recognition method combining shape and appearance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, Eun Jung; Kang, Byung Jun; Park, Kang Ryoung; Lee, Sangyoun

2010-11-01

Facial expression recognition can be widely used for various applications, such as emotion-based human-machine interaction, intelligent robot interfaces, face recognition robust to expression variation, etc. Previous studies have been classified as either shape- or appearance-based recognition. The shape-based method has the disadvantage that the individual variance of facial feature points exists irrespective of similar expressions, which can cause a reduction of the recognition accuracy. The appearance-based method has a limitation in that the textural information of the face is very sensitive to variations in illumination. To overcome these problems, a new facial-expression recognition method is proposed, which combines both shape and appearance information, based on the support vector machine (SVM). This research is novel in the following three ways as compared to previous works. First, the facial feature points are automatically detected by using an active appearance model. From these, the shape-based recognition is performed by using the ratios between the facial feature points based on the facial-action coding system. Second, the SVM, which is trained to recognize the same and different expression classes, is proposed to combine two matching scores obtained from the shape- and appearance-based recognitions. Finally, a single SVM is trained to discriminate four different expressions, such as neutral, a smile, anger, and a scream. By determining the expression of the input facial image whose SVM output is at a minimum, the accuracy of the expression recognition is much enhanced. The experimental results showed that the recognition accuracy of the proposed method was better than previous researches and other fusion methods.

Novel dynamic Bayesian networks for facial action element recognition and understanding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Wei; Park, Jeong-Seon; Choi, Dong-You; Lee, Sang-Woong

2011-12-01

In daily life, language is an important tool of communication between people. Besides language, facial action can also provide a great amount of information. Therefore, facial action recognition has become a popular research topic in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). However, facial action recognition is quite a challenging task due to its complexity. In a literal sense, there are thousands of facial muscular movements, many of which have very subtle differences. Moreover, muscular movements always occur simultaneously when the pose is changed. To address this problem, we first build a fully automatic facial points detection system based on a local Gabor filter bank and principal component analysis. Then, novel dynamic Bayesian networks are proposed to perform facial action recognition using the junction tree algorithm over a limited number of feature points. In order to evaluate the proposed method, we have used the Korean face database for model training. For testing, we used the CUbiC FacePix, facial expressions and emotion database, Japanese female facial expression database, and our own database. Our experimental results clearly demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

In what sense 'familiar'? Examining experiential differences within pathologies of facial recognition.

PubMed

Young, Garry

2009-09-01

Explanations of Capgras delusion and prosopagnosia typically incorporate a dual-route approach to facial recognition in which a deficit in overt or covert processing in one condition is mirror-reversed in the other. Despite this double dissociation, experiences of either patient-group are often reported in the same way--as lacking a sense of familiarity toward familiar faces. In this paper, deficits in the facial processing of these patients are compared to other facial recognition pathologies, and their experiential characteristics mapped onto the dual-route model in order to provide a less ambiguous link between facial processing and experiential content. The paper concludes that the experiential states of Capgras delusion, prosopagnosia, and related facial pathologies are quite distinct, and that this descriptive distinctiveness finds explanatory equivalence at the level of anatomical and functional disruption within the face recognition system. The role of skin conductance response (SCR) as a measure of 'familiarity' is also clarified.

Assessing the Utility of a Virtual Environment for Enhancing Facial Affect Recognition in Adolescents with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bekele, Esubalew; Crittendon, Julie; Zheng, Zhi; Swanson, Amy; Weitlauf, Amy; Warren, Zachary; Sarkar, Nilanjan

2014-01-01

Teenagers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and age-matched controls participated in a dynamic facial affect recognition task within a virtual reality (VR) environment. Participants identified the emotion of a facial expression displayed at varied levels of intensity by a computer generated avatar. The system assessed performance (i.e.,…

Non-Cooperative Facial Recognition Video Dataset Collection Plan

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kimura, Marcia L.; Erikson, Rebecca L.; Lombardo, Nicholas J.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will produce a non-cooperative (i.e. not posing for the camera) facial recognition video data set for research purposes to evaluate and enhance facial recognition systems technology. The aggregate data set consists of 1) videos capturing PNNL role players and public volunteers in three key operational settings, 2) photographs of the role players for enrolling in an evaluation database, and 3) ground truth data that documents when the role player is within various camera fields of view. PNNL will deliver the aggregate data set to DHS who may then choose to make it available tomore » other government agencies interested in evaluating and enhancing facial recognition systems. The three operational settings that will be the focus of the video collection effort include: 1) unidirectional crowd flow 2) bi-directional crowd flow, and 3) linear and/or serpentine queues.« less

Robust representation and recognition of facial emotions using extreme sparse learning.

PubMed

Shojaeilangari, Seyedehsamaneh; Yau, Wei-Yun; Nandakumar, Karthik; Li, Jun; Teoh, Eam Khwang

2015-07-01

Recognition of natural emotions from human faces is an interesting topic with a wide range of potential applications, such as human-computer interaction, automated tutoring systems, image and video retrieval, smart environments, and driver warning systems. Traditionally, facial emotion recognition systems have been evaluated on laboratory controlled data, which is not representative of the environment faced in real-world applications. To robustly recognize the facial emotions in real-world natural situations, this paper proposes an approach called extreme sparse learning, which has the ability to jointly learn a dictionary (set of basis) and a nonlinear classification model. The proposed approach combines the discriminative power of extreme learning machine with the reconstruction property of sparse representation to enable accurate classification when presented with noisy signals and imperfect data recorded in natural settings. In addition, this paper presents a new local spatio-temporal descriptor that is distinctive and pose-invariant. The proposed framework is able to achieve the state-of-the-art recognition accuracy on both acted and spontaneous facial emotion databases.

An audiovisual emotion recognition system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, Yi; Wang, Guoyin; Yang, Yong; He, Kun

2007-12-01

Human emotions could be expressed by many bio-symbols. Speech and facial expression are two of them. They are both regarded as emotional information which is playing an important role in human-computer interaction. Based on our previous studies on emotion recognition, an audiovisual emotion recognition system is developed and represented in this paper. The system is designed for real-time practice, and is guaranteed by some integrated modules. These modules include speech enhancement for eliminating noises, rapid face detection for locating face from background image, example based shape learning for facial feature alignment, and optical flow based tracking algorithm for facial feature tracking. It is known that irrelevant features and high dimensionality of the data can hurt the performance of classifier. Rough set-based feature selection is a good method for dimension reduction. So 13 speech features out of 37 ones and 10 facial features out of 33 ones are selected to represent emotional information, and 52 audiovisual features are selected due to the synchronization when speech and video fused together. The experiment results have demonstrated that this system performs well in real-time practice and has high recognition rate. Our results also show that the work in multimodules fused recognition will become the trend of emotion recognition in the future.

Face recognition system and method using face pattern words and face pattern bytes

DOEpatents

Zheng, Yufeng

2014-12-23

The present invention provides a novel system and method for identifying individuals and for face recognition utilizing facial features for face identification. The system and method of the invention comprise creating facial features or face patterns called face pattern words and face pattern bytes for face identification. The invention also provides for pattern recognitions for identification other than face recognition. The invention further provides a means for identifying individuals based on visible and/or thermal images of those individuals by utilizing computer software implemented by instructions on a computer or computer system and a computer readable medium containing instructions on a computer system for face recognition and identification.

[Neurological disease and facial recognition].

PubMed

Kawamura, Mitsuru; Sugimoto, Azusa; Kobayakawa, Mutsutaka; Tsuruya, Natsuko

2012-07-01

To discuss the neurological basis of facial recognition, we present our case reports of impaired recognition and a review of previous literature. First, we present a case of infarction and discuss prosopagnosia, which has had a large impact on face recognition research. From a study of patient symptoms, we assume that prosopagnosia may be caused by unilateral right occipitotemporal lesion and right cerebral dominance of facial recognition. Further, circumscribed lesion and degenerative disease may also cause progressive prosopagnosia. Apperceptive prosopagnosia is observed in patients with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), pathologically considered as Alzheimer's disease, and associative prosopagnosia in frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Second, we discuss face recognition as part of communication. Patients with Parkinson disease show social cognitive impairments, such as difficulty in facial expression recognition and deficits in theory of mind as detected by the reading the mind in the eyes test. Pathological and functional imaging studies indicate that social cognitive impairment in Parkinson disease is possibly related to damages in the amygdalae and surrounding limbic system. The social cognitive deficits can be observed in the early stages of Parkinson disease, and even in the prodromal stage, for example, patients with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) show impairment in facial expression recognition. Further, patients with myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM 1), which is a multisystem disease that mainly affects the muscles, show social cognitive impairment similar to that of Parkinson disease. Our previous study showed that facial expression recognition impairment of DM 1 patients is associated with lesion in the amygdalae and insulae. Our study results indicate that behaviors and personality traits in DM 1 patients, which are revealed by social cognitive impairment, are attributable to dysfunction of the limbic system.

Acute effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabidiol and their combination on facial emotion recognition: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in cannabis users.

PubMed

Hindocha, Chandni; Freeman, Tom P; Schafer, Grainne; Gardener, Chelsea; Das, Ravi K; Morgan, Celia J A; Curran, H Valerie

2015-03-01

Acute administration of the primary psychoactive constituent of cannabis, Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), impairs human facial affect recognition, implicating the endocannabinoid system in emotional processing. Another main constituent of cannabis, cannabidiol (CBD), has seemingly opposite functional effects on the brain. This study aimed to determine the effects of THC and CBD, both alone and in combination on emotional facial affect recognition. 48 volunteers, selected for high and low frequency of cannabis use and schizotypy, were administered, THC (8mg), CBD (16mg), THC+CBD (8mg+16mg) and placebo, by inhalation, in a 4-way, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design. They completed an emotional facial affect recognition task including fearful, angry, happy, sad, surprise and disgust faces varying in intensity from 20% to 100%. A visual analogue scale (VAS) of feeling 'stoned' was also completed. In comparison to placebo, CBD improved emotional facial affect recognition at 60% emotional intensity; THC was detrimental to the recognition of ambiguous faces of 40% intensity. The combination of THC+CBD produced no impairment. Relative to placebo, both THC alone and combined THC+CBD equally increased feelings of being 'stoned'. CBD did not influence feelings of 'stoned'. No effects of frequency of use or schizotypy were found. In conclusion, CBD improves recognition of emotional facial affect and attenuates the impairment induced by THC. This is the first human study examining the effects of different cannabinoids on emotional processing. It provides preliminary evidence that different pharmacological agents acting upon the endocannabinoid system can both improve and impair recognition of emotional faces. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Acute effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabidiol and their combination on facial emotion recognition: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in cannabis users

PubMed Central

Hindocha, Chandni; Freeman, Tom P.; Schafer, Grainne; Gardener, Chelsea; Das, Ravi K.; Morgan, Celia J.A.; Curran, H. Valerie

2015-01-01

Acute administration of the primary psychoactive constituent of cannabis, Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), impairs human facial affect recognition, implicating the endocannabinoid system in emotional processing. Another main constituent of cannabis, cannabidiol (CBD), has seemingly opposite functional effects on the brain. This study aimed to determine the effects of THC and CBD, both alone and in combination on emotional facial affect recognition. 48 volunteers, selected for high and low frequency of cannabis use and schizotypy, were administered, THC (8 mg), CBD (16 mg), THC+CBD (8 mg+16 mg) and placebo, by inhalation, in a 4-way, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design. They completed an emotional facial affect recognition task including fearful, angry, happy, sad, surprise and disgust faces varying in intensity from 20% to 100%. A visual analogue scale (VAS) of feeling ‘stoned’ was also completed. In comparison to placebo, CBD improved emotional facial affect recognition at 60% emotional intensity; THC was detrimental to the recognition of ambiguous faces of 40% intensity. The combination of THC+CBD produced no impairment. Relative to placebo, both THC alone and combined THC+CBD equally increased feelings of being ‘stoned’. CBD did not influence feelings of ‘stoned’. No effects of frequency of use or schizotypy were found. In conclusion, CBD improves recognition of emotional facial affect and attenuates the impairment induced by THC. This is the first human study examining the effects of different cannabinoids on emotional processing. It provides preliminary evidence that different pharmacological agents acting upon the endocannabinoid system can both improve and impair recognition of emotional faces. PMID:25534187

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.

Incongruence Between Observers’ and Observed Facial Muscle Activation Reduces Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions From Video Stimuli

PubMed Central

Wingenbach, Tanja S. H.; Brosnan, Mark; Pfaltz, Monique C.; Plichta, Michael M.; Ashwin, Chris

2018-01-01

According to embodied cognition accounts, viewing others’ facial emotion can elicit the respective emotion representation in observers which entails simulations of sensory, motor, and contextual experiences. In line with that, published research found viewing others’ facial emotion to elicit automatic matched facial muscle activation, which was further found to facilitate emotion recognition. Perhaps making congruent facial muscle activity explicit produces an even greater recognition advantage. If there is conflicting sensory information, i.e., incongruent facial muscle activity, this might impede recognition. The effects of actively manipulating facial muscle activity on facial emotion recognition from videos were investigated across three experimental conditions: (a) explicit imitation of viewed facial emotional expressions (stimulus-congruent condition), (b) pen-holding with the lips (stimulus-incongruent condition), and (c) passive viewing (control condition). It was hypothesised that (1) experimental condition (a) and (b) result in greater facial muscle activity than (c), (2) experimental condition (a) increases emotion recognition accuracy from others’ faces compared to (c), (3) experimental condition (b) lowers recognition accuracy for expressions with a salient facial feature in the lower, but not the upper face area, compared to (c). Participants (42 males, 42 females) underwent a facial emotion recognition experiment (ADFES-BIV) while electromyography (EMG) was recorded from five facial muscle sites. The experimental conditions’ order was counter-balanced. Pen-holding caused stimulus-incongruent facial muscle activity for expressions with facial feature saliency in the lower face region, which reduced recognition of lower face region emotions. Explicit imitation caused stimulus-congruent facial muscle activity without modulating recognition. Methodological implications are discussed. PMID:29928240

Incongruence Between Observers' and Observed Facial Muscle Activation Reduces Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions From Video Stimuli.

PubMed

Wingenbach, Tanja S H; Brosnan, Mark; Pfaltz, Monique C; Plichta, Michael M; Ashwin, Chris

2018-01-01

According to embodied cognition accounts, viewing others' facial emotion can elicit the respective emotion representation in observers which entails simulations of sensory, motor, and contextual experiences. In line with that, published research found viewing others' facial emotion to elicit automatic matched facial muscle activation, which was further found to facilitate emotion recognition. Perhaps making congruent facial muscle activity explicit produces an even greater recognition advantage. If there is conflicting sensory information, i.e., incongruent facial muscle activity, this might impede recognition. The effects of actively manipulating facial muscle activity on facial emotion recognition from videos were investigated across three experimental conditions: (a) explicit imitation of viewed facial emotional expressions (stimulus-congruent condition), (b) pen-holding with the lips (stimulus-incongruent condition), and (c) passive viewing (control condition). It was hypothesised that (1) experimental condition (a) and (b) result in greater facial muscle activity than (c), (2) experimental condition (a) increases emotion recognition accuracy from others' faces compared to (c), (3) experimental condition (b) lowers recognition accuracy for expressions with a salient facial feature in the lower, but not the upper face area, compared to (c). Participants (42 males, 42 females) underwent a facial emotion recognition experiment (ADFES-BIV) while electromyography (EMG) was recorded from five facial muscle sites. The experimental conditions' order was counter-balanced. Pen-holding caused stimulus-incongruent facial muscle activity for expressions with facial feature saliency in the lower face region, which reduced recognition of lower face region emotions. Explicit imitation caused stimulus-congruent facial muscle activity without modulating recognition. Methodological implications are discussed.

Image ratio features for facial expression recognition application.

PubMed

Song, Mingli; Tao, Dacheng; Liu, Zicheng; Li, Xuelong; Zhou, Mengchu

2010-06-01

Video-based facial expression recognition is a challenging problem in computer vision and human-computer interaction. To target this problem, texture features have been extracted and widely used, because they can capture image intensity changes raised by skin deformation. However, existing texture features encounter problems with albedo and lighting variations. To solve both problems, we propose a new texture feature called image ratio features. Compared with previously proposed texture features, e.g., high gradient component features, image ratio features are more robust to albedo and lighting variations. In addition, to further improve facial expression recognition accuracy based on image ratio features, we combine image ratio features with facial animation parameters (FAPs), which describe the geometric motions of facial feature points. The performance evaluation is based on the Carnegie Mellon University Cohn-Kanade database, our own database, and the Japanese Female Facial Expression database. Experimental results show that the proposed image ratio feature is more robust to albedo and lighting variations, and the combination of image ratio features and FAPs outperforms each feature alone. In addition, we study asymmetric facial expressions based on our own facial expression database and demonstrate the superior performance of our combined expression recognition system.

Automatic Facial Expression Recognition and Operator Functional State

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Blanson, Nina

2012-01-01

The prevalence of human error in safety-critical occupations remains a major challenge to mission success despite increasing automation in control processes. Although various methods have been proposed to prevent incidences of human error, none of these have been developed to employ the detection and regulation of Operator Functional State (OFS), or the optimal condition of the operator while performing a task, in work environments due to drawbacks such as obtrusiveness and impracticality. A video-based system with the ability to infer an individual's emotional state from facial feature patterning mitigates some of the problems associated with other methods of detecting OFS, like obtrusiveness and impracticality in integration with the mission environment. This paper explores the utility of facial expression recognition as a technology for inferring OFS by first expounding on the intricacies of OFS and the scientific background behind emotion and its relationship with an individual's state. Then, descriptions of the feedback loop and the emotion protocols proposed for the facial recognition program are explained. A basic version of the facial expression recognition program uses Haar classifiers and OpenCV libraries to automatically locate key facial landmarks during a live video stream. Various methods of creating facial expression recognition software are reviewed to guide future extensions of the program. The paper concludes with an examination of the steps necessary in the research of emotion and recommendations for the creation of an automatic facial expression recognition program for use in real-time, safety-critical missions

Automatic Facial Expression Recognition and Operator Functional State

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Blanson, Nina

2011-01-01

The prevalence of human error in safety-critical occupations remains a major challenge to mission success despite increasing automation in control processes. Although various methods have been proposed to prevent incidences of human error, none of these have been developed to employ the detection and regulation of Operator Functional State (OFS), or the optimal condition of the operator while performing a task, in work environments due to drawbacks such as obtrusiveness and impracticality. A video-based system with the ability to infer an individual's emotional state from facial feature patterning mitigates some of the problems associated with other methods of detecting OFS, like obtrusiveness and impracticality in integration with the mission environment. This paper explores the utility of facial expression recognition as a technology for inferring OFS by first expounding on the intricacies of OFS and the scientific background behind emotion and its relationship with an individual's state. Then, descriptions of the feedback loop and the emotion protocols proposed for the facial recognition program are explained. A basic version of the facial expression recognition program uses Haar classifiers and OpenCV libraries to automatically locate key facial landmarks during a live video stream. Various methods of creating facial expression recognition software are reviewed to guide future extensions of the program. The paper concludes with an examination of the steps necessary in the research of emotion and recommendations for the creation of an automatic facial expression recognition program for use in real-time, safety-critical missions.

Reading Faces: From Features to Recognition.

PubMed

Guntupalli, J Swaroop; Gobbini, M Ida

2017-12-01

Chang and Tsao recently reported that the monkey face patch system encodes facial identity in a space of facial features as opposed to exemplars. Here, we discuss how such coding might contribute to face recognition, emphasizing the critical role of learning and interactions with other brain areas for optimizing the recognition of familiar faces. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Computer-Aided Recognition of Facial Attributes for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.

PubMed

Valentine, Matthew; Bihm, Dustin C J; Wolf, Lior; Hoyme, H Eugene; May, Philip A; Buckley, David; Kalberg, Wendy; Abdul-Rahman, Omar A

2017-12-01

To compare the detection of facial attributes by computer-based facial recognition software of 2-D images against standard, manual examination in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). Participants were gathered from the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Epidemiology Research database. Standard frontal and oblique photographs of children were obtained during a manual, in-person dysmorphology assessment. Images were submitted for facial analysis conducted by the facial dysmorphology novel analysis technology (an automated system), which assesses ratios of measurements between various facial landmarks to determine the presence of dysmorphic features. Manual blinded dysmorphology assessments were compared with those obtained via the computer-aided system. Areas under the curve values for individual receiver-operating characteristic curves revealed the computer-aided system (0.88 ± 0.02) to be comparable to the manual method (0.86 ± 0.03) in detecting patients with FASD. Interestingly, cases of alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder (ARND) were identified more efficiently by the computer-aided system (0.84 ± 0.07) in comparison to the manual method (0.74 ± 0.04). A facial gestalt analysis of patients with ARND also identified more generalized facial findings compared to the cardinal facial features seen in more severe forms of FASD. We found there was an increased diagnostic accuracy for ARND via our computer-aided method. As this category has been historically difficult to diagnose, we believe our experiment demonstrates that facial dysmorphology novel analysis technology can potentially improve ARND diagnosis by introducing a standardized metric for recognizing FASD-associated facial anomalies. Earlier recognition of these patients will lead to earlier intervention with improved patient outcomes. Copyright © 2017 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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

A motivational determinant of facial emotion recognition: regulatory focus affects recognition of emotions in faces.

PubMed

Sassenrath, Claudia; Sassenberg, Kai; Ray, Devin G; Scheiter, Katharina; Jarodzka, Halszka

2014-01-01

Two studies examined an unexplored motivational determinant of facial emotion recognition: observer regulatory focus. It was predicted that a promotion focus would enhance facial emotion recognition relative to a prevention focus because the attentional strategies associated with promotion focus enhance performance on well-learned or innate tasks - such as facial emotion recognition. In Study 1, a promotion or a prevention focus was experimentally induced and better facial emotion recognition was observed in a promotion focus compared to a prevention focus. In Study 2, individual differences in chronic regulatory focus were assessed and attention allocation was measured using eye tracking during the facial emotion recognition task. Results indicated that the positive relation between a promotion focus and facial emotion recognition is mediated by shorter fixation duration on the face which reflects a pattern of attention allocation matched to the eager strategy in a promotion focus (i.e., striving to make hits). A prevention focus did not have an impact neither on perceptual processing nor on facial emotion recognition. Taken together, these findings demonstrate important mechanisms and consequences of observer motivational orientation for facial emotion recognition.

Pose-variant facial expression recognition using an embedded image system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Song, Kai-Tai; Han, Meng-Ju; Chang, Shuo-Hung

2008-12-01

In recent years, one of the most attractive research areas in human-robot interaction is automated facial expression recognition. Through recognizing the facial expression, a pet robot can interact with human in a more natural manner. In this study, we focus on the facial pose-variant problem. A novel method is proposed in this paper to recognize pose-variant facial expressions. After locating the face position in an image frame, the active appearance model (AAM) is applied to track facial features. Fourteen feature points are extracted to represent the variation of facial expressions. The distance between feature points are defined as the feature values. These feature values are sent to a support vector machine (SVM) for facial expression determination. The pose-variant facial expression is classified into happiness, neutral, sadness, surprise or anger. Furthermore, in order to evaluate the performance for practical applications, this study also built a low resolution database (160x120 pixels) using a CMOS image sensor. Experimental results show that the recognition rate is 84% with the self-built database.

[Prosopagnosia and facial expression recognition].

PubMed

Koyama, Shinichi

2014-04-01

This paper reviews clinical neuropsychological studies that have indicated that the recognition of a person's identity and the recognition of facial expressions are processed by different cortical and subcortical areas of the brain. The fusiform gyrus, especially the right fusiform gyrus, plays an important role in the recognition of identity. The superior temporal sulcus, amygdala, and medial frontal cortex play important roles in facial-expression recognition. Both facial recognition and facial-expression recognition are highly intellectual processes that involve several regions of the brain.

Hybrid Feature Extraction-based Approach for Facial Parts Representation and Recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rouabhia, C.; Tebbikh, H.

2008-06-01

Face recognition is a specialized image processing which has attracted a considerable attention in computer vision. In this article, we develop a new facial recognition system from video sequences images dedicated to person identification whose face is partly occulted. This system is based on a hybrid image feature extraction technique called ACPDL2D (Rouabhia et al. 2007), it combines two-dimensional principal component analysis and two-dimensional linear discriminant analysis with neural network. We performed the feature extraction task on the eyes and the nose images separately then a Multi-Layers Perceptron classifier is used. Compared to the whole face, the results of simulation are in favor of the facial parts in terms of memory capacity and recognition (99.41% for the eyes part, 98.16% for the nose part and 97.25 % for the whole face).

Genetic variations in the dopamine system and facial expression recognition in healthy chinese college students.

PubMed

Zhu, Bi; Chen, Chuansheng; Moyzis, Robert K; Dong, Qi; Chen, Chunhui; He, Qinghua; Stern, Hal S; Li, He; Li, Jin; Li, Jun; Lessard, Jared; Lin, Chongde

2012-01-01

This study investigated the relation between genetic variations in the dopamine system and facial expression recognition. A sample of Chinese college students (n = 478) was given a facial expression recognition task. Subjects were genotyped for 98 loci [96 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 2 variable number tandem repeats] in 16 genes involved in the dopamine neurotransmitter system, including its 4 subsystems: synthesis (TH, DDC, and DBH), degradation/transport (COMT,MAOA,MAOB, and SLC6A3), receptors (DRD1,DRD2,DRD3,DRD4, and DRD5), and modulation (NTS,NTSR1,NTSR2, and NLN). To quantify the total contributions of the dopamine system to emotion recognition, we used a series of multiple regression models. Permutation analyses were performed to assess the posterior probabilities of obtaining such results. Among the 78 loci that were included in the final analyses (after excluding 12 SNPs that were in high linkage disequilibrium and 8 that were not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium), 1 (for fear), 3 (for sadness), 5 (for anger), 13 (for surprise), and 15 (for disgust) loci exhibited main effects on the recognition of facial expressions. Genetic variations in the dopamine system accounted for 3% for fear, 6% for sadness, 7% for anger, 10% for surprise, and 18% for disgust, with the latter surviving a stringent permutation test. Genetic variations in the dopamine system (especially the dopamine synthesis and modulation subsystems) made significant contributions to individual differences in the recognition of disgust faces. Copyright © 2012 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Detection of Terrorist Preparations by an Artificial Intelligence Expert System Employing Fuzzy Signal Detection Theory

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-10-25

FUSEDOT does not require facial recognition , or video surveillance of public areas, both of which are apparently a component of TIA ([26], pp...does not use fuzzy signal detection. Involves facial recognition and video surveillance of public areas. Involves monitoring the content of voice...fuzzy signal detection, which TIA does not. Second, FUSEDOT would be easier to develop, because it does not require the development of facial

Composite Artistry Meets Facial Recognition Technology: Exploring the Use of Facial Recognition Technology to Identify Composite Images

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-09-01

be submitted into a facial recognition program for comparison with millions of possible matches, offering abundant opportunities to identify the...to leverage the robust number of comparative opportunities associated with facial recognition programs. This research investigates the efficacy of...combining composite forensic artistry with facial recognition technology to create a viable investigative tool to identify suspects, as well as better

Recognizing Age-Separated Face Images: Humans and Machines

PubMed Central

Yadav, Daksha; Singh, Richa; Vatsa, Mayank; Noore, Afzel

2014-01-01

Humans utilize facial appearance, gender, expression, aging pattern, and other ancillary information to recognize individuals. It is interesting to observe how humans perceive facial age. Analyzing these properties can help in understanding the phenomenon of facial aging and incorporating the findings can help in designing effective algorithms. Such a study has two components - facial age estimation and age-separated face recognition. Age estimation involves predicting the age of an individual given his/her facial image. On the other hand, age-separated face recognition consists of recognizing an individual given his/her age-separated images. In this research, we investigate which facial cues are utilized by humans for estimating the age of people belonging to various age groups along with analyzing the effect of one's gender, age, and ethnicity on age estimation skills. We also analyze how various facial regions such as binocular and mouth regions influence age estimation and recognition capabilities. Finally, we propose an age-invariant face recognition algorithm that incorporates the knowledge learned from these observations. Key observations of our research are: (1) the age group of newborns and toddlers is easiest to estimate, (2) gender and ethnicity do not affect the judgment of age group estimation, (3) face as a global feature, is essential to achieve good performance in age-separated face recognition, and (4) the proposed algorithm yields improved recognition performance compared to existing algorithms and also outperforms a commercial system in the young image as probe scenario. PMID:25474200

Recognizing age-separated face images: humans and machines.

PubMed

Yadav, Daksha; Singh, Richa; Vatsa, Mayank; Noore, Afzel

2014-01-01

Humans utilize facial appearance, gender, expression, aging pattern, and other ancillary information to recognize individuals. It is interesting to observe how humans perceive facial age. Analyzing these properties can help in understanding the phenomenon of facial aging and incorporating the findings can help in designing effective algorithms. Such a study has two components--facial age estimation and age-separated face recognition. Age estimation involves predicting the age of an individual given his/her facial image. On the other hand, age-separated face recognition consists of recognizing an individual given his/her age-separated images. In this research, we investigate which facial cues are utilized by humans for estimating the age of people belonging to various age groups along with analyzing the effect of one's gender, age, and ethnicity on age estimation skills. We also analyze how various facial regions such as binocular and mouth regions influence age estimation and recognition capabilities. Finally, we propose an age-invariant face recognition algorithm that incorporates the knowledge learned from these observations. Key observations of our research are: (1) the age group of newborns and toddlers is easiest to estimate, (2) gender and ethnicity do not affect the judgment of age group estimation, (3) face as a global feature, is essential to achieve good performance in age-separated face recognition, and (4) the proposed algorithm yields improved recognition performance compared to existing algorithms and also outperforms a commercial system in the young image as probe scenario.

Performance and Usage of Biometrics in a Testbed Environment for Tactical Purposes

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-12-01

19 c. Facial Recognition ..................................................................20...geometry, iris recognition, and facial recognition (Layman’s, 2005). Behavioral biometrics can be described not as a physical characteristic, but are...are at: • Correction facilities • Department of Motor Vehicle • Military checkpoints • POW facilities c. Facial Recognition Facial recognition is

Relation between facial affect recognition and configural face processing in antipsychotic-free schizophrenia.

PubMed

Fakra, Eric; Jouve, Elisabeth; Guillaume, Fabrice; Azorin, Jean-Michel; Blin, Olivier

2015-03-01

Deficit in facial affect recognition is a well-documented impairment in schizophrenia, closely connected to social outcome. This deficit could be related to psychopathology, but also to a broader dysfunction in processing facial information. In addition, patients with schizophrenia inadequately use configural information-a type of processing that relies on spatial relationships between facial features. To date, no study has specifically examined the link between symptoms and misuse of configural information in the deficit in facial affect recognition. Unmedicated schizophrenia patients (n = 30) and matched healthy controls (n = 30) performed a facial affect recognition task and a face inversion task, which tests aptitude to rely on configural information. In patients, regressions were carried out between facial affect recognition, symptom dimensions and inversion effect. Patients, compared with controls, showed a deficit in facial affect recognition and a lower inversion effect. Negative symptoms and lower inversion effect could account for 41.2% of the variance in facial affect recognition. This study confirms the presence of a deficit in facial affect recognition, and also of dysfunctional manipulation in configural information in antipsychotic-free patients. Negative symptoms and poor processing of configural information explained a substantial part of the deficient recognition of facial affect. We speculate that this deficit may be caused by several factors, among which independently stand psychopathology and failure in correctly manipulating configural information. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Atmospheric turbulence and sensor system effects on biometric algorithm performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Espinola, Richard L.; Leonard, Kevin R.; Byrd, Kenneth A.; Potvin, Guy

2015-05-01

Biometric technologies composed of electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor systems and advanced matching algorithms are being used in various force protection/security and tactical surveillance applications. To date, most of these sensor systems have been widely used in controlled conditions with varying success (e.g., short range, uniform illumination, cooperative subjects). However the limiting conditions of such systems have yet to be fully studied for long range applications and degraded imaging environments. Biometric technologies used for long range applications will invariably suffer from the effects of atmospheric turbulence degradation. Atmospheric turbulence causes blur, distortion and intensity fluctuations that can severely degrade image quality of electro-optic and thermal imaging systems and, for the case of biometrics technology, translate to poor matching algorithm performance. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of atmospheric turbulence and sensor resolution on biometric matching algorithm performance. We use a subset of the Facial Recognition Technology (FERET) database and a commercial algorithm to analyze facial recognition performance on turbulence degraded facial images. The goal of this work is to understand the feasibility of long-range facial recognition in degraded imaging conditions, and the utility of camera parameter trade studies to enable the design of the next generation biometrics sensor systems.

Facial expression system on video using widrow hoff

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jannah, M.; Zarlis, M.; Mawengkang, H.

2018-03-01

Facial expressions recognition is one of interesting research. This research contains human feeling to computer application Such as the interaction between human and computer, data compression, facial animation and facial detection from the video. The purpose of this research is to create facial expression system that captures image from the video camera. The system in this research uses Widrow-Hoff learning method in training and testing image with Adaptive Linear Neuron (ADALINE) approach. The system performance is evaluated by two parameters, detection rate and false positive rate. The system accuracy depends on good technique and face position that trained and tested.

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

Neurobiological mechanisms associated with facial affect recognition deficits after traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Neumann, Dawn; McDonald, Brenna C; West, John; Keiski, Michelle A; Wang, Yang

2016-06-01

The neurobiological mechanisms that underlie facial affect recognition deficits after traumatic brain injury (TBI) have not yet been identified. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), study aims were to 1) determine if there are differences in brain activation during facial affect processing in people with TBI who have facial affect recognition impairments (TBI-I) relative to people with TBI and healthy controls who do not have facial affect recognition impairments (TBI-N and HC, respectively); and 2) identify relationships between neural activity and facial affect recognition performance. A facial affect recognition screening task performed outside the scanner was used to determine group classification; TBI patients who performed greater than one standard deviation below normal performance scores were classified as TBI-I, while TBI patients with normal scores were classified as TBI-N. An fMRI facial recognition paradigm was then performed within the 3T environment. Results from 35 participants are reported (TBI-I = 11, TBI-N = 12, and HC = 12). For the fMRI task, TBI-I and TBI-N groups scored significantly lower than the HC group. Blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals for facial affect recognition compared to a baseline condition of viewing a scrambled face, revealed lower neural activation in the right fusiform gyrus (FG) in the TBI-I group than the HC group. Right fusiform gyrus activity correlated with accuracy on the facial affect recognition tasks (both within and outside the scanner). Decreased FG activity suggests facial affect recognition deficits after TBI may be the result of impaired holistic face processing. Future directions and clinical implications are discussed.

Differences between Children and Adults in the Recognition of Enjoyment Smiles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Del Giudice, Marco; Colle, Livia

2007-01-01

The authors investigated the differences between 8-year-olds (n = 80) and adults (n = 80) in recognition of felt versus faked enjoyment smiles by using a newly developed picture set that is based on the Facial Action Coding System. The authors tested the effect of different facial action units (AUs) on judgments of smile authenticity. Multiple…

Recognition of children on age-different images: Facial morphology and age-stable features.

PubMed

Caplova, Zuzana; Compassi, Valentina; Giancola, Silvio; Gibelli, Daniele M; Obertová, Zuzana; Poppa, Pasquale; Sala, Remo; Sforza, Chiarella; Cattaneo, Cristina

2017-07-01

The situation of missing children is one of the most emotional social issues worldwide. The search for and identification of missing children is often hampered, among others, by the fact that the facial morphology of long-term missing children changes as they grow. Nowadays, the wide coverage by surveillance systems potentially provides image material for comparisons with images of missing children that may facilitate identification. The aim of study was to identify whether facial features are stable in time and can be utilized for facial recognition by comparing facial images of children at different ages as well as to test the possible use of moles in recognition. The study was divided into two phases (1) morphological classification of facial features using an Anthropological Atlas; (2) algorithm developed in MATLAB® R2014b for assessing the use of moles as age-stable features. The assessment of facial features by Anthropological Atlases showed high mismatch percentages among observers. On average, the mismatch percentages were lower for features describing shape than for those describing size. The nose tip cleft and the chin dimple showed the best agreement between observers regarding both categorization and stability over time. Using the position of moles as a reference point for recognition of the same person on age-different images seems to be a useful method in terms of objectivity and it can be concluded that moles represent age-stable facial features that may be considered for preliminary recognition. Copyright © 2017 The Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Implementation of facial recognition with Microsoft Kinect v2 sensor for patient verification.

PubMed

Silverstein, Evan; Snyder, Michael

2017-06-01

The aim of this study was to present a straightforward implementation of facial recognition using the Microsoft Kinect v2 sensor for patient identification in a radiotherapy setting. A facial recognition system was created with the Microsoft Kinect v2 using a facial mapping library distributed with the Kinect v2 SDK as a basis for the algorithm. The system extracts 31 fiducial points representing various facial landmarks which are used in both the creation of a reference data set and subsequent evaluations of real-time sensor data in the matching algorithm. To test the algorithm, a database of 39 faces was created, each with 465 vectors derived from the fiducial points, and a one-to-one matching procedure was performed to obtain sensitivity and specificity data of the facial identification system. ROC curves were plotted to display system performance and identify thresholds for match determination. In addition, system performance as a function of ambient light intensity was tested. Using optimized parameters in the matching algorithm, the sensitivity of the system for 5299 trials was 96.5% and the specificity was 96.7%. The results indicate a fairly robust methodology for verifying, in real-time, a specific face through comparison from a precollected reference data set. In its current implementation, the process of data collection for each face and subsequent matching session averaged approximately 30 s, which may be too onerous to provide a realistic supplement to patient identification in a clinical setting. Despite the time commitment, the data collection process was well tolerated by all participants and most robust when consistent ambient light conditions were maintained across both the reference recording session and subsequent real-time identification sessions. A facial recognition system can be implemented for patient identification using the Microsoft Kinect v2 sensor and the distributed SDK. In its present form, the system is accurate-if time consuming-and further iterations of the method could provide a robust, easy to implement, and cost-effective supplement to traditional patient identification methods. © 2017 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

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.

Two Ways to Facial Expression Recognition? Motor and Visual Information Have Different Effects on Facial Expression Recognition.

PubMed

de la Rosa, Stephan; Fademrecht, Laura; Bülthoff, Heinrich H; Giese, Martin A; Curio, Cristóbal

2018-06-01

Motor-based theories of facial expression recognition propose that the visual perception of facial expression is aided by sensorimotor processes that are also used for the production of the same expression. Accordingly, sensorimotor and visual processes should provide congruent emotional information about a facial expression. Here, we report evidence that challenges this view. Specifically, the repeated execution of facial expressions has the opposite effect on the recognition of a subsequent facial expression than the repeated viewing of facial expressions. Moreover, the findings of the motor condition, but not of the visual condition, were correlated with a nonsensory condition in which participants imagined an emotional situation. These results can be well accounted for by the idea that facial expression recognition is not always mediated by motor processes but can also be recognized on visual information alone.

A unified probabilistic framework for spontaneous facial action modeling and understanding.

PubMed

Tong, Yan; Chen, Jixu; Ji, Qiang

2010-02-01

Facial expression is a natural and powerful means of human communication. Recognizing spontaneous facial actions, however, is very challenging due to subtle facial deformation, frequent head movements, and ambiguous and uncertain facial motion measurements. Because of these challenges, current research in facial expression recognition is limited to posed expressions and often in frontal view. A spontaneous facial expression is characterized by rigid head movements and nonrigid facial muscular movements. More importantly, it is the coherent and consistent spatiotemporal interactions among rigid and nonrigid facial motions that produce a meaningful facial expression. Recognizing this fact, we introduce a unified probabilistic facial action model based on the Dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) to simultaneously and coherently represent rigid and nonrigid facial motions, their spatiotemporal dependencies, and their image measurements. Advanced machine learning methods are introduced to learn the model based on both training data and subjective prior knowledge. Given the model and the measurements of facial motions, facial action recognition is accomplished through probabilistic inference by systematically integrating visual measurements with the facial action model. Experiments show that compared to the state-of-the-art techniques, the proposed system yields significant improvements in recognizing both rigid and nonrigid facial motions, especially for spontaneous facial expressions.

Investigation of facial emotion recognition, alexithymia, and levels of anxiety and depression in patients with somatic symptoms and related disorders

PubMed Central

Öztürk, Ahmet; Kiliç, Alperen; Deveci, Erdem; Kirpinar, İsmet

2016-01-01

Background The concept of facial emotion recognition is well established in various neuropsychiatric disorders. Although emotional disturbances are strongly associated with somatoform disorders, there are a restricted number of studies that have investigated facial emotion recognition in somatoform disorders. Furthermore, there have been no studies that have regarded this issue using the new diagnostic criteria for somatoform disorders as somatic symptoms and related disorders (SSD). In this study, we aimed to compare the factors of facial emotion recognition between patients with SSD and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC) and to retest and investigate the factors of facial emotion recognition using the new criteria for SSD. Patients and methods After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 54 patients who were diagnosed with SSD according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) criteria and 46 age- and sex-matched HC were selected to participate in the present study. Facial emotion recognition, alexithymia, and the status of anxiety and depression were compared between the groups. Results Patients with SSD had significantly decreased scores of facial emotion for fear faces, disgust faces, and neutral faces compared with age- and sex-matched HC (t=−2.88, P=0.005; t=−2.86, P=0.005; and t=−2.56, P=0.009, respectively). After eliminating the effects of alexithymia and depressive and anxious states, the groups were found to be similar in terms of their responses to facial emotion and mean reaction time to facial emotions. Discussion Although there have been limited numbers of studies that have examined the recognition of facial emotion in patients with somatoform disorders, our study is the first to investigate facial recognition in patients with SSD diagnosed according to the DSM-5 criteria. Recognition of facial emotion was found to be disturbed in patients with SSD. However, our findings suggest that disturbances in facial recognition were significantly associated with alexithymia and the status of depression and anxiety, which is consistent with the previous studies. Further studies are needed to highlight the associations between facial emotion recognition and SSD. PMID:27199559

Automated facial recognition of manually generated clay facial approximations: Potential application in unidentified persons data repositories.

PubMed

Parks, Connie L; Monson, Keith L

2018-01-01

This research examined how accurately 2D images (i.e., photographs) of 3D clay facial approximations were matched to corresponding photographs of the approximated individuals using an objective automated facial recognition system. Irrespective of search filter (i.e., blind, sex, or ancestry) or rank class (R 1 , R 10 , R 25 , and R 50 ) employed, few operationally informative results were observed. In only a single instance of 48 potential match opportunities was a clay approximation matched to a corresponding life photograph within the top 50 images (R 50 ) of a candidate list, even with relatively small gallery sizes created from the application of search filters (e.g., sex or ancestry search restrictions). Increasing the candidate lists to include the top 100 images (R 100 ) resulted in only two additional instances of correct match. Although other untested variables (e.g., approximation method, 2D photographic process, and practitioner skill level) may have impacted the observed results, this study suggests that 2D images of manually generated clay approximations are not readily matched to life photos by automated facial recognition systems. Further investigation is necessary in order to identify the underlying cause(s), if any, of the poor recognition results observed in this study (e.g., potential inferior facial feature detection and extraction). Additional inquiry exploring prospective remedial measures (e.g., stronger feature differentiation) is also warranted, particularly given the prominent use of clay approximations in unidentified persons casework. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Plastic surgery and the biometric e-passport: implications for facial recognition.

PubMed

Ologunde, Rele

2015-04-01

This correspondence comments on the challenges of plastic reconstructive and aesthetic surgery on the facial recognition algorithms employed by biometric passports. The limitations of facial recognition technology in patients who have undergone facial plastic surgery are also discussed. Finally, the advice of the UK HM passport office to people who undergo facial surgery is reported.

Facial Recognition in a Group-Living Cichlid Fish.

PubMed

Kohda, Masanori; Jordan, Lyndon Alexander; Hotta, Takashi; Kosaka, Naoya; Karino, Kenji; Tanaka, Hirokazu; Taniyama, Masami; Takeyama, Tomohiro

2015-01-01

The theoretical underpinnings of the mechanisms of sociality, e.g. territoriality, hierarchy, and reciprocity, are based on assumptions of individual recognition. While behavioural evidence suggests individual recognition is widespread, the cues that animals use to recognise individuals are established in only a handful of systems. Here, we use digital models to demonstrate that facial features are the visual cue used for individual recognition in the social fish Neolamprologus pulcher. Focal fish were exposed to digital images showing four different combinations of familiar and unfamiliar face and body colorations. Focal fish attended to digital models with unfamiliar faces longer and from a further distance to the model than to models with familiar faces. These results strongly suggest that fish can distinguish individuals accurately using facial colour patterns. Our observations also suggest that fish are able to rapidly (≤ 0.5 sec) discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar individuals, a speed of recognition comparable to primates including humans.

Impact of Childhood Maltreatment on the Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotions.

PubMed

Ardizzi, Martina; Martini, Francesca; Umiltà, Maria Alessandra; Evangelista, Valentina; Ravera, Roberto; Gallese, Vittorio

2015-01-01

The development of the explicit recognition of facial expressions of emotions can be affected by childhood maltreatment experiences. A previous study demonstrated the existence of an explicit recognition bias for angry facial expressions among a population of adolescent Sierra Leonean street-boys exposed to high levels of maltreatment. In the present study, the recognition bias for angry facial expressions was investigated in a younger population of street-children and age-matched controls. Participants performed a forced-choice facial expressions recognition task. Recognition bias was measured as participants' tendency to over-attribute anger label to other negative facial expressions. Participants' heart rate was assessed and related to their behavioral performance, as index of their stress-related physiological responses. Results demonstrated the presence of a recognition bias for angry facial expressions among street-children, also pinpointing a similar, although significantly less pronounced, tendency among controls. Participants' performance was controlled for age, cognitive and educational levels and for naming skills. None of these variables influenced the recognition bias for angry facial expressions. Differently, a significant effect of heart rate on participants' tendency to use anger label was evidenced. Taken together, these results suggest that childhood exposure to maltreatment experiences amplifies children's "pre-existing bias" for anger labeling in forced-choice emotion recognition task. Moreover, they strengthen the thesis according to which the recognition bias for angry facial expressions is a manifestation of a functional adaptive mechanism that tunes victim's perceptive and attentive focus on salient environmental social stimuli.

Impact of Childhood Maltreatment on the Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotions

PubMed Central

Ardizzi, Martina; Martini, Francesca; Umiltà, Maria Alessandra; Evangelista, Valentina; Ravera, Roberto; Gallese, Vittorio

2015-01-01

The development of the explicit recognition of facial expressions of emotions can be affected by childhood maltreatment experiences. A previous study demonstrated the existence of an explicit recognition bias for angry facial expressions among a population of adolescent Sierra Leonean street-boys exposed to high levels of maltreatment. In the present study, the recognition bias for angry facial expressions was investigated in a younger population of street-children and age-matched controls. Participants performed a forced-choice facial expressions recognition task. Recognition bias was measured as participants’ tendency to over-attribute anger label to other negative facial expressions. Participants’ heart rate was assessed and related to their behavioral performance, as index of their stress-related physiological responses. Results demonstrated the presence of a recognition bias for angry facial expressions among street-children, also pinpointing a similar, although significantly less pronounced, tendency among controls. Participants’ performance was controlled for age, cognitive and educational levels and for naming skills. None of these variables influenced the recognition bias for angry facial expressions. Differently, a significant effect of heart rate on participants’ tendency to use anger label was evidenced. Taken together, these results suggest that childhood exposure to maltreatment experiences amplifies children’s “pre-existing bias” for anger labeling in forced-choice emotion recognition task. Moreover, they strengthen the thesis according to which the recognition bias for angry facial expressions is a manifestation of a functional adaptive mechanism that tunes victim’s perceptive and attentive focus on salient environmental social stimuli. PMID:26509890

Face memory and face recognition in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review.

PubMed

Romani, Maria; Vigliante, Miriam; Faedda, Noemi; Rossetti, Serena; Pezzuti, Lina; Guidetti, Vincenzo; Cardona, Francesco

2018-06-01

This review focuses on facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A systematic review, using PRISMA guidelines, was conducted to identify original articles published prior to May 2017 pertaining to memory, face recognition, affect recognition, facial expression recognition and recall of faces in children and adolescents with ADHD. The qualitative synthesis based on different studies shows a particular focus of the research on facial affect recognition without paying similar attention to the structural encoding of facial recognition. In this review, we further investigate facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with ADHD, providing synthesis of the results observed in the literature, while detecting face recognition tasks used on face processing abilities in ADHD and identifying aspects not yet explored. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Adaptive weighted local textural features for illumination, expression, and occlusion invariant face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cui, Chen; Asari, Vijayan K.

2014-03-01

Biometric features such as fingerprints, iris patterns, and face features help to identify people and restrict access to secure areas by performing advanced pattern analysis and matching. Face recognition is one of the most promising biometric methodologies for human identification in a non-cooperative security environment. However, the recognition results obtained by face recognition systems are a affected by several variations that may happen to the patterns in an unrestricted environment. As a result, several algorithms have been developed for extracting different facial features for face recognition. Due to the various possible challenges of data captured at different lighting conditions, viewing angles, facial expressions, and partial occlusions in natural environmental conditions, automatic facial recognition still remains as a difficult issue that needs to be resolved. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to tackling some of these issues by analyzing the local textural descriptions for facial feature representation. The textural information is extracted by an enhanced local binary pattern (ELBP) description of all the local regions of the face. The relationship of each pixel with respect to its neighborhood is extracted and employed to calculate the new representation. ELBP reconstructs a much better textural feature extraction vector from an original gray level image in different lighting conditions. The dimensionality of the texture image is reduced by principal component analysis performed on each local face region. Each low dimensional vector representing a local region is now weighted based on the significance of the sub-region. The weight of each sub-region is determined by employing the local variance estimate of the respective region, which represents the significance of the region. The final facial textural feature vector is obtained by concatenating the reduced dimensional weight sets of all the modules (sub-regions) of the face image. Experiments conducted on various popular face databases show promising performance of the proposed algorithm in varying lighting, expression, and partial occlusion conditions. Four databases were used for testing the performance of the proposed system: Yale Face database, Extended Yale Face database B, Japanese Female Facial Expression database, and CMU AMP Facial Expression database. The experimental results in all four databases show the effectiveness of the proposed system. Also, the computation cost is lower because of the simplified calculation steps. Research work is progressing to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed face recognition method on pose-varying conditions as well. It is envisaged that a multilane approach of trained frameworks at different pose bins and an appropriate voting strategy would lead to a good recognition rate in such situation.

Slowing down presentation of facial movements and vocal sounds enhances facial expression recognition and induces facial-vocal imitation in children with autism.

PubMed

Tardif, Carole; Lainé, France; Rodriguez, Mélissa; Gepner, Bruno

2007-09-01

This study examined the effects of slowing down presentation of facial expressions and their corresponding vocal sounds on facial expression recognition and facial and/or vocal imitation in children with autism. Twelve autistic children and twenty-four normal control children were presented with emotional and non-emotional facial expressions on CD-Rom, under audio or silent conditions, and under dynamic visual conditions (slowly, very slowly, at normal speed) plus a static control. Overall, children with autism showed lower performance in expression recognition and more induced facial-vocal imitation than controls. In the autistic group, facial expression recognition and induced facial-vocal imitation were significantly enhanced in slow conditions. Findings may give new perspectives for understanding and intervention for verbal and emotional perceptive and communicative impairments in autistic populations.

Early visual experience and the recognition of basic facial expressions: involvement of the middle temporal and inferior frontal gyri during haptic identification by the early blind

PubMed Central

Kitada, Ryo; Okamoto, Yuko; Sasaki, Akihiro T.; Kochiyama, Takanori; Miyahara, Motohide; Lederman, Susan J.; Sadato, Norihiro

2012-01-01

Face perception is critical for social communication. Given its fundamental importance in the course of evolution, the innate neural mechanisms can anticipate the computations necessary for representing faces. However, the effect of visual deprivation on the formation of neural mechanisms that underlie face perception is largely unknown. We previously showed that sighted individuals can recognize basic facial expressions by haptics surprisingly well. Moreover, the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in the sighted subjects are involved in haptic and visual recognition of facial expressions. Here, we conducted both psychophysical and functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments to determine the nature of the neural representation that subserves the recognition of basic facial expressions in early blind individuals. In a psychophysical experiment, both early blind and sighted subjects haptically identified basic facial expressions at levels well above chance. In the subsequent fMRI experiment, both groups haptically identified facial expressions and shoe types (control). The sighted subjects then completed the same task visually. Within brain regions activated by the visual and haptic identification of facial expressions (relative to that of shoes) in the sighted group, corresponding haptic identification in the early blind activated regions in the inferior frontal and middle temporal gyri. These results suggest that the neural system that underlies the recognition of basic facial expressions develops supramodally even in the absence of early visual experience. PMID:23372547

Early visual experience and the recognition of basic facial expressions: involvement of the middle temporal and inferior frontal gyri during haptic identification by the early blind.

PubMed

Kitada, Ryo; Okamoto, Yuko; Sasaki, Akihiro T; Kochiyama, Takanori; Miyahara, Motohide; Lederman, Susan J; Sadato, Norihiro

2013-01-01

Face perception is critical for social communication. Given its fundamental importance in the course of evolution, the innate neural mechanisms can anticipate the computations necessary for representing faces. However, the effect of visual deprivation on the formation of neural mechanisms that underlie face perception is largely unknown. We previously showed that sighted individuals can recognize basic facial expressions by haptics surprisingly well. Moreover, the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in the sighted subjects are involved in haptic and visual recognition of facial expressions. Here, we conducted both psychophysical and functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments to determine the nature of the neural representation that subserves the recognition of basic facial expressions in early blind individuals. In a psychophysical experiment, both early blind and sighted subjects haptically identified basic facial expressions at levels well above chance. In the subsequent fMRI experiment, both groups haptically identified facial expressions and shoe types (control). The sighted subjects then completed the same task visually. Within brain regions activated by the visual and haptic identification of facial expressions (relative to that of shoes) in the sighted group, corresponding haptic identification in the early blind activated regions in the inferior frontal and middle temporal gyri. These results suggest that the neural system that underlies the recognition of basic facial expressions develops supramodally even in the absence of early visual experience.

Facial recognition in children after perinatal stroke.

PubMed

Ballantyne, A O; Trauner, D A

1999-04-01

To examine the effects of prenatal or perinatal stroke on the facial recognition skills of children and young adults. It was hypothesized that the nature and extent of facial recognition deficits seen in patients with early-onset lesions would be different from that seen in adults with later-onset neurologic impairment. Numerous studies with normal and neurologically impaired adults have found a right-hemisphere superiority for facial recognition. In contrast, little is known about facial recognition in children after early focal brain damage. Forty subjects had single, unilateral brain lesions from pre- or perinatal strokes (20 had left-hemisphere damage, and 20 had right-hemisphere damage), and 40 subjects were controls who were individually matched to the lesion subjects on the basis of age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Each subject was given the Short-Form of Benton's Test of Facial Recognition. Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test and multiple regression. The lesion subjects performed significantly more poorly than did matched controls. There was no clear-cut lateralization effect, with the left-hemisphere group performing significantly more poorly than matched controls and the right-hemisphere group showing a trend toward poorer performance. Parietal lobe involvement, regardless of lesion side, adversely affected facial recognition performance in the lesion group. Results could not be accounted for by IQ differences between lesion and control groups, nor was lesion severity systematically related to facial recognition performance. Pre- or perinatal unilateral brain damage results in a subtle disturbance in facial recognition ability, independent of the side of the lesion. Parietal lobe involvement, in particular, has an adverse effect on facial recognition skills. These findings suggest that the parietal lobes may be involved in the acquisition of facial recognition ability from a very early point in brain development, but that there is sufficient potential to reorganize or compensate such that the residual deficits, though significant, are subtle.

[Emotional facial expression recognition impairment in Parkinson disease].

PubMed

Lachenal-Chevallet, Karine; Bediou, Benoit; Bouvard, Martine; Thobois, Stéphane; Broussolle, Emmanuel; Vighetto, Alain; Krolak-Salmon, Pierre

2006-03-01

some behavioral disturbances observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) could be related to impaired recognition of various social messages particularly emotional facial expressions. facial expression recognition was assessed using morphed faces (five emotions: happiness, fear, anger, disgust, neutral), and compared to gender recognition and general cognitive assessment in 12 patients with Parkinson's disease and 14 controls subjects. facial expression recognition was impaired among patients, whereas gender recognitions, visuo-perceptive capacities and total efficiency were preserved. Post hoc analyses disclosed a deficit for fear and disgust recognition compared to control subjects. the impairment of emotional facial expression recognition in PD appears independent of other cognitive deficits. This impairment may be related to the dopaminergic depletion in basal ganglia and limbic brain regions. They could take a part in psycho-behavioral disorders and particularly in communication disorders observed in Parkinson's disease patients.

Facial expression recognition based on improved local ternary pattern and stacked auto-encoder

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Yao; Qiu, Weigen

2017-08-01

In order to enhance the robustness of facial expression recognition, we propose a method of facial expression recognition based on improved Local Ternary Pattern (LTP) combined with Stacked Auto-Encoder (SAE). This method uses the improved LTP extraction feature, and then uses the improved depth belief network as the detector and classifier to extract the LTP feature. The combination of LTP and improved deep belief network is realized in facial expression recognition. The recognition rate on CK+ databases has improved significantly.

Facial Recognition Training: Improving Intelligence Collection by Soldiers

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-01-01

Facial Recognition Training: Improving Intelligence Collection by Soldiers By: 2LT Michael Mitchell, MI, ALARNG “In combat, you don’t rise to...technology, but on patrol a Soldier cannot use a device as quickly as simply looking at the subject. Why is Facial Recognition Difficult? Soldiers...00-2008 to 00-00-2008 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Facial Recognition Training: Improving Intelligence Collection by Soldiers 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER 5b

[Neural mechanisms of facial recognition].

PubMed

Nagai, Chiyoko

2007-01-01

We review recent researches in neural mechanisms of facial recognition in the light of three aspects: facial discrimination and identification, recognition of facial expressions, and face perception in itself. First, it has been demonstrated that the fusiform gyrus has a main role of facial discrimination and identification. However, whether the FFA (fusiform face area) is really a special area for facial processing or not is controversial; some researchers insist that the FFA is related to 'becoming an expert' for some kinds of visual objects, including faces. Neural mechanisms of prosopagnosia would be deeply concerned to this issue. Second, the amygdala seems to be very concerned to recognition of facial expressions, especially fear. The amygdala, connected with the superior temporal sulcus and the orbitofrontal cortex, appears to operate the cortical function. The amygdala and the superior temporal sulcus are related to gaze recognition, which explains why a patient with bilateral amygdala damage could not recognize only a fear expression; the information from eyes is necessary for fear recognition. Finally, even a newborn infant can recognize a face as a face, which is congruent with the innate hypothesis of facial recognition. Some researchers speculate that the neural basis of such face perception is the subcortical network, comprised of the amygdala, the superior colliculus, and the pulvinar. This network would relate to covert recognition that prosopagnosic patients have.

Developing a Natural User Interface and Facial Recognition System With OpenCV and the Microsoft Kinect

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gutensohn, Michael

2018-01-01

The task for this project was to design, develop, test, and deploy a facial recognition system for the Kennedy Space Center Augmented/Virtual Reality Lab. This system will serve as a means of user authentication as part of the NUI of the lab. The overarching goal is to create a seamless user interface that will allow the user to initiate and interact with AR and VR experiences without ever needing to use a mouse or keyboard at any step in the process.

Does Facial Amimia Impact the Recognition of Facial Emotions? An EMG Study in Parkinson’s Disease

PubMed Central

Argaud, Soizic; Delplanque, Sylvain; Houvenaghel, Jean-François; Auffret, Manon; Duprez, Joan; Vérin, Marc; Grandjean, Didier; Sauleau, Paul

2016-01-01

According to embodied simulation theory, understanding other people’s emotions is fostered by facial mimicry. However, studies assessing the effect of facial mimicry on the recognition of emotion are still controversial. In Parkinson’s disease (PD), one of the most distinctive clinical features is facial amimia, a reduction in facial expressiveness, but patients also show emotional disturbances. The present study used the pathological model of PD to examine the role of facial mimicry on emotion recognition by investigating EMG responses in PD patients during a facial emotion recognition task (anger, joy, neutral). Our results evidenced a significant decrease in facial mimicry for joy in PD, essentially linked to the absence of reaction of the zygomaticus major and the orbicularis oculi muscles in response to happy avatars, whereas facial mimicry for expressions of anger was relatively preserved. We also confirmed that PD patients were less accurate in recognizing positive and neutral facial expressions and highlighted a beneficial effect of facial mimicry on the recognition of emotion. We thus provide additional arguments for embodied simulation theory suggesting that facial mimicry is a potential lever for therapeutic actions in PD even if it seems not to be necessarily required in recognizing emotion as such. PMID:27467393

[The effect of the serotonin transporter 5-HTTLPR polymorphism on the recognition of facial emotions in schizophrenia].

PubMed

Alfimova, M V; Golimbet, V E; Korovaitseva, G I; Lezheiko, T V; Abramova, L I; Aksenova, E V; Bolgov, M I

2014-01-01

The 5-HTTLPR SLC6A4 and catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphisms are reported to be associated with processing of facial expressions in general population. Impaired recognition of facial expressions that is characteristic of schizophrenia negatively impacts on the social adaptation of the patients. To search for molecular mechanisms of this deficit, we studied main and epistatic effects of 5-HTTLPR and Val158Met polymorphisms on the facial emotion recognition in patients with schizophrenia (n=299) and healthy controls (n=232). The 5-HTTLPR polymorphism was associated with the emotion recognition in patients. The ll-homozygotes recognized facial emotions significantly better compared to those with an s-allele (F=8.00; p=0.005). Although the recognition of facial emotions was correlated with negative symptoms, verbal learning and trait anxiety, these variables did not significantly modified the association. In both groups, no effect of the COMT on the recognition of facial emotions was found.

Facial Emotion Recognition: A Survey and Real-World User Experiences in Mixed Reality

PubMed Central

Mehta, Dhwani; Siddiqui, Mohammad Faridul Haque

2018-01-01

Extensive possibilities of applications have made emotion recognition ineluctable and challenging in the field of computer science. The use of non-verbal cues such as gestures, body movement, and facial expressions convey the feeling and the feedback to the user. This discipline of Human–Computer Interaction places reliance on the algorithmic robustness and the sensitivity of the sensor to ameliorate the recognition. Sensors play a significant role in accurate detection by providing a very high-quality input, hence increasing the efficiency and the reliability of the system. Automatic recognition of human emotions would help in teaching social intelligence in the machines. This paper presents a brief study of the various approaches and the techniques of emotion recognition. The survey covers a succinct review of the databases that are considered as data sets for algorithms detecting the emotions by facial expressions. Later, mixed reality device Microsoft HoloLens (MHL) is introduced for observing emotion recognition in Augmented Reality (AR). A brief introduction of its sensors, their application in emotion recognition and some preliminary results of emotion recognition using MHL are presented. The paper then concludes by comparing results of emotion recognition by the MHL and a regular webcam. PMID:29389845

Facial Emotion Recognition: A Survey and Real-World User Experiences in Mixed Reality.

PubMed

Mehta, Dhwani; Siddiqui, Mohammad Faridul Haque; Javaid, Ahmad Y

2018-02-01

Extensive possibilities of applications have made emotion recognition ineluctable and challenging in the field of computer science. The use of non-verbal cues such as gestures, body movement, and facial expressions convey the feeling and the feedback to the user. This discipline of Human-Computer Interaction places reliance on the algorithmic robustness and the sensitivity of the sensor to ameliorate the recognition. Sensors play a significant role in accurate detection by providing a very high-quality input, hence increasing the efficiency and the reliability of the system. Automatic recognition of human emotions would help in teaching social intelligence in the machines. This paper presents a brief study of the various approaches and the techniques of emotion recognition. The survey covers a succinct review of the databases that are considered as data sets for algorithms detecting the emotions by facial expressions. Later, mixed reality device Microsoft HoloLens (MHL) is introduced for observing emotion recognition in Augmented Reality (AR). A brief introduction of its sensors, their application in emotion recognition and some preliminary results of emotion recognition using MHL are presented. The paper then concludes by comparing results of emotion recognition by the MHL and a regular webcam.

Use of Biometrics within Sub-Saharan Refugee Communities

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-12-01

fingerprint patterns, iris pattern recognition, and facial recognition as a means of establishing an individual’s identity. Biometrics creates and...Biometrics typically comprises fingerprint patterns, iris pattern recognition, and facial recognition as a means of establishing an individual’s identity...authentication because it identifies an individual based on mathematical analysis of the random pattern visible within the iris. Facial recognition is

Facial expression recognition based on improved deep belief networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Yao; Qiu, Weigen

2017-08-01

In order to improve the robustness of facial expression recognition, a method of face expression recognition based on Local Binary Pattern (LBP) combined with improved deep belief networks (DBNs) is proposed. This method uses LBP to extract the feature, and then uses the improved deep belief networks as the detector and classifier to extract the LBP feature. The combination of LBP and improved deep belief networks is realized in facial expression recognition. In the JAFFE (Japanese Female Facial Expression) database on the recognition rate has improved significantly.

NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS: Technologies to Secure Federal Buildings

DTIC Science & Technology

2002-04-25

Medium, some resistance based on sensitivity of eye Facial recognition Facial features are captured and compared Dependent on lighting, positioning...two primary types of facial recognition technology used to create templates: 1. Local feature analysis—Dozens of images from regions of the face are...an adjacent feature. Attachment I—Access Control Technologies: Biometrics Facial Recognition How the technology works

Facial Expression Recognition Deficits and Faulty Learning: Implications for Theoretical Models and Clinical Applications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sheaffer, Beverly L.; Golden, Jeannie A.; Averett, Paige

2009-01-01

The ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion is integral in social interaction. Although the importance of facial expression recognition is reflected in increased research interest as well as in popular culture, clinicians may know little about this topic. The purpose of this article is to discuss facial expression recognition literature…

Emotional facial recognition in proactive and reactive violent offenders.

PubMed

Philipp-Wiegmann, Florence; Rösler, Michael; Retz-Junginger, Petra; Retz, Wolfgang

2017-10-01

The purpose of this study is to analyse individual differences in the ability of emotional facial recognition in violent offenders, who were characterised as either reactive or proactive in relation to their offending. In accordance with findings of our previous study, we expected higher impairments in facial recognition in reactive than proactive violent offenders. To assess the ability to recognize facial expressions, the computer-based Facial Emotional Expression Labeling Test (FEEL) was performed. Group allocation of reactive und proactive violent offenders and assessment of psychopathic traits were performed by an independent forensic expert using rating scales (PROREA, PCL-SV). Compared to proactive violent offenders and controls, the performance of emotion recognition in the reactive offender group was significantly lower, both in total and especially in recognition of negative emotions such as anxiety (d = -1.29), sadness (d = -1.54), and disgust (d = -1.11). Furthermore, reactive violent offenders showed a tendency to interpret non-anger emotions as anger. In contrast, proactive violent offenders performed as well as controls. General and specific deficits in reactive violent offenders are in line with the results of our previous study and correspond to predictions of the Integrated Emotion System (IES, 7) and the hostile attribution processes (21). Due to the different error pattern in the FEEL test, the theoretical distinction between proactive and reactive aggression can be supported based on emotion recognition, even though aggression itself is always a heterogeneous act rather than a distinct one-dimensional concept.

Biometrics: Facing Up to Terrorism

DTIC Science & Technology

2001-10-01

ment committee appointed by Secretary of Trans- portation Norman Y. Mineta to review airport security measures will recommend that facial recogni- tion...on the Role Facial Recognition Technology Can Play in Enhancing Airport Security .” Joseph Atick, the CEO of Visionics, testified before the government...system at a U.S. air- port. This deployment is believed to be the first-in-the-nation use of face-recognition technology for airport security . The sys

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.

An application of viola jones method for face recognition for absence process efficiency

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rizki Damanik, Rudolfo; Sitanggang, Delima; Pasaribu, Hendra; Siagian, Hendrik; Gulo, Frisman

2018-04-01

Absence was a list of documents that the company used to record the attendance time of each employee. The most common problem in a fingerprint machine is the identification of a slow sensor or a sensor not recognizing a finger. The employees late to work because they get difficulties at fingerprint system, they need about 3 – 5 minutes to absence when the condition of finger is wet or not fit. To overcome this problem, this research tried to utilize facial recognition for attendance process. The method used for facial recognition was Viola Jones. Through the processing phase of the RGB face image was converted into a histogram equalization face image for the next stage of recognition. The result of this research was the absence process could be done less than 1 second with a maximum slope of ± 700 and a distance of 20-200 cm. After implement facial recognition the process of absence is more efficient, just take less 1 minute to absence.

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.

Super Bowl Surveillance: Facing Up to Biometrics

DTIC Science & Technology

2001-05-01

Biometric facial recognition can provide significant benefits to society. At the same time, the rapid growth and improvement in the technology could...using facial recognition where it can produce positive benefits. Biometric facial recognition is by no means a perfect technology, and much technical

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.

Survey on RGB, 3D, Thermal, and Multimodal Approaches for Facial Expression Recognition: History, Trends, and Affect-Related Applications.

PubMed

Corneanu, Ciprian Adrian; Simon, Marc Oliu; Cohn, Jeffrey F; Guerrero, Sergio Escalera

2016-08-01

Facial expressions are an important way through which humans interact socially. Building a system capable of automatically recognizing facial expressions from images and video has been an intense field of study in recent years. Interpreting such expressions remains challenging and much research is needed about the way they relate to human affect. This paper presents a general overview of automatic RGB, 3D, thermal and multimodal facial expression analysis. We define a new taxonomy for the field, encompassing all steps from face detection to facial expression recognition, and describe and classify the state of the art methods accordingly. We also present the important datasets and the bench-marking of most influential methods. We conclude with a general discussion about trends, important questions and future lines of research.

Self-organized Evaluation of Dynamic Hand Gestures for Sign Language Recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buciu, Ioan; Pitas, Ioannis

Two main theories exist with respect to face encoding and representation in the human visual system (HVS). The first one refers to the dense (holistic) representation of the face, where faces have "holon"-like appearance. The second one claims that a more appropriate face representation is given by a sparse code, where only a small fraction of the neural cells corresponding to face encoding is activated. Theoretical and experimental evidence suggest that the HVS performs face analysis (encoding, storing, face recognition, facial expression recognition) in a structured and hierarchical way, where both representations have their own contribution and goal. According to neuropsychological experiments, it seems that encoding for face recognition, relies on holistic image representation, while a sparse image representation is used for facial expression analysis and classification. From the computer vision perspective, the techniques developed for automatic face and facial expression recognition fall into the same two representation types. Like in Neuroscience, the techniques which perform better for face recognition yield a holistic image representation, while those techniques suitable for facial expression recognition use a sparse or local image representation. The proposed mathematical models of image formation and encoding try to simulate the efficient storing, organization and coding of data in the human cortex. This is equivalent with embedding constraints in the model design regarding dimensionality reduction, redundant information minimization, mutual information minimization, non-negativity constraints, class information, etc. The presented techniques are applied as a feature extraction step followed by a classification method, which also heavily influences the recognition results.

Slowing down Presentation of Facial Movements and Vocal Sounds Enhances Facial Expression Recognition and Induces Facial-Vocal Imitation in Children with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tardif, Carole; Laine, France; Rodriguez, Melissa; Gepner, Bruno

2007-01-01

This study examined the effects of slowing down presentation of facial expressions and their corresponding vocal sounds on facial expression recognition and facial and/or vocal imitation in children with autism. Twelve autistic children and twenty-four normal control children were presented with emotional and non-emotional facial expressions on…

Does Facial Resemblance Enhance Cooperation?

PubMed Central

Giang, Trang; Bell, Raoul; Buchner, Axel

2012-01-01

Facial self-resemblance has been proposed to serve as a kinship cue that facilitates cooperation between kin. In the present study, facial resemblance was manipulated by morphing stimulus faces with the participants' own faces or control faces (resulting in self-resemblant or other-resemblant composite faces). A norming study showed that the perceived degree of kinship was higher for the participants and the self-resemblant composite faces than for actual first-degree relatives. Effects of facial self-resemblance on trust and cooperation were tested in a paradigm that has proven to be sensitive to facial trustworthiness, facial likability, and facial expression. First, participants played a cooperation game in which the composite faces were shown. Then, likability ratings were assessed. In a source memory test, participants were required to identify old and new faces, and were asked to remember whether the faces belonged to cooperators or cheaters in the cooperation game. Old-new recognition was enhanced for self-resemblant faces in comparison to other-resemblant faces. However, facial self-resemblance had no effects on the degree of cooperation in the cooperation game, on the emotional evaluation of the faces as reflected in the likability judgments, and on the expectation that a face belonged to a cooperator rather than to a cheater. Therefore, the present results are clearly inconsistent with the assumption of an evolved kin recognition module built into the human face recognition system. PMID:23094095

Holistic face processing can inhibit recognition of forensic facial composites.

PubMed

McIntyre, Alex H; Hancock, Peter J B; Frowd, Charlie D; Langton, Stephen R H

2016-04-01

Facial composite systems help eyewitnesses to show the appearance of criminals. However, likenesses created by unfamiliar witnesses will not be completely accurate, and people familiar with the target can find them difficult to identify. Faces are processed holistically; we explore whether this impairs identification of inaccurate composite images and whether recognition can be improved. In Experiment 1 (n = 64) an imaging technique was used to make composites of celebrity faces more accurate and identification was contrasted with the original composite images. Corrected composites were better recognized, confirming that errors in production of the likenesses impair identification. The influence of holistic face processing was explored by misaligning the top and bottom parts of the composites (cf. Young, Hellawell, & Hay, 1987). Misalignment impaired recognition of corrected composites but identification of the original, inaccurate composites significantly improved. This effect was replicated with facial composites of noncelebrities in Experiment 2 (n = 57). We conclude that, like real faces, facial composites are processed holistically: recognition is impaired because unlike real faces, composites contain inaccuracies and holistic face processing makes it difficult to perceive identifiable features. This effect was consistent across composites of celebrities and composites of people who are personally familiar. Our findings suggest that identification of forensic facial composites can be enhanced by presenting composites in a misaligned format. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

The Change in Facial Emotion Recognition Ability in Inpatients with Treatment Resistant Schizophrenia After Electroconvulsive Therapy.

PubMed

Dalkıran, Mihriban; Tasdemir, Akif; Salihoglu, Tamer; Emul, Murat; Duran, Alaattin; Ugur, Mufit; Yavuz, Ruhi

2017-09-01

People with schizophrenia have impairments in emotion recognition along with other social cognitive deficits. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the immediate benefits of ECT on facial emotion recognition ability. Thirty-two treatment resistant patients with schizophrenia who have been indicated for ECT enrolled in the study. Facial emotion stimuli were a set of 56 photographs that depicted seven basic emotions: sadness, anger, happiness, disgust, surprise, fear, and neutral faces. The average age of the participants was 33.4 ± 10.5 years. The rate of recognizing the disgusted facial expression increased significantly after ECT (p < 0.05) and no significant changes were found in the rest of the facial expressions (p > 0.05). After the ECT, the time period of responding to the fear and happy facial expressions were significantly shorter (p < 0.05). Facial emotion recognition ability is an important social cognitive skill for social harmony, proper relation and living independently. At least, the ECT sessions do not seem to affect facial emotion recognition ability negatively and seem to improve identifying disgusted facial emotion which is related with dopamine enriched regions in brain.

Impaired Facial Expression Recognition in Children with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: Impact of Early Seizure Onset on Fear Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Golouboff, Nathalie; Fiori, Nicole; Delalande, Olivier; Fohlen, Martine; Dellatolas, Georges; Jambaque, Isabelle

2008-01-01

The amygdala has been implicated in the recognition of facial emotions, especially fearful expressions, in adults with early-onset right temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The present study investigates the recognition of facial emotions in children and adolescents, 8-16 years old, with epilepsy. Twenty-nine subjects had TLE (13 right, 16 left) and…

Subject independent facial expression recognition with robust face detection using a convolutional neural network.

PubMed

Matsugu, Masakazu; Mori, Katsuhiko; Mitari, Yusuke; Kaneda, Yuji

2003-01-01

Reliable detection of ordinary facial expressions (e.g. smile) despite the variability among individuals as well as face appearance is an important step toward the realization of perceptual user interface with autonomous perception of persons. We describe a rule-based algorithm for robust facial expression recognition combined with robust face detection using a convolutional neural network. In this study, we address the problem of subject independence as well as translation, rotation, and scale invariance in the recognition of facial expression. The result shows reliable detection of smiles with recognition rate of 97.6% for 5600 still images of more than 10 subjects. The proposed algorithm demonstrated the ability to discriminate smiling from talking based on the saliency score obtained from voting visual cues. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first facial expression recognition model with the property of subject independence combined with robustness to variability in facial appearance.

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.

[Association between intelligence development and facial expression recognition ability in children with autism spectrum disorder].

PubMed

Pan, Ning; Wu, Gui-Hua; Zhang, Ling; Zhao, Ya-Fen; Guan, Han; Xu, Cai-Juan; Jing, Jin; Jin, Yu

2017-03-01

To investigate the features of intelligence development, facial expression recognition ability, and the association between them in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A total of 27 ASD children aged 6-16 years (ASD group, full intelligence quotient >70) and age- and gender-matched normally developed children (control group) were enrolled. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Fourth Edition and Chinese Static Facial Expression Photos were used for intelligence evaluation and facial expression recognition test. Compared with the control group, the ASD group had significantly lower scores of full intelligence quotient, verbal comprehension index, perceptual reasoning index (PRI), processing speed index（PSI), and working memory index (WMI) (P<0.05). The ASD group also had a significantly lower overall accuracy rate of facial expression recognition and significantly lower accuracy rates of the recognition of happy, angry, sad, and frightened expressions than the control group (P<0.05). In the ASD group, the overall accuracy rate of facial expression recognition and the accuracy rates of the recognition of happy and frightened expressions were positively correlated with PRI (r=0.415, 0.455, and 0.393 respectively; P<0.05). The accuracy rate of the recognition of angry expression was positively correlated with WMI (r=0.397; P<0.05). ASD children have delayed intelligence development compared with normally developed children and impaired expression recognition ability. Perceptual reasoning and working memory abilities are positively correlated with expression recognition ability, which suggests that insufficient perceptual reasoning and working memory abilities may be important factors affecting facial expression recognition ability in ASD children.

Impact of severity of drug use on discrete emotions recognition in polysubstance abusers.

PubMed

Fernández-Serrano, María José; Lozano, Oscar; Pérez-García, Miguel; Verdejo-García, Antonio

2010-06-01

Neuropsychological studies support the association between severity of drug intake and alterations in specific cognitive domains and neural systems, but there is disproportionately less research on the neuropsychology of emotional alterations associated with addiction. One of the key aspects of adaptive emotional functioning potentially relevant to addiction progression and treatment is the ability to recognize basic emotions in the faces of others. Therefore, the aims of this study were: (i) to examine facial emotion recognition in abstinent polysubstance abusers, and (ii) to explore the association between patterns of quantity and duration of use of several drugs co-abused (including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, heroin and MDMA) and the ability to identify discrete facial emotional expressions portraying basic emotions. We compared accuracy of emotion recognition of facial expressions portraying six basic emotions (measured with the Ekman Faces Test) between polysubstance abusers (PSA, n=65) and non-drug using comparison individuals (NDCI, n=30), and used regression models to explore the association between quantity and duration of use of the different drugs co-abused and indices of recognition of each of the six emotions, while controlling for relevant socio-demographic and affect-related confounders. Results showed: (i) that PSA had significantly poorer recognition than NDCI for facial expressions of anger, disgust, fear and sadness; (ii) that measures of quantity and duration of drugs used significantly predicted poorer discrete emotions recognition: quantity of cocaine use predicted poorer anger recognition, and duration of cocaine use predicted both poorer anger and fear recognition. Severity of cocaine use also significantly predicted overall recognition accuracy. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of Minority Status on Facial Recognition and Naming Performance.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roberts, Richard J.; Hamsher, Kerry

1984-01-01

Examined the differential effects of minority status in Blacks (N=94) on a facial recognition test and a naming test. Results showed that performance on the facial recognition test was relatively free of racial bias, but this was not the case for visual naming. (LLL)

Facial soft biometric features for forensic face recognition.

PubMed

Tome, Pedro; Vera-Rodriguez, Ruben; Fierrez, Julian; Ortega-Garcia, Javier

2015-12-01

This paper proposes a functional feature-based approach useful for real forensic caseworks, based on the shape, orientation and size of facial traits, which can be considered as a soft biometric approach. The motivation of this work is to provide a set of facial features, which can be understood by non-experts such as judges and support the work of forensic examiners who, in practice, carry out a thorough manual comparison of face images paying special attention to the similarities and differences in shape and size of various facial traits. This new approach constitutes a tool that automatically converts a set of facial landmarks to a set of features (shape and size) corresponding to facial regions of forensic value. These features are furthermore evaluated in a population to generate statistics to support forensic examiners. The proposed features can also be used as additional information that can improve the performance of traditional face recognition systems. These features follow the forensic methodology and are obtained in a continuous and discrete manner from raw images. A statistical analysis is also carried out to study the stability, discrimination power and correlation of the proposed facial features on two realistic databases: MORPH and ATVS Forensic DB. Finally, the performance of both continuous and discrete features is analyzed using different similarity measures. Experimental results show high discrimination power and good recognition performance, especially for continuous features. A final fusion of the best systems configurations achieves rank 10 match results of 100% for ATVS database and 75% for MORPH database demonstrating the benefits of using this information in practice. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facial Asymmetry-Based Age Group Estimation: Role in Recognizing Age-Separated Face Images.

PubMed

Sajid, Muhammad; Taj, Imtiaz Ahmad; Bajwa, Usama Ijaz; Ratyal, Naeem Iqbal

2018-04-23

Face recognition aims to establish the identity of a person based on facial characteristics. On the other hand, age group estimation is the automatic calculation of an individual's age range based on facial features. Recognizing age-separated face images is still a challenging research problem due to complex aging processes involving different types of facial tissues, skin, fat, muscles, and bones. Certain holistic and local facial features are used to recognize age-separated face images. However, most of the existing methods recognize face images without incorporating the knowledge learned from age group estimation. In this paper, we propose an age-assisted face recognition approach to handle aging variations. Inspired by the observation that facial asymmetry is an age-dependent intrinsic facial feature, we first use asymmetric facial dimensions to estimate the age group of a given face image. Deeply learned asymmetric facial features are then extracted for face recognition using a deep convolutional neural network (dCNN). Finally, we integrate the knowledge learned from the age group estimation into the face recognition algorithm using the same dCNN. This integration results in a significant improvement in the overall performance compared to using the face recognition algorithm alone. The experimental results on two large facial aging datasets, the MORPH and FERET sets, show that the proposed age group estimation based on the face recognition approach yields superior performance compared to some existing state-of-the-art methods. © 2018 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Effect of camera resolution and bandwidth on facial affect recognition.

PubMed

Cruz, Mario; Cruz, Robyn Flaum; Krupinski, Elizabeth A; Lopez, Ana Maria; McNeeley, Richard M; Weinstein, Ronald S

2004-01-01

This preliminary study explored the effect of camera resolution and bandwidth on facial affect recognition, an important process and clinical variable in mental health service delivery. Sixty medical students and mental health-care professionals were recruited and randomized to four different combinations of commonly used teleconferencing camera resolutions and bandwidths: (1) one chip charged coupling device (CCD) camera, commonly used for VHSgrade taping and in teleconferencing systems costing less than $4,000 with a resolution of 280 lines, and 128 kilobytes per second bandwidth (kbps); (2) VHS and 768 kbps; (3) three-chip CCD camera, commonly used for Betacam (Beta) grade taping and in teleconferencing systems costing more than $4,000 with a resolution of 480 lines, and 128 kbps; and (4) Betacam and 768 kbps. The subjects were asked to identify four facial affects dynamically presented on videotape by an actor and actress presented via a video monitor at 30 frames per second. Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant interaction effect for camera resolution and bandwidth (p = 0.02) and a significant main effect for camera resolution (p = 0.006), but no main effect for bandwidth was detected. Post hoc testing of interaction means, using the Tukey Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test and the critical difference (CD) at the 0.05 alpha level = 1.71, revealed subjects in the VHS/768 kbps (M = 7.133) and VHS/128 kbps (M = 6.533) were significantly better at recognizing the displayed facial affects than those in the Betacam/768 kbps (M = 4.733) or Betacam/128 kbps (M = 6.333) conditions. Camera resolution and bandwidth combinations differ in their capacity to influence facial affect recognition. For service providers, this study's results support the use of VHS cameras with either 768 kbps or 128 kbps bandwidths for facial affect recognition compared to Betacam cameras. The authors argue that the results of this study are a consequence of the VHS camera resolution/bandwidth combinations' ability to improve signal detection (i.e., facial affect recognition) by subjects in comparison to Betacam camera resolution/bandwidth combinations.

The Wireless Ubiquitous Surveillance Testbed

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-03-01

c. Eye Patterns.............................................................................17 d. Facial Recognition ..................................................................19...27). ...........................................98 Table F.4. Facial Recognition Products. (After: Polemi, p. 25 and BiometriTech, 15 May 2002...it applies to homeland security. C. RESEARCH TASKS The main goals of this thesis are to: • Set up the biometric sensors and facial recognition surveillance

Appearance-Based Facial Recognition Using Visible and Thermal Imagery: A Comparative Study

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-01-01

Appearance-Based Facial Recognition Using Visible and Thermal Imagery: A Comparative Study ∗ Andrea Selinger† Diego A. Socolinsky‡ †Equinox...TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2006 to 00-00-2006 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Appearance-Based Facial Recognition Using Visible and Thermal Imagery: A

Influences on Facial Emotion Recognition in Deaf Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sidera, Francesc; Amadó, Anna; Martínez, Laura

2017-01-01

This exploratory research is aimed at studying facial emotion recognition abilities in deaf children and how they relate to linguistic skills and the characteristics of deafness. A total of 166 participants (75 deaf) aged 3-8 years were administered the following tasks: facial emotion recognition, naming vocabulary and cognitive ability. The…

The Differential Effects of Thalamus and Basal Ganglia on Facial Emotion Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheung, Crystal C. Y.; Lee, Tatia M. C.; Yip, James T. H.; King, Kristin E.; Li, Leonard S. W.

2006-01-01

This study examined if subcortical stroke was associated with impaired facial emotion recognition. Furthermore, the lateralization of the impairment and the differential profiles of facial emotion recognition deficits with localized thalamic or basal ganglia damage were also studied. Thirty-eight patients with subcortical strokes and 19 matched…

Facial Affect Recognition and Social Anxiety in Preschool Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ale, Chelsea M.; Chorney, Daniel B.; Brice, Chad S.; Morris, Tracy L.

2010-01-01

Research relating anxiety and facial affect recognition has focused mostly on school-aged children and adults and has yielded mixed results. The current study sought to demonstrate an association among behavioural inhibition and parent-reported social anxiety, shyness, social withdrawal and facial affect recognition performance in 30 children,…

Familial covariation of facial emotion recognition and IQ in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Andric, Sanja; Maric, Nadja P; Mihaljevic, Marina; Mirjanic, Tijana; van Os, Jim

2016-12-30

Alterations in general intellectual ability and social cognition in schizophrenia are core features of the disorder, evident at the illness' onset and persistent throughout its course. However, previous studies examining cognitive alterations in siblings discordant for schizophrenia yielded inconsistent results. Present study aimed to investigate the nature of the association between facial emotion recognition and general IQ by applying genetically sensitive cross-trait cross-sibling design. Participants (total n=158; patients, unaffected siblings, controls) were assessed using the Benton Facial Recognition Test, the Degraded Facial Affect Recognition Task (DFAR) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III. Patients had lower IQ and altered facial emotion recognition in comparison to other groups. Healthy siblings and controls did not significantly differ in IQ and DFAR performance, but siblings exhibited intermediate angry facial expression recognition. Cross-trait within-subject analyses showed significant associations between overall DFAR performance and IQ in all participants. Within-trait cross-sibling analyses found significant associations between patients' and siblings' IQ and overall DFAR performance, suggesting their familial clustering. Finally, cross-trait cross-sibling analyses revealed familial covariation of facial emotion recognition and IQ in siblings discordant for schizophrenia, further indicating their familial etiology. Both traits are important phenotypes for genetic studies and potential early clinical markers of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. 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.

Relative preservation of the recognition of positive facial expression "happiness" in Alzheimer disease.

PubMed

Maki, Yohko; Yoshida, Hiroshi; Yamaguchi, Tomoharu; Yamaguchi, Haruyasu

2013-01-01

Positivity recognition bias has been reported for facial expression as well as memory and visual stimuli in aged individuals, whereas emotional facial recognition in Alzheimer disease (AD) patients is controversial, with possible involvement of confounding factors such as deficits in spatial processing of non-emotional facial features and in verbal processing to express emotions. Thus, we examined whether recognition of positive facial expressions was preserved in AD patients, by adapting a new method that eliminated the influences of these confounding factors. Sensitivity of six basic facial expressions (happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, disgust, and fear) was evaluated in 12 outpatients with mild AD, 17 aged normal controls (ANC), and 25 young normal controls (YNC). To eliminate the factors related to non-emotional facial features, averaged faces were prepared as stimuli. To eliminate the factors related to verbal processing, the participants were required to match the images of stimulus and answer, avoiding the use of verbal labels. In recognition of happiness, there was no difference in sensitivity between YNC and ANC, and between ANC and AD patients. AD patients were less sensitive than ANC in recognition of sadness, surprise, and anger. ANC were less sensitive than YNC in recognition of surprise, anger, and disgust. Within the AD patient group, sensitivity of happiness was significantly higher than those of the other five expressions. In AD patient, recognition of happiness was relatively preserved; recognition of happiness was most sensitive and was preserved against the influences of age and disease.

Motion Imagery Processing and Exploitation (MIPE)

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-01-01

facial recognition —i.e., the identification of a specific person.37 Object detection is often (but not always) considered a prerequisite for instance...The goal of segmentation is to distinguish objects and identify boundaries in images. Some of the earliest approaches to facial recognition involved...methods of instance recognition are at varying levels of maturity. Facial recognition methods are arguably the most mature; the technology is well

The relationship between facial emotion recognition and executive functions in first-episode patients with schizophrenia and their siblings.

PubMed

Yang, Chengqing; Zhang, Tianhong; Li, Zezhi; Heeramun-Aubeeluck, Anisha; Liu, Na; Huang, Nan; Zhang, Jie; He, Leiying; Li, Hui; Tang, Yingying; Chen, Fazhan; Liu, Fei; Wang, Jijun; Lu, Zheng

2015-10-08

Although many studies have examined executive functions and facial emotion recognition in people with schizophrenia, few of them focused on the correlation between them. Furthermore, their relationship in the siblings of patients also remains unclear. The aim of the present study is to examine the correlation between executive functions and facial emotion recognition in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and their siblings. Thirty patients with first-episode schizophrenia, their twenty-six siblings, and thirty healthy controls were enrolled. They completed facial emotion recognition tasks using the Ekman Standard Faces Database, and executive functioning was measured by Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Hierarchical regression analysis was applied to assess the correlation between executive functions and facial emotion recognition. Our study found that in siblings, the accuracy in recognizing low degree 'disgust' emotion was negatively correlated with the total correct rate in WCST (r = -0.614, p = 0.023), but was positively correlated with the total error in WCST (r = 0.623, p = 0.020); the accuracy in recognizing 'neutral' emotion was positively correlated with the total error rate in WCST (r = 0.683, p = 0.014) while negatively correlated with the total correct rate in WCST (r = -0.677, p = 0.017). People with schizophrenia showed an impairment in facial emotion recognition when identifying moderate 'happy' facial emotion, the accuracy of which was significantly correlated with the number of completed categories of WCST (R(2) = 0.432, P < .05). There were no correlations between executive functions and facial emotion recognition in the healthy control group. Our study demonstrated that facial emotion recognition impairment correlated with executive function impairment in people with schizophrenia and their unaffected siblings but not in healthy controls.

Tensor Rank Preserving Discriminant Analysis for Facial Recognition.

PubMed

Tao, Dapeng; Guo, Yanan; Li, Yaotang; Gao, Xinbo

2017-10-12

Facial recognition, one of the basic topics in computer vision and pattern recognition, has received substantial attention in recent years. However, for those traditional facial recognition algorithms, the facial images are reshaped to a long vector, thereby losing part of the original spatial constraints of each pixel. In this paper, a new tensor-based feature extraction algorithm termed tensor rank preserving discriminant analysis (TRPDA) for facial image recognition is proposed; the proposed method involves two stages: in the first stage, the low-dimensional tensor subspace of the original input tensor samples was obtained; in the second stage, discriminative locality alignment was utilized to obtain the ultimate vector feature representation for subsequent facial recognition. On the one hand, the proposed TRPDA algorithm fully utilizes the natural structure of the input samples, and it applies an optimization criterion that can directly handle the tensor spectral analysis problem, thereby decreasing the computation cost compared those traditional tensor-based feature selection algorithms. On the other hand, the proposed TRPDA algorithm extracts feature by finding a tensor subspace that preserves most of the rank order information of the intra-class input samples. Experiments on the three facial databases are performed here to determine the effectiveness of the proposed TRPDA algorithm.

Face to face: blocking facial mimicry can selectively impair recognition of emotional expressions.

PubMed

Oberman, Lindsay M; Winkielman, Piotr; Ramachandran, Vilayanur S

2007-01-01

People spontaneously mimic a variety of behaviors, including emotional facial expressions. Embodied cognition theories suggest that mimicry reflects internal simulation of perceived emotion in order to facilitate its understanding. If so, blocking facial mimicry should impair recognition of expressions, especially of emotions that are simulated using facial musculature. The current research tested this hypothesis using four expressions (happy, disgust, fear, and sad) and two mimicry-interfering manipulations (1) biting on a pen and (2) chewing gum, as well as two control conditions. Experiment 1 used electromyography over cheek, mouth, and nose regions. The bite manipulation consistently activated assessed muscles, whereas the chew manipulation activated muscles only intermittently. Further, expressing happiness generated most facial action. Experiment 2 found that the bite manipulation interfered most with recognition of happiness. These findings suggest that facial mimicry differentially contributes to recognition of specific facial expressions, thus allowing for more refined predictions from embodied cognition theories.

[Measuring impairment of facial affects recognition in schizophrenia. Preliminary study of the facial emotions recognition task (TREF)].

PubMed

Gaudelus, B; Virgile, J; Peyroux, E; Leleu, A; Baudouin, J-Y; Franck, N

2015-06-01

The impairment of social cognition, including facial affects recognition, is a well-established trait in schizophrenia, and specific cognitive remediation programs focusing on facial affects recognition have been developed by different teams worldwide. However, even though social cognitive impairments have been confirmed, previous studies have also shown heterogeneity of the results between different subjects. Therefore, assessment of personal abilities should be measured individually before proposing such programs. Most research teams apply tasks based on facial affects recognition by Ekman et al. or Gur et al. However, these tasks are not easily applicable in a clinical exercise. Here, we present the Facial Emotions Recognition Test (TREF), which is designed to identify facial affects recognition impairments in a clinical practice. The test is composed of 54 photos and evaluates abilities in the recognition of six universal emotions (joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust and contempt). Each of these emotions is represented with colored photos of 4 different models (two men and two women) at nine intensity levels from 20 to 100%. Each photo is presented during 10 seconds; no time limit for responding is applied. The present study compared the scores of the TREF test in a sample of healthy controls (64 subjects) and people with stabilized schizophrenia (45 subjects) according to the DSM IV-TR criteria. We analysed global scores for all emotions, as well as sub scores for each emotion between these two groups, taking into account gender differences. Our results were coherent with previous findings. Applying TREF, we confirmed an impairment in facial affects recognition in schizophrenia by showing significant differences between the two groups in their global results (76.45% for healthy controls versus 61.28% for people with schizophrenia), as well as in sub scores for each emotion except for joy. Scores for women were significantly higher than for men in the population without psychiatric diagnosis. The study also allowed the identification of cut-off scores; results below 2 standard deviations of the healthy control average (61.57%) pointed to a facial affect recognition deficit. The TREF appears to be a useful tool to identify facial affects recognition impairment in schizophrenia. Neuropsychologists, who have tried this task, have positive feedback. The TREF is easy to use (duration of about 15 minutes), easy to apply in subjects with attentional difficulties, and tests facial affects recognition at ecological intensity levels. These results have to be confirmed in the future with larger sample sizes, and in comparison with other tasks, evaluating the facial affects recognition processes. Copyright © 2014 L’Encéphale, Paris. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Facial recognition performance of female inmates as a result of sexual assault history.

PubMed

Islam-Zwart, Kayleen A; Heath, Nicole M; Vik, Peter W

2005-06-01

This study examined the effect of sexual assault history on facial recognition performance. Gender of facial stimuli and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms also were expected to influence performance. Fifty-six female inmates completed an interview and the Wechsler Memory Scale-Third Edition Faces I and Faces II subtests (Wechsler, 1997). Women with a sexual assault exhibited better immediate and delayed facial recognition skills than those with no assault history. There were no differences in performance based on the gender of faces or PTSD diagnosis. Immediate facial recognition was correlated with report of PTSD symptoms. Findings provide greater insight into women's reactions to, and the uniqueness of, the trauma of sexual victimization.

Static facial expression recognition with convolution neural networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Feng; Chen, Zhong; Ouyang, Chao; Zhang, Yifei

2018-03-01

Facial expression recognition is a currently active research topic in the fields of computer vision, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. In this paper, we have developed a convolutional neural networks (CNN) for classifying human emotions from static facial expression into one of the seven facial emotion categories. We pre-train our CNN model on the combined FER2013 dataset formed by train, validation and test set and fine-tune on the extended Cohn-Kanade database. In order to reduce the overfitting of the models, we utilized different techniques including dropout and batch normalization in addition to data augmentation. According to the experimental result, our CNN model has excellent classification performance and robustness for facial expression recognition.

Motion Based Target Acquisition and Evaluation in an Adaptive Machine Vision System

DTIC Science & Technology

1995-05-01

paths in facial recognition and learning. Annals of Neurology, 22, 41-45. Tolman, E.C. (1932) Purposive behavior in Animals and Men. New York: Appleton...Learned scan paths are the active processes of perception. Rizzo et al. (1987) studied the fixation patterns of two patients with impaired facial ... recognition and learning and found an increase in the randomness of the scan patterns compared to controls, indicating that the cortex was failing to direct

Can You See Me Now Visualizing Battlefield Facial Recognition Technology in 2035

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-04-01

County Sheriff’s Department, use certain measurements such as the distance between eyes, the length of the nose, or the shape of the ears. 8 However...captures multiple frames of video and composites them into an appropriately high-resolution image that can be processed by the facial recognition software...stream of data. High resolution video systems, such as those described below will be able to capture orders of magnitude more data in one video frame

Spoofing detection on facial images recognition using LBP and GLCM combination

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sthevanie, F.; Ramadhani, K. N.

2018-03-01

The challenge for the facial based security system is how to detect facial image falsification such as facial image spoofing. Spoofing occurs when someone try to pretend as a registered user to obtain illegal access and gain advantage from the protected system. This research implements facial image spoofing detection method by analyzing image texture. The proposed method for texture analysis combines the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) method. The experimental results show that spoofing detection using LBP and GLCM combination achieves high detection rate compared to that of using only LBP feature or GLCM feature.

The look of fear and anger: facial maturity modulates recognition of fearful and angry expressions.

PubMed

Sacco, Donald F; Hugenberg, Kurt

2009-02-01

The current series of studies provide converging evidence that facial expressions of fear and anger may have co-evolved to mimic mature and babyish faces in order to enhance their communicative signal. In Studies 1 and 2, fearful and angry facial expressions were manipulated to have enhanced babyish features (larger eyes) or enhanced mature features (smaller eyes) and in the context of a speeded categorization task in Study 1 and a visual noise paradigm in Study 2, results indicated that larger eyes facilitated the recognition of fearful facial expressions, while smaller eyes facilitated the recognition of angry facial expressions. Study 3 manipulated facial roundness, a stable structure that does not vary systematically with expressions, and found that congruency between maturity and expression (narrow face-anger; round face-fear) facilitated expression recognition accuracy. Results are discussed as representing a broad co-evolutionary relationship between facial maturity and fearful and angry facial expressions. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved

Hierarchical Recognition Scheme for Human Facial Expression Recognition Systems

PubMed Central

Siddiqi, Muhammad Hameed; Lee, Sungyoung; Lee, Young-Koo; Khan, Adil Mehmood; Truc, Phan Tran Ho

2013-01-01

Over the last decade, human facial expressions recognition (FER) has emerged as an important research area. Several factors make FER a challenging research problem. These include varying light conditions in training and test images; need for automatic and accurate face detection before feature extraction; and high similarity among different expressions that makes it difficult to distinguish these expressions with a high accuracy. This work implements a hierarchical linear discriminant analysis-based facial expressions recognition (HL-FER) system to tackle these problems. Unlike the previous systems, the HL-FER uses a pre-processing step to eliminate light effects, incorporates a new automatic face detection scheme, employs methods to extract both global and local features, and utilizes a HL-FER to overcome the problem of high similarity among different expressions. Unlike most of the previous works that were evaluated using a single dataset, the performance of the HL-FER is assessed using three publicly available datasets under three different experimental settings: n-fold cross validation based on subjects for each dataset separately; n-fold cross validation rule based on datasets; and, finally, a last set of experiments to assess the effectiveness of each module of the HL-FER separately. Weighted average recognition accuracy of 98.7% across three different datasets, using three classifiers, indicates the success of employing the HL-FER for human FER. PMID:24316568

Temporal lobe structures and facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia patients and nonpsychotic relatives.

PubMed

Goghari, Vina M; Macdonald, Angus W; Sponheim, Scott R

2011-11-01

Temporal lobe abnormalities and emotion recognition deficits are prominent features of schizophrenia and appear related to the diathesis of the disorder. This study investigated whether temporal lobe structural abnormalities were associated with facial emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia and related to genetic liability for the disorder. Twenty-seven schizophrenia patients, 23 biological family members, and 36 controls participated. Several temporal lobe regions (fusiform, superior temporal, middle temporal, amygdala, and hippocampus) previously associated with face recognition in normative samples and found to be abnormal in schizophrenia were evaluated using volumetric analyses. Participants completed a facial emotion recognition task and an age recognition control task under time-limited and self-paced conditions. Temporal lobe volumes were tested for associations with task performance. Group status explained 23% of the variance in temporal lobe volume. Left fusiform gray matter volume was decreased by 11% in patients and 7% in relatives compared with controls. Schizophrenia patients additionally exhibited smaller hippocampal and middle temporal volumes. Patients were unable to improve facial emotion recognition performance with unlimited time to make a judgment but were able to improve age recognition performance. Patients additionally showed a relationship between reduced temporal lobe gray matter and poor facial emotion recognition. For the middle temporal lobe region, the relationship between greater volume and better task performance was specific to facial emotion recognition and not age recognition. Because schizophrenia patients exhibited a specific deficit in emotion recognition not attributable to a generalized impairment in face perception, impaired emotion recognition may serve as a target for interventions.

Local ICA for the Most Wanted face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guan, Xin; Szu, Harold H.; Markowitz, Zvi

2000-04-01

Facial disguises of FBI Most Wanted criminals are inevitable and anticipated in our design of automatic/aided target recognition (ATR) imaging systems. For example, man's facial hairs may hide his mouth and chin but not necessarily the nose and eyes. Sunglasses will cover the eyes but not the nose, mouth, and chins. This fact motivates us to build sets of the independent component analyses bases separately for each facial region of the entire alleged criminal group. Then, given an alleged criminal face, collective votes are obtained from all facial regions in terms of 'yes, no, abstain' and are tallied for a potential alarm. Moreover, and innocent outside shall fall below the alarm threshold and is allowed to pass the checkpoint. Such a PD versus FAR called ROC curve is obtained.

Zeroing Biometrics: Collecting Biometrics Before the Shooting Starts

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-04-01

structure, prison, or a border crossing. Facial Photo Facial recognition is the least radical of the modes of biometric collection and may offer the...most promise for the future. Facial recognition is the ability to recognize an individual from a photo or other visual representation. It is no...speed, unfortunately facial recognition programs are more susceptible to acts of disguise than a human observer.24 In the field the use of photos

Facial emotion recognition in patients with focal and diffuse axonal injury.

PubMed

Yassin, Walid; Callahan, Brandy L; Ubukata, Shiho; Sugihara, Genichi; Murai, Toshiya; Ueda, Keita

2017-01-01

Facial emotion recognition impairment has been well documented in patients with traumatic brain injury. Studies exploring the neural substrates involved in such deficits have implicated specific grey matter structures (e.g. orbitofrontal regions), as well as diffuse white matter damage. Our study aims to clarify whether different types of injuries (i.e. focal vs. diffuse) will lead to different types of impairments on facial emotion recognition tasks, as no study has directly compared these patients. The present study examined performance and response patterns on a facial emotion recognition task in 14 participants with diffuse axonal injury (DAI), 14 with focal injury (FI) and 22 healthy controls. We found that, overall, participants with FI and DAI performed more poorly than controls on the facial emotion recognition task. Further, we observed comparable emotion recognition performance in participants with FI and DAI, despite differences in the nature and distribution of their lesions. However, the rating response pattern between the patient groups was different. This is the first study to show that pure DAI, without gross focal lesions, can independently lead to facial emotion recognition deficits and that rating patterns differ depending on the type and location of trauma.

The Relationships among Facial Emotion Recognition, Social Skills, and Quality of Life.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simon, Elliott W.; And Others

1995-01-01

Forty-six institutionalized adults with mild or moderate mental retardation were administered the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (socialization domain), a subjective measure of quality of life, and a facial emotion recognition test. Facial emotion recognition, quality of life, and social skills appeared to be independent of one another. Facial…

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

Deficits in recognition, identification, and discrimination of facial emotions in patients with bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Benito, Adolfo; Lahera, Guillermo; Herrera, Sara; Muncharaz, Ramón; Benito, Guillermo; Fernández-Liria, Alberto; Montes, José Manuel

2013-01-01

To analyze the recognition, identification, and discrimination of facial emotions in a sample of outpatients with bipolar disorder (BD). Forty-four outpatients with diagnosis of BD and 48 matched control subjects were selected. Both groups were assessed with tests for recognition (Emotion Recognition-40 - ER40), identification (Facial Emotion Identification Test - FEIT), and discrimination (Facial Emotion Discrimination Test - FEDT) of facial emotions, as well as a theory of mind (ToM) verbal test (Hinting Task). Differences between groups were analyzed, controlling the influence of mild depressive and manic symptoms. Patients with BD scored significantly lower than controls on recognition (ER40), identification (FEIT), and discrimination (FEDT) of emotions. Regarding the verbal measure of ToM, a lower score was also observed in patients compared to controls. Patients with mild syndromal depressive symptoms obtained outcomes similar to patients in euthymia. A significant correlation between FEDT scores and global functioning (measured by the Functioning Assessment Short Test, FAST) was found. These results suggest that, even in euthymia, patients with BD experience deficits in recognition, identification, and discrimination of facial emotions, with potential functional implications.

High-emulation mask recognition with high-resolution hyperspectral video capture system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feng, Jiao; Fang, Xiaojing; Li, Shoufeng; Wang, Yongjin

2014-11-01

We present a method for distinguishing human face from high-emulation mask, which is increasingly used by criminals for activities such as stealing card numbers and passwords on ATM. Traditional facial recognition technique is difficult to detect such camouflaged criminals. In this paper, we use the high-resolution hyperspectral video capture system to detect high-emulation mask. A RGB camera is used for traditional facial recognition. A prism and a gray scale camera are used to capture spectral information of the observed face. Experiments show that mask made of silica gel has different spectral reflectance compared with the human skin. As multispectral image offers additional spectral information about physical characteristics, high-emulation mask can be easily recognized.

Neurocognition and symptoms identify links between facial recognition and emotion processing in schizophrenia: Meta-analytic findings

PubMed Central

Ventura, Joseph; Wood, Rachel C.; Jimenez, Amy M.; Hellemann, Gerhard S.

2014-01-01

Background In schizophrenia patients, one of the most commonly studied deficits of social cognition is emotion processing (EP), which has documented links to facial recognition (FR). But, how are deficits in facial recognition linked to emotion processing deficits? Can neurocognitive and symptom correlates of FR and EP help differentiate the unique contribution of FR to the domain of social cognition? Methods A meta-analysis of 102 studies (combined n = 4826) in schizophrenia patients was conducted to determine the magnitude and pattern of relationships between facial recognition, emotion processing, neurocognition, and type of symptom. Results Meta-analytic results indicated that facial recognition and emotion processing are strongly interrelated (r = .51). In addition, the relationship between FR and EP through voice prosody (r = .58) is as strong as the relationship between FR and EP based on facial stimuli (r = .53). Further, the relationship between emotion recognition, neurocognition, and symptoms is independent of the emotion processing modality – facial stimuli and voice prosody. Discussion The association between FR and EP that occurs through voice prosody suggests that FR is a fundamental cognitive process. The observed links between FR and EP might be due to bottom-up associations between neurocognition and EP, and not simply because most emotion recognition tasks use visual facial stimuli. In addition, links with symptoms, especially negative symptoms and disorganization, suggest possible symptom mechanisms that contribute to FR and EP deficits. PMID:24268469

Neurocognition and symptoms identify links between facial recognition and emotion processing in schizophrenia: meta-analytic findings.

PubMed

Ventura, Joseph; Wood, Rachel C; Jimenez, Amy M; Hellemann, Gerhard S

2013-12-01

In schizophrenia patients, one of the most commonly studied deficits of social cognition is emotion processing (EP), which has documented links to facial recognition (FR). But, how are deficits in facial recognition linked to emotion processing deficits? Can neurocognitive and symptom correlates of FR and EP help differentiate the unique contribution of FR to the domain of social cognition? A meta-analysis of 102 studies (combined n=4826) in schizophrenia patients was conducted to determine the magnitude and pattern of relationships between facial recognition, emotion processing, neurocognition, and type of symptom. Meta-analytic results indicated that facial recognition and emotion processing are strongly interrelated (r=.51). In addition, the relationship between FR and EP through voice prosody (r=.58) is as strong as the relationship between FR and EP based on facial stimuli (r=.53). Further, the relationship between emotion recognition, neurocognition, and symptoms is independent of the emotion processing modality - facial stimuli and voice prosody. The association between FR and EP that occurs through voice prosody suggests that FR is a fundamental cognitive process. The observed links between FR and EP might be due to bottom-up associations between neurocognition and EP, and not simply because most emotion recognition tasks use visual facial stimuli. In addition, links with symptoms, especially negative symptoms and disorganization, suggest possible symptom mechanisms that contribute to FR and EP deficits. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

Facial emotion recognition and sleep in mentally disordered patients: A natural experiment in a high security hospital.

PubMed

Chu, Simon; McNeill, Kimberley; Ireland, Jane L; Qurashi, Inti

2015-12-15

We investigated the relationship between a change in sleep quality and facial emotion recognition accuracy in a group of mentally-disordered inpatients at a secure forensic psychiatric unit. Patients whose sleep improved over time also showed improved facial emotion recognition while patients who showed no sleep improvement showed no change in emotion recognition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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.

Automatic forensic face recognition from digital images.

PubMed

Peacock, C; Goode, A; Brett, A

2004-01-01

Digital image evidence is now widely available from criminal investigations and surveillance operations, often captured by security and surveillance CCTV. This has resulted in a growing demand from law enforcement agencies for automatic person-recognition based on image data. In forensic science, a fundamental requirement for such automatic face recognition is to evaluate the weight that can justifiably be attached to this recognition evidence in a scientific framework. This paper describes a pilot study carried out by the Forensic Science Service (UK) which explores the use of digital facial images in forensic investigation. For the purpose of the experiment a specific software package was chosen (Image Metrics Optasia). The paper does not describe the techniques used by the software to reach its decision of probabilistic matches to facial images, but accepts the output of the software as though it were a 'black box'. In this way, the paper lays a foundation for how face recognition systems can be compared in a forensic framework. The aim of the paper is to explore how reliably and under what conditions digital facial images can be presented in evidence.

The familial basis of facial emotion recognition deficits in adolescents with conduct disorder and their unaffected relatives.

PubMed

Sully, K; Sonuga-Barke, E J S; Fairchild, G

2015-07-01

There is accumulating evidence of impairments in facial emotion recognition in adolescents with conduct disorder (CD). However, the majority of studies in this area have only been able to demonstrate an association, rather than a causal link, between emotion recognition deficits and CD. To move closer towards understanding the causal pathways linking emotion recognition problems with CD, we studied emotion recognition in the unaffected first-degree relatives of CD probands, as well as those with a diagnosis of CD. Using a family-based design, we investigated facial emotion recognition in probands with CD (n = 43), their unaffected relatives (n = 21), and healthy controls (n = 38). We used the Emotion Hexagon task, an alternative forced-choice task using morphed facial expressions depicting the six primary emotions, to assess facial emotion recognition accuracy. Relative to controls, the CD group showed impaired recognition of anger, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise (all p < 0.005). Similar to probands with CD, unaffected relatives showed deficits in anger and happiness recognition relative to controls (all p < 0.008), with a trend toward a deficit in fear recognition. There were no significant differences in performance between the CD probands and the unaffected relatives following correction for multiple comparisons. These results suggest that facial emotion recognition deficits are present in adolescents who are at increased familial risk for developing antisocial behaviour, as well as those who have already developed CD. Consequently, impaired emotion recognition appears to be a viable familial risk marker or candidate endophenotype for CD.

Enhanced facial texture illumination normalization for face recognition.

PubMed

Luo, Yong; Guan, Ye-Peng

2015-08-01

An uncontrolled lighting condition is one of the most critical challenges for practical face recognition applications. An enhanced facial texture illumination normalization method is put forward to resolve this challenge. An adaptive relighting algorithm is developed to improve the brightness uniformity of face images. Facial texture is extracted by using an illumination estimation difference algorithm. An anisotropic histogram-stretching algorithm is proposed to minimize the intraclass distance of facial skin and maximize the dynamic range of facial texture distribution. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed method can more effectively eliminate the redundant information of facial skin and illumination. Extensive experiments show that the proposed method has superior performance in normalizing illumination variation and enhancing facial texture features for illumination-insensitive face recognition.

Toward End-to-End Face Recognition Through Alignment Learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhong, Yuanyi; Chen, Jiansheng; Huang, Bo

2017-08-01

Plenty of effective methods have been proposed for face recognition during the past decade. Although these methods differ essentially in many aspects, a common practice of them is to specifically align the facial area based on the prior knowledge of human face structure before feature extraction. In most systems, the face alignment module is implemented independently. This has actually caused difficulties in the designing and training of end-to-end face recognition models. In this paper we study the possibility of alignment learning in end-to-end face recognition, in which neither prior knowledge on facial landmarks nor artificially defined geometric transformations are required. Specifically, spatial transformer layers are inserted in front of the feature extraction layers in a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for face recognition. Only human identity clues are used for driving the neural network to automatically learn the most suitable geometric transformation and the most appropriate facial area for the recognition task. To ensure reproducibility, our model is trained purely on the publicly available CASIA-WebFace dataset, and is tested on the Labeled Face in the Wild (LFW) dataset. We have achieved a verification accuracy of 99.08\\% which is comparable to state-of-the-art single model based methods.

The Boundaries of Hemispheric Processing in Visual Pattern Recognition

DTIC Science & Technology

1989-11-01

Allen, M. W. (1968). Impairment in facial recognition in patients cerebral disease. Cortex, 4, 344-358. Bogen, J. E. (1969). The other side of the brain...effects on a facial recognition task in normal subjects. Cortex, 9, 246-258. tliscock, M. (1988). Behavioral asymmetries in normal children. In D. L... facial recognition . Neuropsychologia, 22, 471-477. Ross-Kossak, P., & Turkewitz, G. (1986). A micro and macro developmental view of the nature of changes

Facial emotion recognition ability: psychiatry nurses versus nurses from other departments.

PubMed

Gultekin, Gozde; Kincir, Zeliha; Kurt, Merve; Catal, Yasir; Acil, Asli; Aydin, Aybike; Özcan, Mualla; Delikkaya, Busra N; Kacar, Selma; Emul, Murat

2016-12-01

Facial emotion recognition is a basic element in non-verbal communication. Although some researchers have shown that recognizing facial expressions may be important in the interaction between doctors and patients, there are no studies concerning facial emotion recognition in nurses. Here, we aimed to investigate facial emotion recognition ability in nurses and compare the abilities between nurses from psychiatry and other departments. In this cross-sectional study, sixty seven nurses were divided into two groups according to their departments: psychiatry (n=31); and, other departments (n=36). A Facial Emotion Recognition Test, constructed from a set of photographs from Ekman and Friesen's book "Pictures of Facial Affect", was administered to all participants. In whole group, the highest mean accuracy rate of recognizing facial emotion was the happy (99.14%) while the lowest accurately recognized facial expression was fear (47.71%). There were no significant differences between two groups among mean accuracy rates in recognizing happy, sad, fear, angry, surprised facial emotion expressions (for all, p>0.05). The ability of recognizing disgusted and neutral facial emotions tended to be better in other nurses than psychiatry nurses (p=0.052 and p=0.053, respectively) Conclusion: This study was the first that revealed indifference in the ability of FER between psychiatry nurses and non-psychiatry nurses. In medical education curricula throughout the world, no specific training program is scheduled for recognizing emotional cues of patients. We considered that improving the ability of recognizing facial emotion expression in medical stuff might be beneficial in reducing inappropriate patient-medical stuff interaction.

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.

Theory of mind and recognition of facial emotion in dementia: challenge to current concepts.

PubMed

Freedman, Morris; Binns, Malcolm A; Black, Sandra E; Murphy, Cara; Stuss, Donald T

2013-01-01

Current literature suggests that theory of mind (ToM) and recognition of facial emotion are impaired in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). In contrast, studies suggest that ToM is spared in Alzheimer disease (AD). However, there is controversy whether recognition of emotion in faces is impaired in AD. This study challenges the concepts that ToM is preserved in AD and that recognition of facial emotion is impaired in bvFTD. ToM, recognition of facial emotion, and identification of emotions associated with video vignettes were studied in bvFTD, AD, and normal controls. ToM was assessed using false-belief and visual perspective-taking tasks. Identification of facial emotion was tested using Ekman and Friesen's pictures of facial affect. After adjusting for relevant covariates, there were significant ToM deficits in bvFTD and AD compared with controls, whereas neither group was impaired in the identification of emotions associated with video vignettes. There was borderline impairment in recognizing angry faces in bvFTD. Patients with AD showed significant deficits on false belief and visual perspective taking, and bvFTD patients were impaired on second-order false belief. We report novel findings challenging the concepts that ToM is spared in AD and that recognition of facial emotion is impaired in bvFTD.

Anodal tDCS targeting the right orbitofrontal cortex enhances facial expression recognition

PubMed Central

Murphy, Jillian M.; Ridley, Nicole J.; Vercammen, Ans

2015-01-01

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) has been implicated in the capacity to accurately recognise facial expressions. The aim of the current study was to determine if anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the right OFC in healthy adults would enhance facial expression recognition, compared with a sham condition. Across two counterbalanced sessions of tDCS (i.e. anodal and sham), 20 undergraduate participants (18 female) completed a facial expression labelling task comprising angry, disgusted, fearful, happy, sad and neutral expressions, and a control (social judgement) task comprising the same expressions. Responses on the labelling task were scored for accuracy, median reaction time and overall efficiency (i.e. combined accuracy and reaction time). Anodal tDCS targeting the right OFC enhanced facial expression recognition, reflected in greater efficiency and speed of recognition across emotions, relative to the sham condition. In contrast, there was no effect of tDCS to responses on the control task. This is the first study to demonstrate that anodal tDCS targeting the right OFC boosts facial expression recognition. This finding provides a solid foundation for future research to examine the efficacy of this technique as a means to treat facial expression recognition deficits, particularly in individuals with OFC damage or dysfunction. PMID:25971602

[Recognition of facial emotions and theory of mind in schizophrenia: could the theory of mind deficit be due to the non-recognition of facial emotions?].

PubMed

Besche-Richard, C; Bourrin-Tisseron, A; Olivier, M; Cuervo-Lombard, C-V; Limosin, F

2012-06-01

The deficits of recognition of facial emotions and attribution of mental states are now well-documented in schizophrenic patients. However, we don't clearly know about the link between these two complex cognitive functions, especially in schizophrenia. In this study, we attempted to test the link between the recognition of facial emotions and the capacities of mentalization, notably the attribution of beliefs, in health and schizophrenic participants. We supposed that the level of performance of recognition of facial emotions, compared to the working memory and executive functioning, was the best predictor of the capacities to attribute a belief. Twenty schizophrenic participants according to DSM-IVTR (mean age: 35.9 years, S.D. 9.07; mean education level: 11.15 years, S.D. 2.58) clinically stabilized, receiving neuroleptic or antipsychotic medication participated in the study. They were matched on age (mean age: 36.3 years, S.D. 10.9) and educational level (mean educational level: 12.10, S.D. 2.25) with 30 matched healthy participants. All the participants were evaluated with a pool of tasks testing the recognition of facial emotions (the faces of Baron-Cohen), the attribution of beliefs (two stories of first order and two stories of second order), the working memory (the digit span of the WAIS-III and the Corsi test) and the executive functioning (Trail Making Test A et B, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test brief version). Comparing schizophrenic and healthy participants, our results confirmed a difference between the performances of the recognition of facial emotions and those of the attribution of beliefs. The result of the simple linear regression showed that the recognition of facial emotions, compared to the performances of working memory and executive functioning, was the best predictor of the performances in the theory of mind stories. Our results confirmed, in a sample of schizophrenic patients, the deficits in the recognition of facial emotions and in the attribution of mental states. Our new result concerned the demonstration that the performances in the recognition of facial emotions are the best predictor of the performances in the attribution of beliefs. With Marshall et al.'s model on empathy, we can explain this link between the recognition of facial emotions and the comprehension of beliefs. Copyright © 2011 L’Encéphale, Paris. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Instructions to mimic improve facial emotion recognition in people with sub-clinical autism traits.

PubMed

Lewis, Michael B; Dunn, Emily

2017-11-01

People tend to mimic the facial expression of others. It has been suggested that this helps provide social glue between affiliated people but it could also aid recognition of emotions through embodied cognition. The degree of facial mimicry, however, varies between individuals and is limited in people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). The present study sought to investigate the effect of promoting facial mimicry during a facial-emotion-recognition test. In two experiments, participants without an ASC diagnosis had their autism quotient (AQ) measured. Following a baseline test, they did an emotion-recognition test again but half of the participants were asked to mimic the target face they saw prior to making their responses. Mimicry improved emotion recognition, and further analysis revealed that the largest improvement was for participants who had higher scores on the autism traits. In fact, recognition performance was best overall for people who had high AQ scores but also received the instruction to mimic. Implications for people with ASC are explored.

Fusiform gyrus volume reduction and facial recognition in chronic schizophrenia.

PubMed

Onitsuka, Toshiaki; Shenton, Martha E; Kasai, Kiyoto; Nestor, Paul G; Toner, Sarah K; Kikinis, Ron; Jolesz, Ferenc A; McCarley, Robert W

2003-04-01

The fusiform gyrus (FG), or occipitotemporal gyrus, is thought to subserve the processing and encoding of faces. Of note, several studies have reported that patients with schizophrenia show deficits in facial processing. It is thus hypothesized that the FG might be one brain region underlying abnormal facial recognition in schizophrenia. The objectives of this study were to determine whether there are abnormalities in gray matter volumes for the anterior and the posterior FG in patients with chronic schizophrenia and to investigate relationships between FG subregions and immediate and delayed memory for faces. Patients were recruited from the Boston VA Healthcare System, Brockton Division, and control subjects were recruited through newspaper advertisement. Study participants included 21 male patients diagnosed as having chronic schizophrenia and 28 male controls. Participants underwent high-spatial-resolution magnetic resonance imaging, and facial recognition memory was evaluated. Main outcome measures included anterior and posterior FG gray matter volumes based on high-spatial-resolution magnetic resonance imaging, a detailed and reliable manual delineation using 3-dimensional information, and correlation coefficients between FG subregions and raw scores on immediate and delayed facial memory derived from the Wechsler Memory Scale III. Patients with chronic schizophrenia had overall smaller FG gray matter volumes (10%) than normal controls. Additionally, patients with schizophrenia performed more poorly than normal controls in both immediate and delayed facial memory tests. Moreover, the degree of poor performance on delayed memory for faces was significantly correlated with the degree of bilateral anterior FG reduction in patients with schizophrenia. These results suggest that neuroanatomic FG abnormalities underlie at least some of the deficits associated with facial recognition in schizophrenia.

A Neural Basis of Facial Action Recognition in Humans

PubMed Central

Srinivasan, Ramprakash; Golomb, Julie D.

2016-01-01

By combining different facial muscle actions, called action units, humans can produce an extraordinarily large number of facial expressions. Computational models and studies in cognitive science and social psychology have long hypothesized that the brain needs to visually interpret these action units to understand other people's actions and intentions. Surprisingly, no studies have identified the neural basis of the visual recognition of these action units. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and an innovative machine learning analysis approach, we identify a consistent and differential coding of action units in the brain. Crucially, in a brain region thought to be responsible for the processing of changeable aspects of the face, multivoxel pattern analysis could decode the presence of specific action units in an image. This coding was found to be consistent across people, facilitating the estimation of the perceived action units on participants not used to train the multivoxel decoder. Furthermore, this coding of action units was identified when participants attended to the emotion category of the facial expression, suggesting an interaction between the visual analysis of action units and emotion categorization as predicted by the computational models mentioned above. These results provide the first evidence for a representation of action units in the brain and suggest a mechanism for the analysis of large numbers of facial actions and a loss of this capacity in psychopathologies. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Computational models and studies in cognitive and social psychology propound that visual recognition of facial expressions requires an intermediate step to identify visible facial changes caused by the movement of specific facial muscles. Because facial expressions are indeed created by moving one's facial muscles, it is logical to assume that our visual system solves this inverse problem. Here, using an innovative machine learning method and neuroimaging data, we identify for the first time a brain region responsible for the recognition of actions associated with specific facial muscles. Furthermore, this representation is preserved across subjects. Our machine learning analysis does not require mapping the data to a standard brain and may serve as an alternative to hyperalignment. PMID:27098688

Facial emotion recognition deficits in relatives of children with autism are not associated with 5HTTLPR.

PubMed

Neves, Maila de Castro Lourenço das; Tremeau, Fabien; Nicolato, Rodrigo; Lauar, Hélio; Romano-Silva, Marco Aurélio; Correa, Humberto

2011-09-01

A large body of evidence suggests that several aspects of face processing are impaired in autism and that this impairment might be hereditary. This study was aimed at assessing facial emotion recognition in parents of children with autism and its associations with a functional polymorphism of the serotonin transporter (5HTTLPR). We evaluated 40 parents of children with autism and 41 healthy controls. All participants were administered the Penn Emotion Recognition Test (ER40) and were genotyped for 5HTTLPR. Our study showed that parents of children with autism performed worse in the facial emotion recognition test than controls. Analyses of error patterns showed that parents of children with autism over-attributed neutral to emotional faces. We found evidence that 5HTTLPR polymorphism did not influence the performance in the Penn Emotion Recognition Test, but that it may determine different error patterns. Facial emotion recognition deficits are more common in first-degree relatives of autistic patients than in the general population, suggesting that facial emotion recognition is a candidate endophenotype for autism.

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

Impaired recognition of facial emotions from low-spatial frequencies in Asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Kätsyri, Jari; Saalasti, Satu; Tiippana, Kaisa; von Wendt, Lennart; Sams, Mikko

2008-01-01

The theory of 'weak central coherence' [Happe, F., & Frith, U. (2006). The weak coherence account: Detail-focused cognitive style in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36(1), 5-25] implies that persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have a perceptual bias for local but not for global stimulus features. The recognition of emotional facial expressions representing various different levels of detail has not been studied previously in ASDs. We analyzed the recognition of four basic emotional facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear and happiness) from low-spatial frequencies (overall global shapes without local features) in adults with an ASD. A group of 20 participants with Asperger syndrome (AS) was compared to a group of non-autistic age- and sex-matched controls. Emotion recognition was tested from static and dynamic facial expressions whose spatial frequency contents had been manipulated by low-pass filtering at two levels. The two groups recognized emotions similarly from non-filtered faces and from dynamic vs. static facial expressions. In contrast, the participants with AS were less accurate than controls in recognizing facial emotions from very low-spatial frequencies. The results suggest intact recognition of basic facial emotions and dynamic facial information, but impaired visual processing of global features in ASDs.

Transforming Security Screening With Biometrics

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-04-09

prompted the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to experiment with facial recognition technology for identification of known terrorists. While DoD...screening of individuals. Facial recognition technology has been tested to some degree for accessing highly sensitive military areas, but not for...the military can implement facial recognition to screen personnel requesting access to bases and stations, DoD is not likely to use biometrics to

Association of impaired facial affect recognition with basic facial and visual processing deficits in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Norton, Daniel; McBain, Ryan; Holt, Daphne J; Ongur, Dost; Chen, Yue

2009-06-15

Impaired emotion recognition has been reported in schizophrenia, yet the nature of this impairment is not completely understood. Recognition of facial emotion depends on processing affective and nonaffective facial signals, as well as basic visual attributes. We examined whether and how poor facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia is related to basic visual processing and nonaffective face recognition. Schizophrenia patients (n = 32) and healthy control subjects (n = 29) performed emotion discrimination, identity discrimination, and visual contrast detection tasks, where the emotionality, distinctiveness of identity, or visual contrast was systematically manipulated. Subjects determined which of two presentations in a trial contained the target: the emotional face for emotion discrimination, a specific individual for identity discrimination, and a sinusoidal grating for contrast detection. Patients had significantly higher thresholds (worse performance) than control subjects for discriminating both fearful and happy faces. Furthermore, patients' poor performance in fear discrimination was predicted by performance in visual detection and face identity discrimination. Schizophrenia patients require greater emotional signal strength to discriminate fearful or happy face images from neutral ones. Deficient emotion recognition in schizophrenia does not appear to be determined solely by affective processing but is also linked to the processing of basic visual and facial information.

Contributions of feature shapes and surface cues to the recognition of facial expressions.

PubMed

Sormaz, Mladen; Young, Andrew W; Andrews, Timothy J

2016-10-01

Theoretical accounts of face processing often emphasise feature shapes as the primary visual cue to the recognition of facial expressions. However, changes in facial expression also affect the surface properties of the face. In this study, we investigated whether this surface information can also be used in the recognition of facial expression. First, participants identified facial expressions (fear, anger, disgust, sadness, happiness) from images that were manipulated such that they varied mainly in shape or mainly in surface properties. We found that the categorization of facial expression is possible in either type of image, but that different expressions are relatively dependent on surface or shape properties. Next, we investigated the relative contributions of shape and surface information to the categorization of facial expressions. This employed a complementary method that involved combining the surface properties of one expression with the shape properties from a different expression. Our results showed that the categorization of facial expressions in these hybrid images was equally dependent on the surface and shape properties of the image. Together, these findings provide a direct demonstration that both feature shape and surface information make significant contributions to the recognition of facial expressions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quality of life differences in patients with right- versus left-sided facial paralysis: Universal preference of right-sided human face recognition.

PubMed

Ryu, Nam Gyu; Lim, Byung Woo; Cho, Jae Keun; Kim, Jin

2016-09-01

We investigated whether experiencing right- or left-sided facial paralysis would affect an individual's ability to recognize one side of the human face using hybrid hemi-facial photos by preliminary study. Further investigation looked at the relationship between facial recognition ability, stress, and quality of life. To investigate predominance of one side of the human face for face recognition, 100 normal participants (right-handed: n = 97, left-handed: n = 3, right brain dominance: n = 56, left brain dominance: n = 44) answered a questionnaire that included hybrid hemi-facial photos developed to determine decide superiority of one side for human face recognition. To determine differences of stress level and quality of life between individuals experiencing right- and left-sided facial paralysis, 100 patients (right side:50, left side:50, not including traumatic facial nerve paralysis) answered a questionnaire about facial disability index test and quality of life (SF-36 Korean version). Regardless of handedness or hemispheric dominance, the proportion of predominance of the right side in human face recognition was larger than the left side (71% versus 12%, neutral: 17%). Facial distress index of the patients with right-sided facial paralysis was lower than that of left-sided patients (68.8 ± 9.42 versus 76.4 ± 8.28), and the SF-36 scores of right-sided patients were lower than left-sided patients (119.07 ± 15.24 versus 123.25 ± 16.48, total score: 166). Universal preference for the right side in human face recognition showed worse psychological mood and social interaction in patients with right-side facial paralysis than left-sided paralysis. This information is helpful to clinicians in that psychological and social factors should be considered when treating patients with facial-paralysis. Copyright © 2016 British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Biometric correspondence between reface computerized facial approximations and CT-derived ground truth skin surface models objectively examined using an automated facial recognition system.

PubMed

Parks, Connie L; Monson, Keith L

2018-05-01

This study employed an automated facial recognition system as a means of objectively evaluating biometric correspondence between a ReFace facial approximation and the computed tomography (CT) derived ground truth skin surface of the same individual. High rates of biometric correspondence were observed, irrespective of rank class (R k ) or demographic cohort examined. Overall, 48% of the test subjects' ReFace approximation probes (n=96) were matched to his or her corresponding ground truth skin surface image at R 1 , a rank indicating a high degree of biometric correspondence and a potential positive identification. Identification rates improved with each successively broader rank class (R 10 =85%, R 25 =96%, and R 50 =99%), with 100% identification by R 57 . A sharp increase (39% mean increase) in identification rates was observed between R 1 and R 10 across most rank classes and demographic cohorts. In contrast, significantly lower (p<0.01) increases in identification rates were observed between R 10 and R 25 (8% mean increase) and R 25 and R 50 (3% mean increase). No significant (p>0.05) performance differences were observed across demographic cohorts or CT scan protocols. Performance measures observed in this research suggest that ReFace approximations are biometrically similar to the actual faces of the approximated individuals and, therefore, may have potential operational utility in contexts in which computerized approximations are utilized as probes in automated facial recognition systems. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

The Chinese Facial Emotion Recognition Database (CFERD): a computer-generated 3-D paradigm to measure the recognition of facial emotional expressions at different intensities.

PubMed

Huang, Charles Lung-Cheng; Hsiao, Sigmund; Hwu, Hai-Gwo; Howng, Shen-Long

2012-12-30

The Chinese Facial Emotion Recognition Database (CFERD), a computer-generated three-dimensional (3D) paradigm, was developed to measure the recognition of facial emotional expressions at different intensities. The stimuli consisted of 3D colour photographic images of six basic facial emotional expressions (happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, anger and surprise) and neutral faces of the Chinese. The purpose of the present study is to describe the development and validation of CFERD with nonclinical healthy participants (N=100; 50 men; age ranging between 18 and 50 years), and to generate normative data set. The results showed that the sensitivity index d' [d'=Z(hit rate)-Z(false alarm rate), where function Z(p), p∈[0,1

Cross-domain expression recognition based on sparse coding and transfer learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Yong; Zhang, Weiyi; Huang, Yong

2017-05-01

Traditional facial expression recognition methods usually assume that the training set and the test set are independent and identically distributed. However, in actual expression recognition applications, the conditions of independent and identical distribution are hardly satisfied for the training set and test set because of the difference of light, shade, race and so on. In order to solve this problem and improve the performance of expression recognition in the actual applications, a novel method based on transfer learning and sparse coding is applied to facial expression recognition. First of all, a common primitive model, that is, the dictionary is learnt. Then, based on the idea of transfer learning, the learned primitive pattern is transferred to facial expression and the corresponding feature representation is obtained by sparse coding. The experimental results in CK +, JAFFE and NVIE database shows that the transfer learning based on sparse coding method can effectively improve the expression recognition rate in the cross-domain expression recognition task and is suitable for the practical facial expression recognition applications.

Are there differential deficits in facial emotion recognition between paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenia? A signal detection analysis.

PubMed

Huang, Charles Lung-Cheng; Hsiao, Sigmund; Hwu, Hai-Gwo; Howng, Shen-Long

2013-10-30

This study assessed facial emotion recognition abilities in subjects with paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenia (NPS) using signal detection theory. We explore the differential deficits in facial emotion recognition in 44 paranoid patients with schizophrenia (PS) and 30 non-paranoid patients with schizophrenia (NPS), compared to 80 healthy controls. We used morphed faces with different intensities of emotion and computed the sensitivity index (d') of each emotion. The results showed that performance differed between the schizophrenia and healthy controls groups in the recognition of both negative and positive affects. The PS group performed worse than the healthy controls group but better than the NPS group in overall performance. Performance differed between the NPS and healthy controls groups in the recognition of all basic emotions and neutral faces; between the PS and healthy controls groups in the recognition of angry faces; and between the PS and NPS groups in the recognition of happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, and neutral affects. The facial emotion recognition impairment in schizophrenia may reflect a generalized deficit rather than a negative-emotion specific deficit. The PS group performed worse than the control group, but better than the NPS group in facial expression recognition, with differential deficits between PS and NPS patients. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facial emotion recognition in paranoid schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Sachse, Michael; Schlitt, Sabine; Hainz, Daniela; Ciaramidaro, Angela; Walter, Henrik; Poustka, Fritz; Bölte, Sven; Freitag, Christine M

2014-11-01

Schizophrenia (SZ) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) share deficits in emotion processing. In order to identify convergent and divergent mechanisms, we investigated facial emotion recognition in SZ, high-functioning ASD (HFASD), and typically developed controls (TD). Different degrees of task difficulty and emotion complexity (face, eyes; basic emotions, complex emotions) were used. Two Benton tests were implemented in order to elicit potentially confounding visuo-perceptual functioning and facial processing. Nineteen participants with paranoid SZ, 22 with HFASD and 20 TD were included, aged between 14 and 33 years. Individuals with SZ were comparable to TD in all obtained emotion recognition measures, but showed reduced basic visuo-perceptual abilities. The HFASD group was impaired in the recognition of basic and complex emotions compared to both, SZ and TD. When facial identity recognition was adjusted for, group differences remained for the recognition of complex emotions only. Our results suggest that there is a SZ subgroup with predominantly paranoid symptoms that does not show problems in face processing and emotion recognition, but visuo-perceptual impairments. They also confirm the notion of a general facial and emotion recognition deficit in HFASD. No shared emotion recognition deficit was found for paranoid SZ and HFASD, emphasizing the differential cognitive underpinnings of both disorders. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emotion recognition deficits associated with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions are improved by gaze manipulation.

PubMed

Wolf, Richard C; Pujara, Maia; Baskaya, Mustafa K; Koenigs, Michael

2016-09-01

Facial emotion recognition is a critical aspect of human communication. Since abnormalities in facial emotion recognition are associated with social and affective impairment in a variety of psychiatric and neurological conditions, identifying the neural substrates and psychological processes underlying facial emotion recognition will help advance basic and translational research on social-affective function. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has recently been implicated in deploying visual attention to the eyes of emotional faces, although there is mixed evidence regarding the importance of this brain region for recognition accuracy. In the present study of neurological patients with vmPFC damage, we used an emotion recognition task with morphed facial expressions of varying intensities to determine (1) whether vmPFC is essential for emotion recognition accuracy, and (2) whether instructed attention to the eyes of faces would be sufficient to improve any accuracy deficits. We found that vmPFC lesion patients are impaired, relative to neurologically healthy adults, at recognizing moderate intensity expressions of anger and that recognition accuracy can be improved by providing instructions of where to fixate. These results suggest that vmPFC may be important for the recognition of facial emotion through a role in guiding visual attention to emotionally salient regions of faces. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Formal implementation of a performance evaluation model for the face recognition system.

PubMed

Shin, Yong-Nyuo; Kim, Jason; Lee, Yong-Jun; Shin, Woochang; Choi, Jin-Young

2008-01-01

Due to usability features, practical applications, and its lack of intrusiveness, face recognition technology, based on information, derived from individuals' facial features, has been attracting considerable attention recently. Reported recognition rates of commercialized face recognition systems cannot be admitted as official recognition rates, as they are based on assumptions that are beneficial to the specific system and face database. Therefore, performance evaluation methods and tools are necessary to objectively measure the accuracy and performance of any face recognition system. In this paper, we propose and formalize a performance evaluation model for the biometric recognition system, implementing an evaluation tool for face recognition systems based on the proposed model. Furthermore, we performed evaluations objectively by providing guidelines for the design and implementation of a performance evaluation system, formalizing the performance test process.

Mapping correspondence between facial mimicry and emotion recognition in healthy subjects.

PubMed

Ponari, Marta; Conson, Massimiliano; D'Amico, Nunzia Pina; Grossi, Dario; Trojano, Luigi

2012-12-01

We aimed at verifying the hypothesis that facial mimicry is causally and selectively involved in emotion recognition. For this purpose, in Experiment 1, we explored the effect of tonic contraction of muscles in upper or lower half of participants' face on their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. We found that the "lower" manipulation specifically impaired recognition of happiness and disgust, the "upper" manipulation impaired recognition of anger, while both manipulations affected recognition of fear; recognition of surprise and sadness were not affected by either blocking manipulations. In Experiment 2, we verified whether emotion recognition is hampered by stimuli in which an upper or lower half-face showing an emotional expression is combined with a neutral half-face. We found that the neutral lower half-face interfered with recognition of happiness and disgust, whereas the neutral upper half impaired recognition of anger; recognition of fear and sadness was impaired by both manipulations, whereas recognition of surprise was not affected by either manipulation. Taken together, the present findings support simulation models of emotion recognition and provide insight into the role of mimicry in comprehension of others' emotional facial expressions. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

Violent Media Consumption and the Recognition of Dynamic Facial Expressions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kirsh, Steven J.; Mounts, Jeffrey R. W.; Olczak, Paul V.

2006-01-01

This study assessed the speed of recognition of facial emotional expressions (happy and angry) as a function of violent media consumption. Color photos of calm facial expressions morphed to either an angry or a happy facial expression. Participants were asked to make a speeded identification of the emotion (happiness or anger) during the morph.…

Facial emotion recognition is inversely correlated with tremor severity in essential tremor.

PubMed

Auzou, Nicolas; Foubert-Samier, Alexandra; Dupouy, Sandrine; Meissner, Wassilios G

2014-04-01

We here assess limbic and orbitofrontal control in 20 patients with essential tremor (ET) and 18 age-matched healthy controls using the Ekman Facial Emotion Recognition Task and the IOWA Gambling Task. Our results show an inverse relation between facial emotion recognition and tremor severity. ET patients also showed worse performance in joy and fear recognition, as well as subtle abnormalities in risk detection, but these differences did not reach significance after correction for multiple testing.

Facial emotion recognition system for autistic children: a feasible study based on FPGA implementation.

PubMed

Smitha, K G; Vinod, A P

2015-11-01

Children with autism spectrum disorder have difficulty in understanding the emotional and mental states from the facial expressions of the people they interact. The inability to understand other people's emotions will hinder their interpersonal communication. Though many facial emotion recognition algorithms have been proposed in the literature, they are mainly intended for processing by a personal computer, which limits their usability in on-the-move applications where portability is desired. The portability of the system will ensure ease of use and real-time emotion recognition and that will aid for immediate feedback while communicating with caretakers. Principal component analysis (PCA) has been identified as the least complex feature extraction algorithm to be implemented in hardware. In this paper, we present a detailed study of the implementation of serial and parallel implementation of PCA in order to identify the most feasible method for realization of a portable emotion detector for autistic children. The proposed emotion recognizer architectures are implemented on Virtex 7 XC7VX330T FFG1761-3 FPGA. We achieved 82.3% detection accuracy for a word length of 8 bits.

Role of temporal processing stages by inferior temporal neurons in facial recognition.

PubMed

Sugase-Miyamoto, Yasuko; Matsumoto, Narihisa; Kawano, Kenji

2011-01-01

In this review, we focus on the role of temporal stages of encoded facial information in the visual system, which might enable the efficient determination of species, identity, and expression. Facial recognition is an important function of our brain and is known to be processed in the ventral visual pathway, where visual signals are processed through areas V1, V2, V4, and the inferior temporal (IT) cortex. In the IT cortex, neurons show selective responses to complex visual images such as faces, and at each stage along the pathway the stimulus selectivity of the neural responses becomes sharper, particularly in the later portion of the responses. In the IT cortex of the monkey, facial information is represented by different temporal stages of neural responses, as shown in our previous study: the initial transient response of face-responsive neurons represents information about global categories, i.e., human vs. monkey vs. simple shapes, whilst the later portion of these responses represents information about detailed facial categories, i.e., expression and/or identity. This suggests that the temporal stages of the neuronal firing pattern play an important role in the coding of visual stimuli, including faces. This type of coding may be a plausible mechanism underlying the temporal dynamics of recognition, including the process of detection/categorization followed by the identification of objects. Recent single-unit studies in monkeys have also provided evidence consistent with the important role of the temporal stages of encoded facial information. For example, view-invariant facial identity information is represented in the response at a later period within a region of face-selective neurons. Consistent with these findings, temporally modulated neural activity has also been observed in human studies. These results suggest a close correlation between the temporal processing stages of facial information by IT neurons and the temporal dynamics of face recognition.

Role of Temporal Processing Stages by Inferior Temporal Neurons in Facial Recognition

PubMed Central

Sugase-Miyamoto, Yasuko; Matsumoto, Narihisa; Kawano, Kenji

2011-01-01

In this review, we focus on the role of temporal stages of encoded facial information in the visual system, which might enable the efficient determination of species, identity, and expression. Facial recognition is an important function of our brain and is known to be processed in the ventral visual pathway, where visual signals are processed through areas V1, V2, V4, and the inferior temporal (IT) cortex. In the IT cortex, neurons show selective responses to complex visual images such as faces, and at each stage along the pathway the stimulus selectivity of the neural responses becomes sharper, particularly in the later portion of the responses. In the IT cortex of the monkey, facial information is represented by different temporal stages of neural responses, as shown in our previous study: the initial transient response of face-responsive neurons represents information about global categories, i.e., human vs. monkey vs. simple shapes, whilst the later portion of these responses represents information about detailed facial categories, i.e., expression and/or identity. This suggests that the temporal stages of the neuronal firing pattern play an important role in the coding of visual stimuli, including faces. This type of coding may be a plausible mechanism underlying the temporal dynamics of recognition, including the process of detection/categorization followed by the identification of objects. Recent single-unit studies in monkeys have also provided evidence consistent with the important role of the temporal stages of encoded facial information. For example, view-invariant facial identity information is represented in the response at a later period within a region of face-selective neurons. Consistent with these findings, temporally modulated neural activity has also been observed in human studies. These results suggest a close correlation between the temporal processing stages of facial information by IT neurons and the temporal dynamics of face recognition. PMID:21734904

Behavioral and Neuroimaging Evidence for Facial Emotion Recognition in Elderly Korean Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Frontotemporal Dementia

PubMed Central

Park, Soowon; Kim, Taehoon; Shin, Seong A; Kim, Yu Kyeong; Sohn, Bo Kyung; Park, Hyeon-Ju; Youn, Jung-Hae; Lee, Jun-Young

2017-01-01

Background: Facial emotion recognition (FER) is impaired in individuals with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) when compared to healthy older adults. Since deficits in emotion recognition are closely related to caregiver burden or social interactions, researchers have fundamental interest in FER performance in patients with dementia. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the performance profiles of six facial emotions (i.e., fear, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, and happiness) and neutral faces measured among Korean healthy control (HCs), and those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), AD, and FTD. Additionally, the neuroanatomical correlates of facial emotions were investigated. Methods: A total of 110 (33 HC, 32 MCI, 32 AD, 13 FTD) older adult participants were recruited from two different medical centers in metropolitan areas of South Korea. These individuals underwent an FER test that was used to assess the recognition of emotions or absence of emotion (neutral) in 35 facial stimuli. Repeated measures two-way analyses of variance were used to examine the distinct profiles of emotional recognition among the four groups. We also performed brain imaging and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) on the participants to examine the associations between FER scores and gray matter volume. Results: The mean score of negative emotion recognition (i.e., fear, anger, disgust, and sadness) clearly discriminated FTD participants from individuals with MCI and AD and HC [F(3,106) = 10.829, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.235], whereas the mean score of positive emotion recognition (i.e., surprise and happiness) did not. A VBM analysis showed negative emotions were correlated with gray matter volume of anterior temporal regions, whereas positive emotions were related to gray matter volume of fronto-parietal regions. Conclusion: Impairment of negative FER in patients with FTD is cross-cultural. The discrete neural correlates of FER indicate that emotional recognition processing is a multi-modal system in the brain. Focusing on the negative emotion recognition is a more effective way to discriminate healthy aging, MCI, and AD from FTD in older Korean adults. PMID:29249960

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

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

Oxytocin Promotes Facial Emotion Recognition and Amygdala Reactivity in Adults with Asperger Syndrome

PubMed Central

Domes, Gregor; Kumbier, Ekkehardt; Heinrichs, Markus; Herpertz, Sabine C

2014-01-01

The neuropeptide oxytocin has recently been shown to enhance eye gaze and emotion recognition in healthy men. Here, we report a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that examined the neural and behavioral effects of a single dose of intranasal oxytocin on emotion recognition in individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS), a clinical condition characterized by impaired eye gaze and facial emotion recognition. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether oxytocin would enhance emotion recognition from facial sections of the eye vs the mouth region and modulate regional activity in brain areas associated with face perception in both adults with AS, and a neurotypical control group. Intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin improved performance in a facial emotion recognition task in individuals with AS. This was linked to increased left amygdala reactivity in response to facial stimuli and increased activity in the neural network involved in social cognition. Our data suggest that the amygdala, together with functionally associated cortical areas mediate the positive effect of oxytocin on social cognitive functioning in AS. PMID:24067301

Oxytocin promotes facial emotion recognition and amygdala reactivity in adults with asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Domes, Gregor; Kumbier, Ekkehardt; Heinrichs, Markus; Herpertz, Sabine C

2014-02-01

The neuropeptide oxytocin has recently been shown to enhance eye gaze and emotion recognition in healthy men. Here, we report a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that examined the neural and behavioral effects of a single dose of intranasal oxytocin on emotion recognition in individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS), a clinical condition characterized by impaired eye gaze and facial emotion recognition. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether oxytocin would enhance emotion recognition from facial sections of the eye vs the mouth region and modulate regional activity in brain areas associated with face perception in both adults with AS, and a neurotypical control group. Intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin improved performance in a facial emotion recognition task in individuals with AS. This was linked to increased left amygdala reactivity in response to facial stimuli and increased activity in the neural network involved in social cognition. Our data suggest that the amygdala, together with functionally associated cortical areas mediate the positive effect of oxytocin on social cognitive functioning in AS.

Face recognition via edge-based Gabor feature representation for plastic surgery-altered images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chude-Olisah, Chollette C.; Sulong, Ghazali; Chude-Okonkwo, Uche A. K.; Hashim, Siti Z. M.

2014-12-01

Plastic surgery procedures on the face introduce skin texture variations between images of the same person (intra-subject), thereby making the task of face recognition more difficult than in normal scenario. Usually, in contemporary face recognition systems, the original gray-level face image is used as input to the Gabor descriptor, which translates to encoding some texture properties of the face image. The texture-encoding process significantly degrades the performance of such systems in the case of plastic surgery due to the presence of surgically induced intra-subject variations. Based on the proposition that the shape of significant facial components such as eyes, nose, eyebrow, and mouth remains unchanged after plastic surgery, this paper employs an edge-based Gabor feature representation approach for the recognition of surgically altered face images. We use the edge information, which is dependent on the shapes of the significant facial components, to address the plastic surgery-induced texture variation problems. To ensure that the significant facial components represent useful edge information with little or no false edges, a simple illumination normalization technique is proposed for preprocessing. Gabor wavelet is applied to the edge image to accentuate on the uniqueness of the significant facial components for discriminating among different subjects. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated on the Georgia Tech (GT) and the Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) databases with illumination and expression problems, and the plastic surgery database with texture changes. Results show that the proposed edge-based Gabor feature representation approach is robust against plastic surgery-induced face variations amidst expression and illumination problems and outperforms the existing plastic surgery face recognition methods reported in the literature.

Functional integration of the posterior superior temporal sulcus correlates with facial expression recognition.

PubMed

Wang, Xu; Song, Yiying; Zhen, Zonglei; Liu, Jia

2016-05-01

Face perception is essential for daily and social activities. Neuroimaging studies have revealed a distributed face network (FN) consisting of multiple regions that exhibit preferential responses to invariant or changeable facial information. However, our understanding about how these regions work collaboratively to facilitate facial information processing is limited. Here, we focused on changeable facial information processing, and investigated how the functional integration of the FN is related to the performance of facial expression recognition. To do so, we first defined the FN as voxels that responded more strongly to faces than objects, and then used a voxel-based global brain connectivity method based on resting-state fMRI to characterize the within-network connectivity (WNC) of each voxel in the FN. By relating the WNC and performance in the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" Test across participants, we found that individuals with stronger WNC in the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS) were better at recognizing facial expressions. Further, the resting-state functional connectivity (FC) between the rpSTS and right occipital face area (rOFA), early visual cortex (EVC), and bilateral STS were positively correlated with the ability of facial expression recognition, and the FCs of EVC-pSTS and OFA-pSTS contributed independently to facial expression recognition. In short, our study highlights the behavioral significance of intrinsic functional integration of the FN in facial expression processing, and provides evidence for the hub-like role of the rpSTS for facial expression recognition. Hum Brain Mapp 37:1930-1940, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Human facial neural activities and gesture recognition for machine-interfacing applications.

PubMed

Hamedi, M; Salleh, Sh-Hussain; Tan, T S; Ismail, K; Ali, J; Dee-Uam, C; Pavaganun, C; Yupapin, P P

2011-01-01

The authors present a new method of recognizing different human facial gestures through their neural activities and muscle movements, which can be used in machine-interfacing applications. Human-machine interface (HMI) technology utilizes human neural activities as input controllers for the machine. Recently, much work has been done on the specific application of facial electromyography (EMG)-based HMI, which have used limited and fixed numbers of facial gestures. In this work, a multipurpose interface is suggested that can support 2-11 control commands that can be applied to various HMI systems. The significance of this work is finding the most accurate facial gestures for any application with a maximum of eleven control commands. Eleven facial gesture EMGs are recorded from ten volunteers. Detected EMGs are passed through a band-pass filter and root mean square features are extracted. Various combinations of gestures with a different number of gestures in each group are made from the existing facial gestures. Finally, all combinations are trained and classified by a Fuzzy c-means classifier. In conclusion, combinations with the highest recognition accuracy in each group are chosen. An average accuracy >90% of chosen combinations proved their ability to be used as command controllers.

Relationship between individual differences in functional connectivity and facial-emotion recognition abilities in adults with traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Rigon, A; Voss, M W; Turkstra, L S; Mutlu, B; Duff, M C

2017-01-01

Although several studies have demonstrated that facial-affect recognition impairment is common following moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), and that there are diffuse alterations in large-scale functional brain networks in TBI populations, little is known about the relationship between the two. Here, in a sample of 26 participants with TBI and 20 healthy comparison participants (HC) we measured facial-affect recognition abilities and resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) using fMRI. We then used network-based statistics to examine (A) the presence of rs-FC differences between individuals with TBI and HC within the facial-affect processing network, and (B) the association between inter-individual differences in emotion recognition skills and rs-FC within the facial-affect processing network. We found that participants with TBI showed significantly lower rs-FC in a component comprising homotopic and within-hemisphere, anterior-posterior connections within the facial-affect processing network. In addition, within the TBI group, participants with higher emotion-labeling skills showed stronger rs-FC within a network comprised of intra- and inter-hemispheric bilateral connections. Findings indicate that the ability to successfully recognize facial-affect after TBI is related to rs-FC within components of facial-affective networks, and provide new evidence that further our understanding of the mechanisms underlying emotion recognition impairment in TBI.

Dissociable roles of internal feelings and face recognition ability in facial expression decoding.

PubMed

Zhang, Lin; Song, Yiying; Liu, Ling; Liu, Jia

2016-05-15

The problem of emotion recognition has been tackled by researchers in both affective computing and cognitive neuroscience. While affective computing relies on analyzing visual features from facial expressions, it has been proposed that humans recognize emotions by internally simulating the emotional states conveyed by others' expressions, in addition to perceptual analysis of facial features. Here we investigated whether and how our internal feelings contributed to the ability to decode facial expressions. In two independent large samples of participants, we observed that individuals who generally experienced richer internal feelings exhibited a higher ability to decode facial expressions, and the contribution of internal feelings was independent of face recognition ability. Further, using voxel-based morphometry, we found that the gray matter volume (GMV) of bilateral superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the right inferior parietal lobule was associated with facial expression decoding through the mediating effect of internal feelings, while the GMV of bilateral STS, precuneus, and the right central opercular cortex contributed to facial expression decoding through the mediating effect of face recognition ability. In addition, the clusters in bilateral STS involved in the two components were neighboring yet separate. Our results may provide clues about the mechanism by which internal feelings, in addition to face recognition ability, serve as an important instrument for humans in facial expression decoding. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

AB119. Computer-aided facial recognition of Chinese individuals with 22q11.2 deletion-algorithm training using NIH atlas of human malformation syndromes from diverse population

PubMed Central

Mok, Gary Tsz Kin; Chung, Brian Hon-Yin

2017-01-01

Background 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) is a common genetic disorder with an estimated frequency of 1/4,000. It is a multi-systemic disorder with high phenotypic variability. Our previous work showed substantial under-diagnosis of 22q11.2DS as 1 in 10 adult patients with conotruncal defects were found to have 22q11.2DS. The National Institute of Health (NIH) has created an atlas of human malformation syndrome from diverse populations to provide an easy tool to assist clinician in diagnosing the syndromic across various populations. In this study, we seek to determine whether training the computer-aided facial recognition technology using images from ethnicity-matched patients from the NIH Atlas can improve the detection performance of this technology. Methods Clinical photographs of 16 Chinese subjects with molecularly confirmed 22q11.2DS, from the NIH atlas and its related publication were used for training the facial recognition technology. The system automatically localizes hundreds of facial fiducial points and takes measurements. The final classification is based on these measurements, as well as an estimated probability of subjects having 22q11.2DS based on the entire facial image. Clinical photographs of 7 patients with molecularly confirmed 22q11.2DS were obtained with informed consent and used for testing the performance in recognizing facial profiles of the Chinese subjects before and after training. Results All 7 test cases were improved in ranking and scoring after the software training. In 4 cases, 22q11.2DS did not appear as one possible syndrome match before the training; however, it appeared within the first 10 syndrome matches after training. Conclusions The present pilot data shows that this technology can be trained to recognize patients with 22q11.2DS. It also highlights the need to collect clinical photographs of patients from diverse populations to be used as resources for training the software which can lead to improvement of the performance of computer-aided facial recognition technology.

Facial Recognition in a Discus Fish (Cichlidae): Experimental Approach Using Digital Models

PubMed Central

Satoh, Shun; Tanaka, Hirokazu; Kohda, Masanori

2016-01-01

A number of mammals and birds are known to be capable of visually discriminating between familiar and unfamiliar individuals, depending on facial patterns in some species. Many fish also visually recognize other conspecifics individually, and previous studies report that facial color patterns can be an initial signal for individual recognition. For example, a cichlid fish and a damselfish will use individual-specific color patterns that develop only in the facial area. However, it remains to be determined whether the facial area is an especially favorable site for visual signals in fish, and if so why? The monogamous discus fish, Symphysopdon aequifasciatus (Cichlidae), is capable of visually distinguishing its pair-partner from other conspecifics. Discus fish have individual-specific coloration patterns on entire body including the facial area, frontal head, trunk and vertical fins. If the facial area is an inherently important site for the visual cues, this species will use facial patterns for individual recognition, but otherwise they will use patterns on other body parts as well. We used modified digital models to examine whether discus fish use only facial coloration for individual recognition. Digital models of four different combinations of familiar and unfamiliar fish faces and bodies were displayed in frontal and lateral views. Focal fish frequently performed partner-specific displays towards partner-face models, and did aggressive displays towards models of non-partner’s faces. We conclude that to identify individuals this fish does not depend on frontal color patterns but does on lateral facial color patterns, although they have unique color patterns on the other parts of body. We discuss the significance of facial coloration for individual recognition in fish compared with birds and mammals. PMID:27191162

Facial Recognition in a Discus Fish (Cichlidae): Experimental Approach Using Digital Models.

PubMed

Satoh, Shun; Tanaka, Hirokazu; Kohda, Masanori

2016-01-01

A number of mammals and birds are known to be capable of visually discriminating between familiar and unfamiliar individuals, depending on facial patterns in some species. Many fish also visually recognize other conspecifics individually, and previous studies report that facial color patterns can be an initial signal for individual recognition. For example, a cichlid fish and a damselfish will use individual-specific color patterns that develop only in the facial area. However, it remains to be determined whether the facial area is an especially favorable site for visual signals in fish, and if so why? The monogamous discus fish, Symphysopdon aequifasciatus (Cichlidae), is capable of visually distinguishing its pair-partner from other conspecifics. Discus fish have individual-specific coloration patterns on entire body including the facial area, frontal head, trunk and vertical fins. If the facial area is an inherently important site for the visual cues, this species will use facial patterns for individual recognition, but otherwise they will use patterns on other body parts as well. We used modified digital models to examine whether discus fish use only facial coloration for individual recognition. Digital models of four different combinations of familiar and unfamiliar fish faces and bodies were displayed in frontal and lateral views. Focal fish frequently performed partner-specific displays towards partner-face models, and did aggressive displays towards models of non-partner's faces. We conclude that to identify individuals this fish does not depend on frontal color patterns but does on lateral facial color patterns, although they have unique color patterns on the other parts of body. We discuss the significance of facial coloration for individual recognition in fish compared with birds and mammals.

Discriminability effect on Garner interference: evidence from recognition of facial identity and expression

PubMed Central

Wang, Yamin; Fu, Xiaolan; Johnston, Robert A.; Yan, Zheng

2013-01-01

Using Garner’s speeded classification task existing studies demonstrated an asymmetric interference in the recognition of facial identity and facial expression. It seems that expression is hard to interfere with identity recognition. However, discriminability of identity and expression, a potential confounding variable, had not been carefully examined in existing studies. In current work, we manipulated discriminability of identity and expression by matching facial shape (long or round) in identity and matching mouth (opened or closed) in facial expression. Garner interference was found either from identity to expression (Experiment 1) or from expression to identity (Experiment 2). Interference was also found in both directions (Experiment 3) or in neither direction (Experiment 4). The results support that Garner interference tends to occur under condition of low discriminability of relevant dimension regardless of facial property. Our findings indicate that Garner interference is not necessarily related to interdependent processing in recognition of facial identity and expression. The findings also suggest that discriminability as a mediating factor should be carefully controlled in future research. PMID:24391609

Comparing Facial Emotional Recognition in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder and Patients with Schizotypal Personality Disorder with a Normal Group

PubMed Central

Farsham, Aida; Abbaslou, Tahereh; Bidaki, Reza; Bozorg, Bonnie

2017-01-01

Objective: No research has been conducted on facial emotional recognition on patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and schizotypal personality disorder (SPD). The present study aimed at comparing facial emotion recognition in these patients with the general population. The neurocognitive processing of emotions can show the pathologic style of these 2 disorders. Method: Twenty BPD patients, 16 SPD patients, and 20 healthy individuals were selected by available sampling method. Structural Clinical Interview for Axis II, Millon Personality Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory and Facial Emotional Recognition Test was were conducted for all participants. Discussion: The results of one way ANOVA and Scheffe’s post hoc test analysis revealed significant differences in neuropsychology assessment of facial emotional recognition between BPD and SPD patients with normal group (p = 0/001). A significant difference was found in emotion recognition of fear between the 2 groups of BPD and normal population (p = 0/008). A significant difference was observed between SPD patients and control group in emotion recognition of wonder (p = 0/04(. The obtained results indicated a deficit in negative emotion recognition, especially disgust emotion, thus, it can be concluded that these patients have the same neurocognitive profile in the emotion domain. PMID:28659980

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.

Facial recognition deficits as a potential endophenotype in bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Vierck, Esther; Porter, Richard J; Joyce, Peter R

2015-11-30

Bipolar disorder (BD) is considered a highly heritable and genetically complex disorder. Several cognitive functions, such as executive functions and verbal memory have been suggested as promising candidates for endophenotypes. Although there is evidence for deficits in facial emotion recognition in individuals with BD, studies investigating these functions as endophenotypes are rare. The current study investigates emotion recognition as a potential endophenotype in BD by comparing 36 BD participants, 24 of their 1st degree relatives and 40 healthy control participants in a computerised facial emotion recognition task. Group differences were evaluated using repeated measurement analysis of co-variance with age as a covariate. Results revealed slowed emotion recognition for both BD and their relatives. Furthermore, BD participants were less accurate than healthy controls in their recognition of emotion expressions. We found no evidence of emotion specific differences between groups. Our results provide evidence for facial recognition as a potential endophenotype in BD. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Impact of facial emotional recognition alterations in Dementia of the Alzheimer type].

PubMed

Rubinstein, Wanda; Cossini, Florencia; Politis, Daniel

2016-07-01

Face recognition of basic emotions is independent of other deficits in dementia of the Alzheimer type. Among these deficits, there is disagreement about what emotions are more difficult to recognize. Our aim was to study the presence of alterations in the process of facial recognition of basic emotions, and to investigate if there were differences in the recognition of each type of emotion in Alzheimer's disease. With three tests of recognition of basic facial emotions we evaluated 29 patients who had been diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer type and 18 control subjects. Significant differences were obtained in tests of recognition of basic facial emotions and between each. Since the amygdala, one of the brain structures responsible for emotional reaction, is affected in the early stages of this disease, our findings become relevant to understand how this alteration of the process of emotional recognition impacts the difficulties these patients have in both interpersonal relations and behavioral disorders.

Facial Emotion Recognition Impairments are Associated with Brain Volume Abnormalities in Individuals with HIV

PubMed Central

Clark, Uraina S.; Walker, Keenan A.; Cohen, Ronald A.; Devlin, Kathryn N.; Folkers, Anna M.; Pina, Mathew M.; Tashima, Karen T.

2015-01-01

Impaired facial emotion recognition abilities in HIV+ patients are well documented, but little is known about the neural etiology of these difficulties. We examined the relation of facial emotion recognition abilities to regional brain volumes in 44 HIV-positive (HIV+) and 44 HIV-negative control (HC) adults. Volumes of structures implicated in HIV− associated neuropathology and emotion recognition were measured on MRI using an automated segmentation tool. Relative to HC, HIV+ patients demonstrated emotion recognition impairments for fearful expressions, reduced anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) volumes, and increased amygdala volumes. In the HIV+ group, fear recognition impairments correlated significantly with ACC, but not amygdala volumes. ACC reductions were also associated with lower nadir CD4 levels (i.e., greater HIV-disease severity). These findings extend our understanding of the neurobiological substrates underlying an essential social function, facial emotion recognition, in HIV+ individuals and implicate HIV-related ACC atrophy in the impairment of these abilities. PMID:25744868

Resource Allocation in Dynamic Environments

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-10-01

Utility Curve for the TOC Camera 42 Figure 20: Utility Curves for Ground Vehicle Camera and Squad Camera 43 Figure 21: Facial - Recognition Utility...A Facial - Recognition Server (FRS) can receive images from smartphones the squads use, compare them to a local database, and then return the...fallback. In addition, each squad has the ability to capture images with a smartphone and send them to a Facial - Recognition Server in the TOC to

Gabor Jets for Clutter Rejection in Infrared Imagery

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-12-01

application of a suitable model like Gabor Jets in facial recognition is well motivated by the observation that some low level, spatial-frequency...set. This is a simplified form of the Gabor Jet procedure and will not require any elastic graph matching procedures used in facial recognition . Another...motivation for employing Gabor jets as a post processing clutter rejecter is attributed to the great deal of research in facial recognition , invariant

Facial emotion recognition and borderline personality pathology.

PubMed

Meehan, Kevin B; De Panfilis, Chiara; Cain, Nicole M; Antonucci, Camilla; Soliani, Antonio; Clarkin, John F; Sambataro, Fabio

2017-09-01

The impact of borderline personality pathology on facial emotion recognition has been in dispute; with impaired, comparable, and enhanced accuracy found in high borderline personality groups. Discrepancies are likely driven by variations in facial emotion recognition tasks across studies (stimuli type/intensity) and heterogeneity in borderline personality pathology. This study evaluates facial emotion recognition for neutral and negative emotions (fear/sadness/disgust/anger) presented at varying intensities. Effortful control was evaluated as a moderator of facial emotion recognition in borderline personality. Non-clinical multicultural undergraduates (n = 132) completed a morphed facial emotion recognition task of neutral and negative emotional expressions across different intensities (100% Neutral; 25%/50%/75% Emotion) and self-reported borderline personality features and effortful control. Greater borderline personality features related to decreased accuracy in detecting neutral faces, but increased accuracy in detecting negative emotion faces, particularly at low-intensity thresholds. This pattern was moderated by effortful control; for individuals with low but not high effortful control, greater borderline personality features related to misattributions of emotion to neutral expressions, and enhanced detection of low-intensity emotional expressions. Individuals with high borderline personality features may therefore exhibit a bias toward detecting negative emotions that are not or barely present; however, good self-regulatory skills may protect against this potential social-cognitive vulnerability. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mapping structural covariance networks of facial emotion recognition in early psychosis: A pilot study.

PubMed

Buchy, Lisa; Barbato, Mariapaola; Makowski, Carolina; Bray, Signe; MacMaster, Frank P; Deighton, Stephanie; Addington, Jean

2017-11-01

People with psychosis show deficits recognizing facial emotions and disrupted activation in the underlying neural circuitry. We evaluated associations between facial emotion recognition and cortical thickness using a correlation-based approach to map structural covariance networks across the brain. Fifteen people with an early psychosis provided magnetic resonance scans and completed the Penn Emotion Recognition and Differentiation tasks. Fifteen historical controls provided magnetic resonance scans. Cortical thickness was computed using CIVET and analyzed with linear models. Seed-based structural covariance analysis was done using the mapping anatomical correlations across the cerebral cortex methodology. To map structural covariance networks involved in facial emotion recognition, the right somatosensory cortex and bilateral fusiform face areas were selected as seeds. Statistics were run in SurfStat. Findings showed increased cortical covariance between the right fusiform face region seed and right orbitofrontal cortex in controls than early psychosis subjects. Facial emotion recognition scores were not significantly associated with thickness in any region. A negative effect of Penn Differentiation scores on cortical covariance was seen between the left fusiform face area seed and right superior parietal lobule in early psychosis subjects. Results suggest that facial emotion recognition ability is related to covariance in a temporal-parietal network in early psychosis. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Event-related theta synchronization predicts deficit in facial affect recognition in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Csukly, Gábor; Stefanics, Gábor; Komlósi, Sarolta; Czigler, István; Czobor, Pál

2014-02-01

Growing evidence suggests that abnormalities in the synchronized oscillatory activity of neurons in schizophrenia may lead to impaired neural activation and temporal coding and thus lead to neurocognitive dysfunctions, such as deficits in facial affect recognition. To gain an insight into the neurobiological processes linked to facial affect recognition, we investigated both induced and evoked oscillatory activity by calculating the Event Related Spectral Perturbation (ERSP) and the Inter Trial Coherence (ITC) during facial affect recognition. Fearful and neutral faces as well as nonface patches were presented to 24 patients with schizophrenia and 24 matched healthy controls while EEG was recorded. The participants' task was to recognize facial expressions. Because previous findings with healthy controls showed that facial feature decoding was associated primarily with oscillatory activity in the theta band, we analyzed ERSP and ITC in this frequency band in the time interval of 140-200 ms, which corresponds to the N170 component. Event-related theta activity and phase-locking to facial expressions, but not to nonface patches, predicted emotion recognition performance in both controls and patients. Event-related changes in theta amplitude and phase-locking were found to be significantly weaker in patients compared with healthy controls, which is in line with previous investigations showing decreased neural synchronization in the low frequency bands in patients with schizophrenia. Neural synchrony is thought to underlie distributed information processing. Our results indicate a less effective functioning in the recognition process of facial features, which may contribute to a less effective social cognition in schizophrenia. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Accuracy of computer-assisted navigation: significant augmentation by facial recognition software.

PubMed

Glicksman, Jordan T; Reger, Christine; Parasher, Arjun K; Kennedy, David W

2017-09-01

Over the past 20 years, image guidance navigation has been used with increasing frequency as an adjunct during sinus and skull base surgery. These devices commonly utilize surface registration, where varying pressure of the registration probe and loss of contact with the face during the skin tracing process can lead to registration inaccuracies, and the number of registration points incorporated is necessarily limited. The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of novel facial recognition software for image guidance registration. Consecutive adults undergoing endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) were prospectively studied. Patients underwent image guidance registration via both conventional surface registration and facial recognition software. The accuracy of both registration processes were measured at the head of the middle turbinate (MTH), middle turbinate axilla (MTA), anterior wall of sphenoid sinus (SS), and nasal tip (NT). Forty-five patients were included in this investigation. Facial recognition was accurate to within a mean of 0.47 mm at the MTH, 0.33 mm at the MTA, 0.39 mm at the SS, and 0.36 mm at the NT. Facial recognition was more accurate than surface registration at the MTH by an average of 0.43 mm (p = 0.002), at the MTA by an average of 0.44 mm (p < 0.001), and at the SS by an average of 0.40 mm (p < 0.001). The integration of facial recognition software did not adversely affect registration time. In this prospective study, automated facial recognition software significantly improved the accuracy of image guidance registration when compared to conventional surface registration. © 2017 ARS-AAOA, LLC.

Automatic decoding of facial movements reveals deceptive pain expressions

PubMed Central

Bartlett, Marian Stewart; Littlewort, Gwen C.; Frank, Mark G.; Lee, Kang

2014-01-01

Summary In highly social species such as humans, faces have evolved to convey rich information for social interaction, including expressions of emotions and pain [1–3]. Two motor pathways control facial movement [4–7]. A subcortical extrapyramidal motor system drives spontaneous facial expressions of felt emotions. A cortical pyramidal motor system controls voluntary facial expressions. The pyramidal system enables humans to simulate facial expressions of emotions not actually experienced. Their simulation is so successful that they can deceive most observers [8–11]. Machine vision may, however, be able to distinguish deceptive from genuine facial signals by identifying the subtle differences between pyramidally and extrapyramidally driven movements. Here we show that human observers could not discriminate real from faked expressions of pain better than chance, and after training, improved accuracy to a modest 55%. However a computer vision system that automatically measures facial movements and performs pattern recognition on those movements attained 85% accuracy. The machine system’s superiority is attributable to its ability to differentiate the dynamics of genuine from faked expressions. Thus by revealing the dynamics of facial action through machine vision systems, our approach has the potential to elucidate behavioral fingerprints of neural control systems involved in emotional signaling. PMID:24656830

MARTI: man-machine animation real-time interface

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jones, Christian M.; Dlay, Satnam S.

1997-05-01

The research introduces MARTI (man-machine animation real-time interface) for the realization of natural human-machine interfacing. The system uses simple vocal sound-tracks of human speakers to provide lip synchronization of computer graphical facial models. We present novel research in a number of engineering disciplines, which include speech recognition, facial modeling, and computer animation. This interdisciplinary research utilizes the latest, hybrid connectionist/hidden Markov model, speech recognition system to provide very accurate phone recognition and timing for speaker independent continuous speech, and expands on knowledge from the animation industry in the development of accurate facial models and automated animation. The research has many real-world applications which include the provision of a highly accurate and 'natural' man-machine interface to assist user interactions with computer systems and communication with one other using human idiosyncrasies; a complete special effects and animation toolbox providing automatic lip synchronization without the normal constraints of head-sets, joysticks, and skilled animators; compression of video data to well below standard telecommunication channel bandwidth for video communications and multi-media systems; assisting speech training and aids for the handicapped; and facilitating player interaction for 'video gaming' and 'virtual worlds.' MARTI has introduced a new level of realism to man-machine interfacing and special effect animation which has been previously unseen.

People with chronic facial pain perform worse than controls at a facial emotion recognition task, but it is not all about the emotion.

PubMed

von Piekartz, H; Wallwork, S B; Mohr, G; Butler, D S; Moseley, G L

2015-04-01

Alexithymia, or a lack of emotional awareness, is prevalent in some chronic pain conditions and has been linked to poor recognition of others' emotions. Recognising others' emotions from their facial expression involves both emotional and motor processing, but the possible contribution of motor disruption has not been considered. It is possible that poor performance on emotional recognition tasks could reflect problems with emotional processing, motor processing or both. We hypothesised that people with chronic facial pain would be less accurate in recognising others' emotions from facial expressions, would be less accurate in a motor imagery task involving the face, and that performance on both tasks would be positively related. A convenience sample of 19 people (15 females) with chronic facial pain and 19 gender-matched controls participated. They undertook two tasks; in the first task, they identified the facial emotion presented in a photograph. In the second, they identified whether the person in the image had a facial feature pointed towards their left or right side, a well-recognised paradigm to induce implicit motor imagery. People with chronic facial pain performed worse than controls at both tasks (Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling (FEEL) task P < 0·001; left/right judgment task P < 0·001). Participants who were more accurate at one task were also more accurate at the other, regardless of group (P < 0·001, r(2)  = 0·523). Participants with chronic facial pain were worse than controls at both the FEEL emotion recognition task and the left/right facial expression task and performance covaried within participants. We propose that disrupted motor processing may underpin or at least contribute to the difficulty that facial pain patients have in emotion recognition and that further research that tests this proposal is warranted. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Facial Emotion Recognition by Persons with Mental Retardation: A Review of the Experimental Literature.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rojahn, Johannes; And Others

1995-01-01

This literature review discusses 21 studies on facial emotion recognition by persons with mental retardation in terms of methodological characteristics, stimulus material, salient variables and their relation to recognition tasks, and emotion recognition deficits in mental retardation. A table provides comparative data on all 21 studies. (DB)

Neuroticism and facial emotion recognition in healthy adults.

PubMed

Andric, Sanja; Maric, Nadja P; Knezevic, Goran; Mihaljevic, Marina; Mirjanic, Tijana; Velthorst, Eva; van Os, Jim

2016-04-01

The aim of the present study was to examine whether healthy individuals with higher levels of neuroticism, a robust independent predictor of psychopathology, exhibit altered facial emotion recognition performance. Facial emotion recognition accuracy was investigated in 104 healthy adults using the Degraded Facial Affect Recognition Task (DFAR). Participants' degree of neuroticism was estimated using neuroticism scales extracted from the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. A significant negative correlation between the degree of neuroticism and the percentage of correct answers on DFAR was found only for happy facial expression (significant after applying Bonferroni correction). Altered sensitivity to the emotional context represents a useful and easy way to obtain cognitive phenotype that correlates strongly with inter-individual variations in neuroticism linked to stress vulnerability and subsequent psychopathology. Present findings could have implication in early intervention strategies and staging models in psychiatry. © 2015 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Influence of make-up on facial recognition.

PubMed

Ueda, Sayako; Koyama, Takamasa

2010-01-01

Make-up may enhance or disguise facial characteristics. The influence of wearing make-up on facial recognition could be of two kinds: (i) when women do not wear make-up and then are seen with make-up, and (ii) when women wear make-up and then are seen without make-up. A study is reported which shows that light make-up makes it easier to recognise a face, and heavy make-up makes it more difficult. Seeing initially a made-up face makes any subsequent facial recognition more difficult than initially seeing that face without make-up.

Biometric Identifiers and Border Security: 9/11 Commission Recommendations and Related Issues

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-02-07

joints, and knuckles, has been used for about 30 years to control access to secure facilities such as nuclear power plants. Facial recognition analyzes...this end, however, DOS has also begun phasing in the use of facial recognition technologies with visa and passport photos, but these technologies are...party, have approved interoperable biometric standards, and the baseline biometric will be facial recognition . Member states will also have the option

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.

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

Not on the Face Alone: Perception of Contextualized Face Expressions in Huntington's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aviezer, Hillel; Bentin, Shlomo; Hassin, Ran R.; Meschino, Wendy S.; Kennedy, Jeanne; Grewal, Sonya; Esmail, Sherali; Cohen, Sharon; Moscovitch, Morris

2009-01-01

Numerous studies have demonstrated that Huntington's disease mutation-carriers have deficient explicit recognition of isolated facial expressions. There are no studies, however, which have investigated the recognition of facial expressions embedded within an emotional body and scene context. Real life facial expressions are typically embedded in…

Development of Emotional Facial Recognition in Late Childhood and Adolescence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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

2007-01-01

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…

Automated night/day standoff detection, tracking, and identification of personnel for installation protection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lemoff, Brian E.; Martin, Robert B.; Sluch, Mikhail; Kafka, Kristopher M.; McCormick, William; Ice, Robert

2013-06-01

The capability to positively and covertly identify people at a safe distance, 24-hours per day, could provide a valuable advantage in protecting installations, both domestically and in an asymmetric warfare environment. This capability would enable installation security officers to identify known bad actors from a safe distance, even if they are approaching under cover of darkness. We will describe an active-SWIR imaging system being developed to automatically detect, track, and identify people at long range using computer face recognition. The system illuminates the target with an eye-safe and invisible SWIR laser beam, to provide consistent high-resolution imagery night and day. SWIR facial imagery produced by the system is matched against a watch-list of mug shots using computer face recognition algorithms. The current system relies on an operator to point the camera and to review and interpret the face recognition results. Automation software is being developed that will allow the system to be cued to a location by an external system, automatically detect a person, track the person as they move, zoom in on the face, select good facial images, and process the face recognition results, producing alarms and sharing data with other systems when people are detected and identified. Progress on the automation of this system will be presented along with experimental night-time face recognition results at distance.

Facial emotion recognition in Williams syndrome and Down syndrome: A matching and developmental study.

PubMed

Martínez-Castilla, Pastora; Burt, Michael; Borgatti, Renato; Gagliardi, Chiara

2015-01-01

In this study both the matching and developmental trajectories approaches were used to clarify questions that remain open in the literature on facial emotion recognition in Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS). The matching approach showed that individuals with WS or DS exhibit neither proficiency for the expression of happiness nor specific impairments for negative emotions. Instead, they present the same pattern of emotion recognition as typically developing (TD) individuals. Thus, the better performance on the recognition of positive compared to negative emotions usually reported in WS and DS is not specific of these populations but seems to represent a typical pattern. Prior studies based on the matching approach suggested that the development of facial emotion recognition is delayed in WS and atypical in DS. Nevertheless, and even though performance levels were lower in DS than in WS, the developmental trajectories approach used in this study evidenced that not only individuals with DS but also those with WS present atypical development in facial emotion recognition. Unlike in the TD participants, where developmental changes were observed along with age, in the WS and DS groups, the development of facial emotion recognition was static. Both individuals with WS and those with DS reached an early maximum developmental level due to cognitive constraints.

Facial emotion recognition, face scan paths, and face perception in children with neurofibromatosis type 1.

PubMed

Lewis, Amelia K; Porter, Melanie A; Williams, Tracey A; Bzishvili, Samantha; North, Kathryn N; Payne, Jonathan M

2017-05-01

This study aimed to investigate face scan paths and face perception abilities in children with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) and how these might relate to emotion recognition abilities in this population. The authors investigated facial emotion recognition, face scan paths, and face perception in 29 children with NF1 compared to 29 chronological age-matched typically developing controls. Correlations between facial emotion recognition, face scan paths, and face perception in children with NF1 were examined. Children with NF1 displayed significantly poorer recognition of fearful expressions compared to controls, as well as a nonsignificant trend toward poorer recognition of anger. Although there was no significant difference between groups in time spent viewing individual core facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, and nonfeature regions), children with NF1 spent significantly less time than controls viewing the face as a whole. Children with NF1 also displayed significantly poorer face perception abilities than typically developing controls. Facial emotion recognition deficits were not significantly associated with aberrant face scan paths or face perception abilities in the NF1 group. These results suggest that impairments in the perception, identification, and interpretation of information from faces are important aspects of the social-cognitive phenotype of NF1. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceptual and affective mechanisms in facial expression recognition: An integrative review.

PubMed

Calvo, Manuel G; Nummenmaa, Lauri

2016-09-01

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

Multimedia Content Development as a Facial Expression Datasets for Recognition of Human Emotions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mamonto, N. E.; Maulana, H.; Liliana, D. Y.; Basaruddin, T.

2018-02-01

Datasets that have been developed before contain facial expression from foreign people. The development of multimedia content aims to answer the problems experienced by the research team and other researchers who will conduct similar research. The method used in the development of multimedia content as facial expression datasets for human emotion recognition is the Villamil-Molina version of the multimedia development method. Multimedia content developed with 10 subjects or talents with each talent performing 3 shots with each capturing talent having to demonstrate 19 facial expressions. After the process of editing and rendering, tests are carried out with the conclusion that the multimedia content can be used as a facial expression dataset for recognition of human emotions.

Recognition of facial emotions in neuropsychiatric disorders.

PubMed

Kohler, Christian G; Turner, Travis H; Gur, Raquel E; Gur, Ruben C

2004-04-01

Recognition of facial emotions represents an important aspect of interpersonal communication and is governed by select neural substrates. We present data on emotion recognition in healthy young adults utilizing a novel set of color photographs of evoked universal emotions. In addition, we review the recent literature on emotion recognition in psychiatric and neurologic disorders, and studies that compare different disorders.

Emotion-independent face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

De Silva, Liyanage C.; Esther, Kho G. P.

2000-12-01

Current face recognition techniques tend to work well when recognizing faces under small variations in lighting, facial expression and pose, but deteriorate under more extreme conditions. In this paper, a face recognition system to recognize faces of known individuals, despite variations in facial expression due to different emotions, is developed. The eigenface approach is used for feature extraction. Classification methods include Euclidean distance, back propagation neural network and generalized regression neural network. These methods yield 100% recognition accuracy when the training database is representative, containing one image representing the peak expression for each emotion of each person apart from the neutral expression. The feature vectors used for comparison in the Euclidean distance method and for training the neural network must be all the feature vectors of the training set. These results are obtained for a face database consisting of only four persons.

Impairment of facial recognition in patients with right cerebral infarcts quantified by computer aided "morphing".

PubMed Central

Rösler, A; Lanquillon, S; Dippel, O; Braune, H J

1997-01-01

OBJECTIVE: To investigate where facial recognition is located anatomically and to establish whether there is a graded transition from unimpaired recognition of faces to complete prosopagnosia after infarctions in the territory of the middle cerebral artery. METHODS: A computerised morphing program was developed which shows 30 frames gradually changing from portrait photographs of unfamiliar persons to those of well known persons. With a standardised protocol, 31 patients with right and left sided infarctions in the territory of the middle cerebral artery and an age and sex matched control group were compared by non-parametric tests. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Facial recognition in patients with right sided lesions was significantly impaired compared with controls and with patients with left sided lesions. A graded impairment in facial recognition in patients with right sided ischaemic infarcts in the territory of the middle cerebral artery seems to exist. Images PMID:9069481

The recognition of facial emotion expressions in Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Assogna, Francesca; Pontieri, Francesco E; Caltagirone, Carlo; Spalletta, Gianfranco

2008-11-01

A limited number of studies in Parkinson's Disease (PD) suggest a disturbance of recognition of facial emotion expressions. In particular, disgust recognition impairment has been reported in unmedicated and medicated PD patients. However, the results are rather inconclusive in the definition of the degree and the selectivity of emotion recognition impairment, and an associated impairment of almost all basic facial emotions in PD is also described. Few studies have investigated the relationship with neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological symptoms with mainly negative results. This inconsistency may be due to many different problems, such as emotion assessment, perception deficit, cognitive impairment, behavioral symptoms, illness severity and antiparkinsonian therapy. Here we review the clinical characteristics and neural structures involved in the recognition of specific facial emotion expressions, and the plausible role of dopamine transmission and dopamine replacement therapy in these processes. It is clear that future studies should be directed to clarify all these issues.

Hybrid generative-discriminative approach to age-invariant face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sajid, Muhammad; Shafique, Tamoor

2018-03-01

Age-invariant face recognition is still a challenging research problem due to the complex aging process involving types of facial tissues, skin, fat, muscles, and bones. Most of the related studies that have addressed the aging problem are focused on generative representation (aging simulation) or discriminative representation (feature-based approaches). Designing an appropriate hybrid approach taking into account both the generative and discriminative representations for age-invariant face recognition remains an open problem. We perform a hybrid matching to achieve robustness to aging variations. This approach automatically segments the eyes, nose-bridge, and mouth regions, which are relatively less sensitive to aging variations compared with the rest of the facial regions that are age-sensitive. The aging variations of age-sensitive facial parts are compensated using a demographic-aware generative model based on a bridged denoising autoencoder. The age-insensitive facial parts are represented by pixel average vector-based local binary patterns. Deep convolutional neural networks are used to extract relative features of age-sensitive and age-insensitive facial parts. Finally, the feature vectors of age-sensitive and age-insensitive facial parts are fused to achieve the recognition results. Extensive experimental results on morphological face database II (MORPH II), face and gesture recognition network (FG-NET), and Verification Subset of cross-age celebrity dataset (CACD-VS) demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for age-invariant face recognition well.

Abnormal Facial Emotion Recognition in Depression: Serial Testing in an Ultra-Rapid-Cycling Patient.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

George, Mark S.; Huggins, Teresa; McDermut, Wilson; Parekh, Priti I.; Rubinow, David; Post, Robert M.

1998-01-01

Mood disorder subjects have a selective deficit in recognizing human facial emotion. Whether the facial emotion recognition errors persist during normal mood states (i.e., are state vs. trait dependent) was studied in one male bipolar II patient. Results of five sessions are presented and discussed. (Author/EMK)

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…

78 FR 73502 - Multistakeholder Process To Develop Consumer Data Privacy Code of Conduct Concerning Facial...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-12-06

... Process To Develop Consumer Data Privacy Code of Conduct Concerning Facial Recognition Technology AGENCY... technology. This Notice announces the meetings to be held in February, March, April, May, and June 2014. The... promote trust regarding facial recognition technology in the commercial context.\\4\\ NTIA encourages...

Predicting the Accuracy of Facial Affect Recognition: The Interaction of Child Maltreatment and Intellectual Functioning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shenk, Chad E.; Putnam, Frank W.; Noll, Jennie G.

2013-01-01

Previous research demonstrates that both child maltreatment and intellectual performance contribute uniquely to the accurate identification of facial affect by children and adolescents. The purpose of this study was to extend this research by examining whether child maltreatment affects the accuracy of facial recognition differently at varying…

Analysis of differences between Western and East-Asian faces based on facial region segmentation and PCA for facial expression recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Benitez-Garcia, Gibran; Nakamura, Tomoaki; Kaneko, Masahide

2017-01-01

Darwin was the first one to assert that facial expressions are innate and universal, which are recognized across all cultures. However, recent some cross-cultural studies have questioned this assumed universality. Therefore, this paper presents an analysis of the differences between Western and East-Asian faces of the six basic expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise) focused on three individual facial regions of eyes-eyebrows, nose and mouth. The analysis is conducted by applying PCA for two feature extraction methods: appearance-based by using the pixel intensities of facial parts, and geometric-based by handling 125 feature points from the face. Both methods are evaluated using 4 standard databases for both racial groups and the results are compared with a cross-cultural human study applied to 20 participants. Our analysis reveals that differences between Westerns and East-Asians exist mainly on the regions of eyes-eyebrows and mouth for expressions of fear and disgust respectively. This work presents important findings for a better design of automatic facial expression recognition systems based on the difference between two racial groups.

Emotional face recognition deficits and medication effects in pre-manifest through stage-II Huntington's disease.

PubMed

Labuschagne, Izelle; Jones, Rebecca; Callaghan, Jenny; Whitehead, Daisy; Dumas, Eve M; Say, Miranda J; Hart, Ellen P; Justo, Damian; Coleman, Allison; Dar Santos, Rachelle C; Frost, Chris; Craufurd, David; Tabrizi, Sarah J; Stout, Julie C

2013-05-15

Facial emotion recognition impairments have been reported in Huntington's disease (HD). However, the nature of the impairments across the spectrum of HD remains unclear. We report on emotion recognition data from 344 participants comprising premanifest HD (PreHD) and early HD patients, and controls. In a test of recognition of facial emotions, we examined responses to six basic emotional expressions and neutral expressions. In addition, and within the early HD sample, we tested for differences on emotion recognition performance between those 'on' vs. 'off' neuroleptic or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medications. The PreHD groups showed significant (p<0.05) impaired recognition, compared to controls, on fearful, angry and surprised faces; whereas the early HD groups were significantly impaired across all emotions including neutral expressions. In early HD, neuroleptic use was associated with worse facial emotion recognition, whereas SSRI use was associated with better facial emotion recognition. The findings suggest that emotion recognition impairments exist across the HD spectrum, but are relatively more widespread in manifest HD than in the premanifest period. Commonly prescribed medications to treat HD-related symptoms also appear to affect emotion recognition. These findings have important implications for interpersonal communication and medication usage in HD. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Face recognition with the Karhunen-Loeve transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Suarez, Pedro F.

1991-12-01

The major goal of this research was to investigate machine recognition of faces. The approach taken to achieve this goal was to investigate the use of Karhunen-Loe've Transform (KLT) by implementing flexible and practical code. The KLT utilizes the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix as a basis set. Faces were projected onto the eigenvectors, called eigenfaces, and the resulting projection coefficients were used as features. Face recognition accuracies for the KLT coefficients were superior to Fourier based techniques. Additionally, this thesis demonstrated the image compression and reconstruction capabilities of the KLT. This theses also developed the use of the KLT as a facial feature detector. The ability to differentiate between facial features provides a computer communications interface for non-vocal people with cerebral palsy. Lastly, this thesis developed a KLT based axis system for laser scanner data of human heads. The scanner data axis system provides the anthropometric community a more precise method of fitting custom helmets.

A Spiking Neural Network Based Cortex-Like Mechanism and Application to Facial Expression Recognition

PubMed Central

Fu, Si-Yao; Yang, Guo-Sheng; Kuai, Xin-Kai

2012-01-01

In this paper, we present a quantitative, highly structured cortex-simulated model, which can be simply described as feedforward, hierarchical simulation of ventral stream of visual cortex using biologically plausible, computationally convenient spiking neural network system. The motivation comes directly from recent pioneering works on detailed functional decomposition analysis of the feedforward pathway of the ventral stream of visual cortex and developments on artificial spiking neural networks (SNNs). By combining the logical structure of the cortical hierarchy and computing power of the spiking neuron model, a practical framework has been presented. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate our system on several facial expression recognition tasks. The proposed cortical-like feedforward hierarchy framework has the merit of capability of dealing with complicated pattern recognition problems, suggesting that, by combining the cognitive models with modern neurocomputational approaches, the neurosystematic approach to the study of cortex-like mechanism has the potential to extend our knowledge of brain mechanisms underlying the cognitive analysis and to advance theoretical models of how we recognize face or, more specifically, perceive other people's facial expression in a rich, dynamic, and complex environment, providing a new starting point for improved models of visual cortex-like mechanism. PMID:23193391

A spiking neural network based cortex-like mechanism and application to facial expression recognition.

PubMed

Fu, Si-Yao; Yang, Guo-Sheng; Kuai, Xin-Kai

2012-01-01

In this paper, we present a quantitative, highly structured cortex-simulated model, which can be simply described as feedforward, hierarchical simulation of ventral stream of visual cortex using biologically plausible, computationally convenient spiking neural network system. The motivation comes directly from recent pioneering works on detailed functional decomposition analysis of the feedforward pathway of the ventral stream of visual cortex and developments on artificial spiking neural networks (SNNs). By combining the logical structure of the cortical hierarchy and computing power of the spiking neuron model, a practical framework has been presented. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate our system on several facial expression recognition tasks. The proposed cortical-like feedforward hierarchy framework has the merit of capability of dealing with complicated pattern recognition problems, suggesting that, by combining the cognitive models with modern neurocomputational approaches, the neurosystematic approach to the study of cortex-like mechanism has the potential to extend our knowledge of brain mechanisms underlying the cognitive analysis and to advance theoretical models of how we recognize face or, more specifically, perceive other people's facial expression in a rich, dynamic, and complex environment, providing a new starting point for improved models of visual cortex-like mechanism.

The effect of comorbid depression on facial and prosody emotion recognition in first-episode schizophrenia spectrum.

PubMed

Herniman, Sarah E; Allott, Kelly A; Killackey, Eóin; Hester, Robert; Cotton, Sue M

2017-01-15

Comorbid depression is common in first-episode schizophrenia spectrum (FES) disorders. Both depression and FES are associated with significant deficits in facial and prosody emotion recognition performance. However, it remains unclear whether people with FES and comorbid depression, compared to those without comorbid depression, have overall poorer emotion recognition, or instead, a different pattern of emotion recognition deficits. The aim of this study was to compare facial and prosody emotion recognition performance between those with and without comorbid depression in FES. This study involved secondary analysis of baseline data from a randomized controlled trial of vocational intervention for young people with first-episode psychosis (N=82; age range: 15-25 years). Those with comorbid depression (n=24) had more accurate recognition of sadness in faces compared to those without comorbid depression. Severity of depressive symptoms was also associated with more accurate recognition of sadness in faces. Such results did not recur for prosody emotion recognition. In addition to the cross-sectional design, limitations of this study include the absence of facial and prosodic recognition of neutral emotions. Findings indicate a mood congruent negative bias in facial emotion recognition in those with comorbid depression and FES, and provide support for cognitive theories of depression that emphasise the role of such biases in the development and maintenance of depression. Longitudinal research is needed to determine whether mood-congruent negative biases are implicated in the development and maintenance of depression in FES, or whether such biases are simply markers of depressed state. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Hostility and Facial Affect Recognition: Effects of a Cold Pressor Stressor on Accuracy and Cardiovascular Reactivity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herridge, Matt L.; Harrison, David W.; Mollet, Gina A.; Shenal, Brian V.

2004-01-01

The effects of hostility and a cold pressor stressor on the accuracy of facial affect perception were examined in the present experiment. A mechanism whereby physiological arousal level is mediated by systems which also mediate accuracy of an individual's interpretation of affective cues is described. Right-handed participants were classified as…

Bihippocampal damage with emotional dysfunction: impaired auditory recognition of fear.

PubMed

Ghika-Schmid, F; Ghika, J; Vuilleumier, P; Assal, G; Vuadens, P; Scherer, K; Maeder, P; Uske, A; Bogousslavsky, J

1997-01-01

A right-handed man developed a sudden transient, amnestic syndrome associated with bilateral hemorrhage of the hippocampi, probably due to Urbach-Wiethe disease. In the 3rd month, despite significant hippocampal structural damage on imaging, only a milder degree of retrograde and anterograde amnesia persisted on detailed neuropsychological examination. On systematic testing of recognition of facial and vocal expression of emotion, we found an impairment of the vocal perception of fear, but not that of other emotions, such as joy, sadness and anger. Such selective impairment of fear perception was not present in the recognition of facial expression of emotion. Thus emotional perception varies according to the different aspects of emotions and the different modality of presentation (faces versus voices). This is consistent with the idea that there may be multiple emotion systems. The study of emotional perception in this unique case of bilateral involvement of hippocampus suggests that this structure may play a critical role in the recognition of fear in vocal expression, possibly dissociated from that of other emotions and from that of fear in facial expression. In regard of recent data suggesting that the amygdala is playing a role in the recognition of fear in the auditory as well as in the visual modality this could suggest that the hippocampus may be part of the auditory pathway of fear recognition.

Stability of facial emotion recognition performance in bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Martino, Diego J; Samamé, Cecilia; Strejilevich, Sergio A

2016-09-30

The aim of this study was to assess the performance in emotional processing over time in a sample of euthymic patients with bipolar disorder (BD). Performance in the facial recognition of the six basic emotions (surprise, anger, sadness, happiness, disgust, and fear) did not change during a follow-up period of almost 7 years. These preliminary results suggest that performance in facial emotion recognition might be stable over time in BD. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facial Emotion Recognition in Child Psychiatry: A Systematic Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Collin, Lisa; Bindra, Jasmeet; Raju, Monika; Gillberg, Christopher; Minnis, Helen

2013-01-01

This review focuses on facial affect (emotion) recognition in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders other than autism. A systematic search, using PRISMA guidelines, was conducted to identify original articles published prior to October 2011 pertaining to face recognition tasks in case-control studies. Used in the qualitative…

Age, gender, and puberty influence the development of facial emotion recognition.

PubMed

Lawrence, Kate; Campbell, Ruth; Skuse, David

2015-01-01

Our ability to differentiate between simple facial expressions of emotion develops between infancy and early adulthood, yet few studies have explored the developmental trajectory of emotion recognition using a single methodology across a wide age-range. We investigated the development of emotion recognition abilities through childhood and adolescence, testing the hypothesis that children's ability to recognize simple emotions is modulated by chronological age, pubertal stage and gender. In order to establish norms, we assessed 478 children aged 6-16 years, using the Ekman-Friesen Pictures of Facial Affect. We then modeled these cross-sectional data in terms of competence in accurate recognition of the six emotions studied, when the positive correlation between emotion recognition and IQ was controlled. Significant linear trends were seen in children's ability to recognize facial expressions of happiness, surprise, fear, and disgust; there was improvement with increasing age. In contrast, for sad and angry expressions there is little or no change in accuracy over the age range 6-16 years; near-adult levels of competence are established by middle-childhood. In a sampled subset, pubertal status influenced the ability to recognize facial expressions of disgust and anger; there was an increase in competence from mid to late puberty, which occurred independently of age. A small female advantage was found in the recognition of some facial expressions. The normative data provided in this study will aid clinicians and researchers in assessing the emotion recognition abilities of children and will facilitate the identification of abnormalities in a skill that is often impaired in neurodevelopmental disorders. If emotion recognition abilities are a good model with which to understand adolescent development, then these results could have implications for the education, mental health provision and legal treatment of teenagers.

Age, gender, and puberty influence the development of facial emotion recognition

PubMed Central

Lawrence, Kate; Campbell, Ruth; Skuse, David

2015-01-01

Our ability to differentiate between simple facial expressions of emotion develops between infancy and early adulthood, yet few studies have explored the developmental trajectory of emotion recognition using a single methodology across a wide age-range. We investigated the development of emotion recognition abilities through childhood and adolescence, testing the hypothesis that children’s ability to recognize simple emotions is modulated by chronological age, pubertal stage and gender. In order to establish norms, we assessed 478 children aged 6–16 years, using the Ekman-Friesen Pictures of Facial Affect. We then modeled these cross-sectional data in terms of competence in accurate recognition of the six emotions studied, when the positive correlation between emotion recognition and IQ was controlled. Significant linear trends were seen in children’s ability to recognize facial expressions of happiness, surprise, fear, and disgust; there was improvement with increasing age. In contrast, for sad and angry expressions there is little or no change in accuracy over the age range 6–16 years; near-adult levels of competence are established by middle-childhood. In a sampled subset, pubertal status influenced the ability to recognize facial expressions of disgust and anger; there was an increase in competence from mid to late puberty, which occurred independently of age. A small female advantage was found in the recognition of some facial expressions. The normative data provided in this study will aid clinicians and researchers in assessing the emotion recognition abilities of children and will facilitate the identification of abnormalities in a skill that is often impaired in neurodevelopmental disorders. If emotion recognition abilities are a good model with which to understand adolescent development, then these results could have implications for the education, mental health provision and legal treatment of teenagers. PMID:26136697

Recognizing Action Units for Facial Expression Analysis

PubMed Central

Tian, Ying-li; Kanade, Takeo; Cohn, Jeffrey F.

2010-01-01

Most automatic expression analysis systems attempt to recognize a small set of prototypic expressions, such as happiness, anger, surprise, and fear. Such prototypic expressions, however, occur rather infrequently. Human emotions and intentions are more often communicated by changes in one or a few discrete facial features. In this paper, we develop an Automatic Face Analysis (AFA) system to analyze facial expressions based on both permanent facial features (brows, eyes, mouth) and transient facial features (deepening of facial furrows) in a nearly frontal-view face image sequence. The AFA system recognizes fine-grained changes in facial expression into action units (AUs) of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), instead of a few prototypic expressions. Multistate face and facial component models are proposed for tracking and modeling the various facial features, including lips, eyes, brows, cheeks, and furrows. During tracking, detailed parametric descriptions of the facial features are extracted. With these parameters as the inputs, a group of action units (neutral expression, six upper face AUs and 10 lower face AUs) are recognized whether they occur alone or in combinations. The system has achieved average recognition rates of 96.4 percent (95.4 percent if neutral expressions are excluded) for upper face AUs and 96.7 percent (95.6 percent with neutral expressions excluded) for lower face AUs. The generalizability of the system has been tested by using independent image databases collected and FACS-coded for ground-truth by different research teams. PMID:25210210

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.

Dissociation between recognition and detection advantage for facial expressions: a meta-analysis.

PubMed

Nummenmaa, Lauri; Calvo, Manuel G

2015-04-01

Happy facial expressions are recognized faster and more accurately than other expressions in categorization tasks, whereas detection in visual search tasks is widely believed to be faster for angry than happy faces. We used meta-analytic techniques for resolving this categorization versus detection advantage discrepancy for positive versus negative facial expressions. Effect sizes were computed on the basis of the r statistic for a total of 34 recognition studies with 3,561 participants and 37 visual search studies with 2,455 participants, yielding a total of 41 effect sizes for recognition accuracy, 25 for recognition speed, and 125 for visual search speed. Random effects meta-analysis was conducted to estimate effect sizes at population level. For recognition tasks, an advantage in recognition accuracy and speed for happy expressions was found for all stimulus types. In contrast, for visual search tasks, moderator analysis revealed that a happy face detection advantage was restricted to photographic faces, whereas a clear angry face advantage was found for schematic and "smiley" faces. Robust detection advantage for nonhappy faces was observed even when stimulus emotionality was distorted by inversion or rearrangement of the facial features, suggesting that visual features primarily drive the search. We conclude that the recognition advantage for happy faces is a genuine phenomenon related to processing of facial expression category and affective valence. In contrast, detection advantages toward either happy (photographic stimuli) or nonhappy (schematic) faces is contingent on visual stimulus features rather than facial expression, and may not involve categorical or affective processing. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Intact anger recognition in depression despite aberrant visual facial information usage.

PubMed

Clark, Cameron M; Chiu, Carina G; Diaz, Ruth L; Goghari, Vina M

2014-08-01

Previous literature has indicated abnormalities in facial emotion recognition abilities, as well as deficits in basic visual processes in major depression. However, the literature is unclear on a number of important factors including whether or not these abnormalities represent deficient or enhanced emotion recognition abilities compared to control populations, and the degree to which basic visual deficits might impact this process. The present study investigated emotion recognition abilities for angry versus neutral facial expressions in a sample of undergraduate students with Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) scores indicative of moderate depression (i.e., ≥20), compared to matched low-BDI-II score (i.e., ≤2) controls via the Bubbles Facial Emotion Perception Task. Results indicated unimpaired behavioural performance in discriminating angry from neutral expressions in the high depressive symptoms group relative to the minimal depressive symptoms group, despite evidence of an abnormal pattern of visual facial information usage. The generalizability of the current findings is limited by the highly structured nature of the facial emotion recognition task used, as well as the use of an analog sample undergraduates scoring high in self-rated symptoms of depression rather than a clinical sample. Our findings suggest that basic visual processes are involved in emotion recognition abnormalities in depression, demonstrating consistency with the emotion recognition literature in other psychopathologies (e.g., schizophrenia, autism, social anxiety). Future research should seek to replicate these findings in clinical populations with major depression, and assess the association between aberrant face gaze behaviours and symptom severity and social functioning. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Is the emotion recognition deficit associated with frontotemporal dementia caused by selective inattention to diagnostic facial features?

PubMed

Oliver, Lindsay D; Virani, Karim; Finger, Elizabeth C; Mitchell, Derek G V

2014-07-01

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder characterized by severely impaired social and emotional behaviour, including emotion recognition deficits. Though fear recognition impairments seen in particular neurological and developmental disorders can be ameliorated by reallocating attention to critical facial features, the possibility that similar benefits can be conferred to patients with FTD has yet to be explored. In the current study, we examined the impact of presenting distinct regions of the face (whole face, eyes-only, and eyes-removed) on the ability to recognize expressions of anger, fear, disgust, and happiness in 24 patients with FTD and 24 healthy controls. A recognition deficit was demonstrated across emotions by patients with FTD relative to controls. Crucially, removal of diagnostic facial features resulted in an appropriate decline in performance for both groups; furthermore, patients with FTD demonstrated a lack of disproportionate improvement in emotion recognition accuracy as a result of isolating critical facial features relative to controls. Thus, unlike some neurological and developmental disorders featuring amygdala dysfunction, the emotion recognition deficit observed in FTD is not likely driven by selective inattention to critical facial features. Patients with FTD also mislabelled negative facial expressions as happy more often than controls, providing further evidence for abnormalities in the representation of positive affect in FTD. This work suggests that the emotional expression recognition deficit associated with FTD is unlikely to be rectified by adjusting selective attention to diagnostic features, as has proven useful in other select disorders. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In-the-wild facial expression recognition in extreme poses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Fei; Zhang, Qian; Zheng, Chi; Qiu, Guoping

2018-04-01

In the computer research area, facial expression recognition is a hot research problem. Recent years, the research has moved from the lab environment to in-the-wild circumstances. It is challenging, especially under extreme poses. But current expression detection systems are trying to avoid the pose effects and gain the general applicable ability. In this work, we solve the problem in the opposite approach. We consider the head poses and detect the expressions within special head poses. Our work includes two parts: detect the head pose and group it into one pre-defined head pose class; do facial expression recognize within each pose class. Our experiments show that the recognition results with pose class grouping are much better than that of direct recognition without considering poses. We combine the hand-crafted features, SIFT, LBP and geometric feature, with deep learning feature as the representation of the expressions. The handcrafted features are added into the deep learning framework along with the high level deep learning features. As a comparison, we implement SVM and random forest to as the prediction models. To train and test our methodology, we labeled the face dataset with 6 basic expressions.

The Relation of Facial Affect Recognition and Empathy to Delinquency in Youth Offenders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carr, Mary B.; Lutjemeier, John A.

2005-01-01

Associations among facial affect recognition, empathy, and self-reported delinquency were studied in a sample of 29 male youth offenders at a probation placement facility. Youth offenders were asked to recognize facial expressions of emotions from adult faces, child faces, and cartoon faces. Youth offenders also responded to a series of statements…

Facial affect recognition in symptomatically remitted patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Yalcin-Siedentopf, Nursen; Hoertnagl, Christine M; Biedermann, Falko; Baumgartner, Susanne; Deisenhammer, Eberhard A; Hausmann, Armand; Kaufmann, Alexandra; Kemmler, Georg; Mühlbacher, Moritz; Rauch, Anna-Sophia; Fleischhacker, W Wolfgang; Hofer, Alex

2014-02-01

Both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD) have consistently been associated with deficits in facial affect recognition (FAR). These impairments have been related to various aspects of social competence and functioning and are relatively stable over time. However, individuals in remission may outperform patients experiencing an acute phase of the disorders. The present study directly contrasted FAR in symptomatically remitted patients with schizophrenia or BD and healthy volunteers and investigated its relationship with patients' outcomes. Compared to healthy control subjects, schizophrenia patients were impaired in the recognition of angry, disgusted, sad and happy facial expressions, while BD patients showed deficits only in the recognition of disgusted and happy facial expressions. When directly comparing the two patient groups individuals suffering from BD outperformed those with schizophrenia in the recognition of expressions depicting anger. There was no significant association between affect recognition abilities and symptomatic or psychosocial outcomes in schizophrenia patients. Among BD patients, relatively higher depression scores were associated with impairments in both the identification of happy faces and psychosocial functioning. Overall, our findings indicate that during periods of symptomatic remission the recognition of facial affect may be less impaired in patients with BD than in those suffering from schizophrenia. However, in the psychosocial context BD patients seem to be more sensitive to residual symptomatology. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. 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.

SparCLeS: dynamic l₁ sparse classifiers with level sets for robust beard/moustache detection and segmentation.

PubMed

Le, T Hoang Ngan; Luu, Khoa; Savvides, Marios

2013-08-01

Robust facial hair detection and segmentation is a highly valued soft biometric attribute for carrying out forensic facial analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel and fully automatic system, called SparCLeS, for beard/moustache detection and segmentation in challenging facial images. SparCLeS uses the multiscale self-quotient (MSQ) algorithm to preprocess facial images and deal with illumination variation. Histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) features are extracted from the preprocessed images and a dynamic sparse classifier is built using these features to classify a facial region as either containing skin or facial hair. A level set based approach, which makes use of the advantages of both global and local information, is then used to segment the regions of a face containing facial hair. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed system in detecting and segmenting facial hair regions in images drawn from three databases, i.e., the NIST Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge (MBGC) still face database, the NIST Color Facial Recognition Technology FERET database, and the Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) database.

[Recognition of facial expression of emotions in Parkinson's disease: a theoretical review].

PubMed

Alonso-Recio, L; Serrano-Rodriguez, J M; Carvajal-Molina, F; Loeches-Alonso, A; Martin-Plasencia, P

2012-04-16

Emotional facial expression is a basic guide during social interaction and, therefore, alterations in their expression or recognition are important limitations for communication. To examine facial expression recognition abilities and their possible impairment in Parkinson's disease. First, we review the studies on this topic which have not found entirely similar results. Second, we analyze the factors that may explain these discrepancies and, in particular, as third objective, we consider the relationship between emotional recognition problems and cognitive impairment associated with the disease. Finally, we propose alternatives strategies for the development of studies that could clarify the state of these abilities in Parkinson's disease. Most studies suggest deficits in facial expression recognition, especially in those with negative emotional content. However, it is possible that these alterations are related to those that also appear in the course of the disease in other perceptual and executive processes. To advance in this issue, we consider necessary to design emotional recognition studies implicating differentially the executive or visuospatial processes, and/or contrasting cognitive abilities with facial expressions and non emotional stimuli. The precision of the status of these abilities, as well as increase our knowledge of the functional consequences of the characteristic brain damage in the disease, may indicate if we should pay special attention in their rehabilitation inside the programs implemented.

Facial expressions recognition with an emotion expressive robotic head

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Doroftei, I.; Adascalitei, F.; Lefeber, D.; Vanderborght, B.; Doroftei, I. A.

2016-08-01

The purpose of this study is to present the preliminary steps in facial expressions recognition with a new version of an expressive social robotic head. So, in a first phase, our main goal was to reach a minimum level of emotional expressiveness in order to obtain nonverbal communication between the robot and human by building six basic facial expressions. To evaluate the facial expressions, the robot was used in some preliminary user studies, among children and adults.

Facial recognition software success rates for the identification of 3D surface reconstructed facial images: implications for patient privacy and security.

PubMed

Mazura, Jan C; Juluru, Krishna; Chen, Joseph J; Morgan, Tara A; John, Majnu; Siegel, Eliot L

2012-06-01

Image de-identification has focused on the removal of textual protected health information (PHI). Surface reconstructions of the face have the potential to reveal a subject's identity even when textual PHI is absent. This study assessed the ability of a computer application to match research subjects' 3D facial reconstructions with conventional photographs of their face. In a prospective study, 29 subjects underwent CT scans of the head and had frontal digital photographs of their face taken. Facial reconstructions of each CT dataset were generated on a 3D workstation. In phase 1, photographs of the 29 subjects undergoing CT scans were added to a digital directory and tested for recognition using facial recognition software. In phases 2-4, additional photographs were added in groups of 50 to increase the pool of possible matches and the test for recognition was repeated. As an internal control, photographs of all subjects were tested for recognition against an identical photograph. Of 3D reconstructions, 27.5% were matched correctly to corresponding photographs (95% upper CL, 40.1%). All study subject photographs were matched correctly to identical photographs (95% lower CL, 88.6%). Of 3D reconstructions, 96.6% were recognized simply as a face by the software (95% lower CL, 83.5%). Facial recognition software has the potential to recognize features on 3D CT surface reconstructions and match these with photographs, with implications for PHI.

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.

Monitoring of facial stress during space flight: Optical computer recognition combining discriminative and generative methods

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dinges, David F.; Venkataraman, Sundara; McGlinchey, Eleanor L.; Metaxas, Dimitris N.

2007-02-01

Astronauts are required to perform mission-critical tasks at a high level of functional capability throughout spaceflight. Stressors can compromise their ability to do so, making early objective detection of neurobehavioral problems in spaceflight a priority. Computer optical approaches offer a completely unobtrusive way to detect distress during critical operations in space flight. A methodology was developed and a study completed to determine whether optical computer recognition algorithms could be used to discriminate facial expressions during stress induced by performance demands. Stress recognition from a facial image sequence is a subject that has not received much attention although it is an important problem for many applications beyond space flight (security, human-computer interaction, etc.). This paper proposes a comprehensive method to detect stress from facial image sequences by using a model-based tracker. The image sequences were captured as subjects underwent a battery of psychological tests under high- and low-stress conditions. A cue integration-based tracking system accurately captured the rigid and non-rigid parameters of different parts of the face (eyebrows, lips). The labeled sequences were used to train the recognition system, which consisted of generative (hidden Markov model) and discriminative (support vector machine) parts that yield results superior to using either approach individually. The current optical algorithm methods performed at a 68% accuracy rate in an experimental study of 60 healthy adults undergoing periods of high-stress versus low-stress performance demands. Accuracy and practical feasibility of the technique is being improved further with automatic multi-resolution selection for the discretization of the mask, and automated face detection and mask initialization algorithms.

Muecas: A Multi-Sensor Robotic Head for Affective Human Robot Interaction and Imitation

PubMed Central

Cid, Felipe; Moreno, Jose; Bustos, Pablo; Núñez, Pedro

2014-01-01

This paper presents a multi-sensor humanoid robotic head for human robot interaction. The design of the robotic head, Muecas, is based on ongoing research on the mechanisms of perception and imitation of human expressions and emotions. These mechanisms allow direct interaction between the robot and its human companion through the different natural language modalities: speech, body language and facial expressions. The robotic head has 12 degrees of freedom, in a human-like configuration, including eyes, eyebrows, mouth and neck, and has been designed and built entirely by IADeX (Engineering, Automation and Design of Extremadura) and RoboLab. A detailed description of its kinematics is provided along with the design of the most complex controllers. Muecas can be directly controlled by FACS (Facial Action Coding System), the de facto standard for facial expression recognition and synthesis. This feature facilitates its use by third party platforms and encourages the development of imitation and of goal-based systems. Imitation systems learn from the user, while goal-based ones use planning techniques to drive the user towards a final desired state. To show the flexibility and reliability of the robotic head, the paper presents a software architecture that is able to detect, recognize, classify and generate facial expressions in real time using FACS. This system has been implemented using the robotics framework, RoboComp, which provides hardware-independent access to the sensors in the head. Finally, the paper presents experimental results showing the real-time functioning of the whole system, including recognition and imitation of human facial expressions. PMID:24787636

Mapping the impairment in decoding static facial expressions of emotion in prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Fiset, Daniel; Blais, Caroline; Royer, Jessica; Richoz, Anne-Raphaëlle; Dugas, Gabrielle; Caldara, Roberto

2017-08-01

Acquired prosopagnosia is characterized by a deficit in face recognition due to diverse brain lesions, but interestingly most prosopagnosic patients suffering from posterior lesions use the mouth instead of the eyes for face identification. Whether this bias is present for the recognition of facial expressions of emotion has not yet been addressed. We tested PS, a pure case of acquired prosopagnosia with bilateral occipitotemporal lesions anatomically sparing the regions dedicated for facial expression recognition. PS used mostly the mouth to recognize facial expressions even when the eye area was the most diagnostic. Moreover, PS directed most of her fixations towards the mouth. Her impairment was still largely present when she was instructed to look at the eyes, or when she was forced to look at them. Control participants showed a performance comparable to PS when only the lower part of the face was available. These observations suggest that the deficits observed in PS with static images are not solely attentional, but are rooted at the level of facial information use. This study corroborates neuroimaging findings suggesting that the Occipital Face Area might play a critical role in extracting facial features that are integrated for both face identification and facial expression recognition in static images. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

Facing the Problem: Impaired Emotion Recognition During Multimodal Social Information Processing in Borderline Personality Disorder.

PubMed

Niedtfeld, Inga; Defiebre, Nadine; Regenbogen, Christina; Mier, Daniela; Fenske, Sabrina; Kirsch, Peter; Lis, Stefanie; Schmahl, Christian

2017-04-01

Previous research has revealed alterations and deficits in facial emotion recognition in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). During interpersonal communication in daily life, social signals such as speech content, variation in prosody, and facial expression need to be considered simultaneously. We hypothesized that deficits in higher level integration of social stimuli contribute to difficulties in emotion recognition in BPD, and heightened arousal might explain this effect. Thirty-one patients with BPD and thirty-one healthy controls were asked to identify emotions in short video clips, which were designed to represent different combinations of the three communication channels: facial expression, speech content, and prosody. Skin conductance was recorded as a measure of sympathetic arousal, while controlling for state dissociation. Patients with BPD showed lower mean accuracy scores than healthy control subjects in all conditions comprising emotional facial expressions. This was true for the condition with facial expression only, and for the combination of all three communication channels. Electrodermal responses were enhanced in BPD only in response to auditory stimuli. In line with the major body of facial emotion recognition studies, we conclude that deficits in the interpretation of facial expressions lead to the difficulties observed in multimodal emotion processing in BPD.

Influence of Emotional Facial Expressions on 3-5-Year-Olds' Face Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Freitag, Claudia; Schwarzer, Gudrun

2011-01-01

Three experiments examined 3- and 5-year-olds' recognition of faces in constant and varied emotional expressions. Children were asked to identify repeatedly presented target faces, distinguishing them from distractor faces, during an immediate recognition test and during delayed assessments after 10 min and one week. Emotional facial expression…

3D facial expression recognition using maximum relevance minimum redundancy geometrical features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rabiu, Habibu; Saripan, M. Iqbal; Mashohor, Syamsiah; Marhaban, Mohd Hamiruce

2012-12-01

In recent years, facial expression recognition (FER) has become an attractive research area, which besides the fundamental challenges, it poses, finds application in areas, such as human-computer interaction, clinical psychology, lie detection, pain assessment, and neurology. Generally the approaches to FER consist of three main steps: face detection, feature extraction and expression recognition. The recognition accuracy of FER hinges immensely on the relevance of the selected features in representing the target expressions. In this article, we present a person and gender independent 3D facial expression recognition method, using maximum relevance minimum redundancy geometrical features. The aim is to detect a compact set of features that sufficiently represents the most discriminative features between the target classes. Multi-class one-against-one SVM classifier was employed to recognize the seven facial expressions; neutral, happy, sad, angry, fear, disgust, and surprise. The average recognition accuracy of 92.2% was recorded. Furthermore, inter database homogeneity was investigated between two independent databases the BU-3DFE and UPM-3DFE the results showed a strong homogeneity between the two databases.

Processing environmental stimuli in paranoid schizophrenia: recognizing facial emotions and performing executive functions.

PubMed

Yu, Shao Hua; Zhu, Jun Peng; Xu, You; Zheng, Lei Lei; Chai, Hao; He, Wei; Liu, Wei Bo; Li, Hui Chun; Wang, Wei

2012-12-01

To study the contribution of executive function to abnormal recognition of facial expressions of emotion in schizophrenia patients. Abnormal recognition of facial expressions of emotion was assayed according to Japanese and Caucasian facial expressions of emotion (JACFEE), Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST), positive and negative symptom scale, and Hamilton anxiety and depression scale, respectively, in 88 paranoid schizophrenia patients and 75 healthy volunteers. Patients scored higher on the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale and the Hamilton Anxiety and Depression Scales, displayed lower JACFEE recognition accuracies and poorer WCST performances. The JACFEE recognition accuracy of contempt and disgust was negatively correlated with the negative symptom scale score while the recognition accuracy of fear was positively with the positive symptom scale score and the recognition accuracy of surprise was negatively with the general psychopathology score in patients. Moreover, the WCST could predict the JACFEE recognition accuracy of contempt, disgust, and sadness in patients, and the perseverative errors negatively predicted the recognition accuracy of sadness in healthy volunteers. The JACFEE recognition accuracy of sadness could predict the WCST categories in paranoid schizophrenia patients. Recognition accuracy of social-/moral emotions, such as contempt, disgust and sadness is related to the executive function in paranoid schizophrenia patients, especially when regarding sadness. Copyright © 2012 The Editorial Board of Biomedical and Environmental Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Recognizing Dynamic Faces in Malaysian Chinese Participants.

PubMed

Tan, Chrystalle B Y; Sheppard, Elizabeth; Stephen, Ian D

2016-03-01

High performance level in face recognition studies does not seem to be replicable in real-life situations possibly because of the artificial nature of laboratory studies. Recognizing faces in natural social situations may be a more challenging task, as it involves constant examination of dynamic facial motions that may alter facial structure vital to the recognition of unfamiliar faces. Because of the incongruences of recognition performance, the current study developed stimuli that closely represent natural social situations to yield results that more accurately reflect observers' performance in real-life settings. Naturalistic stimuli of African, East Asian, and Western Caucasian actors introducing themselves were presented to investigate Malaysian Chinese participants' recognition sensitivity and looking strategies when performing a face recognition task. When perceiving dynamic facial stimuli, participants fixated most on the nose, followed by the mouth then the eyes. Focusing on the nose may have enabled participants to gain a more holistic view of actors' facial and head movements, which proved to be beneficial in recognizing identities. Participants recognized all three races of faces equally well. The current results, which differed from a previous static face recognition study, may be a more accurate reflection of observers' recognition abilities and looking strategies. © The Author(s) 2015.

Recognizing Faces Like Humans

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-02-01

1995. 3. B. Kamgar-Parsi and B. Kamgar-Parsi, Methods of facial recognition , US Patent pending, 2007. 4. www.frvt.org/FRGC/ Homepage of the Facial Recognition Grand Challenge project. Last accessed 4 February 2010. c 2010 SPIE

Cerebro-facio-thoracic dysplasia (Pascual-Castroviejo syndrome): Identification of a novel mutation, use of facial recognition analysis, and review of the literature.

PubMed

Tender, Jennifer A F; Ferreira, Carlos R

2018-04-13

Cerebro-facio-thoracic dysplasia (CFTD) is a rare, autosomal recessive disorder characterized by facial dysmorphism, cognitive impairment and distinct skeletal anomalies and has been linked to the TMCO1 defect syndrome. To describe two siblings with features consistent with CFTD with a novel homozygous p.Arg114* pathogenic variant in the TMCO1 gene. We conducted a literature review and summarized the clinical features and laboratory results of two siblings with a novel pathogenic variant in the TMCO1 gene. Facial recognition analysis was utilized to assess the specificity of facial traits. The novel homozygous p.Arg114* pathogenic variant in the TMCO1 gene is responsible for the clinical features of CFTD in two siblings. Facial recognition analysis allows unambiguous distinction of this syndrome against controls.

Reaction Time of Facial Affect Recognition in Asperger's Disorder for Cartoon and Real, Static and Moving Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miyahara, Motohide; Bray, Anne; Tsujii, Masatsugu; Fujita, Chikako; Sugiyama, Toshiro

2007-01-01

This study used a choice reaction-time paradigm to test the perceived impairment of facial affect recognition in Asperger's disorder. Twenty teenagers with Asperger's disorder and 20 controls were compared with respect to the latency and accuracy of response to happy or disgusted facial expressions, presented in cartoon or real images and in…

Effect of positive emotion on consolidation of memory for faces: the modulation of facial valence and facial gender.

PubMed

Wang, Bo

2013-01-01

Studies have shown that emotion elicited after learning enhances memory consolidation. However, no prior studies have used facial photos as stimuli. This study examined the effect of post-learning positive emotion on consolidation of memory for faces. During the learning participants viewed neutral, positive, or negative faces. Then they were assigned to a condition in which they either watched a 9-minute positive video clip, or a 9-minute neutral video. Then 30 minutes after the learning participants took a surprise memory test, in which they made "remember", "know", and "new" judgements. The findings are: (1) Positive emotion enhanced consolidation of recognition for negative male faces, but impaired consolidation of recognition for negative female faces; (2) For males, recognition for negative faces was equivalent to that for positive faces; for females, recognition for negative faces was better than that for positive faces. Our study provides the important evidence that effect of post-learning emotion on memory consolidation can extend to facial stimuli and such an effect can be modulated by facial valence and facial gender. The findings may shed light on establishing models concerning the influence of emotion on memory consolidation.

Oxytocin improves facial emotion recognition in young adults with antisocial personality disorder.

PubMed

Timmermann, Marion; Jeung, Haang; Schmitt, Ruth; Boll, Sabrina; Freitag, Christine M; Bertsch, Katja; Herpertz, Sabine C

2017-11-01

Deficient facial emotion recognition has been suggested to underlie aggression in individuals with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). As the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been shown to improve facial emotion recognition, it might also exert beneficial effects in individuals providing so much harm to the society. In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial, 22 individuals with ASPD and 29 healthy control (HC) subjects (matched for age, sex, intelligence, and education) were intranasally administered either OT (24 IU) or a placebo 45min before participating in an emotion classification paradigm with fearful, angry, and happy faces. We assessed the number of correct classifications and reaction times as indicators of emotion recognition ability. Significant group×substance×emotion interactions were found in correct classifications and reaction times. Compared to HC, individuals with ASPD showed deficits in recognizing fearful and happy faces; these group differences were no longer observable under OT. Additionally, reaction times for angry faces differed significantly between the ASPD and HC group in the placebo condition. This effect was mainly driven by longer reaction times in HC subjects after placebo administration compared to OT administration while individuals with ASPD revealed descriptively the contrary response pattern. Our data indicate an improvement of the recognition of fearful and happy facial expressions by OT in young adults with ASPD. Particularly the increased recognition of facial fear is of high importance since the correct perception of distress signals in others is thought to inhibit aggression. Beneficial effects of OT might be further mediated by improved recognition of facial happiness probably reflecting increased social reward responsiveness. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Wavelet filtered shifted phase-encoded joint transform correlation for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moniruzzaman, Md.; Alam, Mohammad S.

2017-05-01

A new wavelet-filtered-based Shifted- phase-encoded Joint Transform Correlation (WPJTC) technique has been proposed for efficient face recognition. The proposed technique uses discrete wavelet decomposition for preprocessing and can effectively accommodate various 3D facial distortions, effects of noise, and illumination variations. After analyzing different forms of wavelet basis functions, an optimal method has been proposed by considering the discrimination capability and processing speed as performance trade-offs. The proposed technique yields better correlation discrimination compared to alternate pattern recognition techniques such as phase-shifted phase-encoded fringe-adjusted joint transform correlator. The performance of the proposed WPJTC has been tested using the Yale facial database and extended Yale facial database under different environments such as illumination variation, noise, and 3D changes in facial expressions. Test results show that the proposed WPJTC yields better performance compared to alternate JTC based face recognition techniques.

Individual differences in the recognition of facial expressions: an event-related potentials study.

PubMed

Tamamiya, Yoshiyuki; Hiraki, Kazuo

2013-01-01

Previous studies have shown that early posterior components of event-related potentials (ERPs) are modulated by facial expressions. The goal of the current study was to investigate individual differences in the recognition of facial expressions by examining the relationship between ERP components and the discrimination of facial expressions. Pictures of 3 facial expressions (angry, happy, and neutral) were presented to 36 young adults during ERP recording. Participants were asked to respond with a button press as soon as they recognized the expression depicted. A multiple regression analysis, where ERP components were set as predictor variables, assessed hits and reaction times in response to the facial expressions as dependent variables. The N170 amplitudes significantly predicted for accuracy of angry and happy expressions, and the N170 latencies were predictive for accuracy of neutral expressions. The P2 amplitudes significantly predicted reaction time. The P2 latencies significantly predicted reaction times only for neutral faces. These results suggest that individual differences in the recognition of facial expressions emerge from early components in visual processing.

Specific Patterns of Emotion Recognition from Faces in Children with ASD: Results of a Cross-Modal Matching Paradigm

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Golan, Ofer; Gordon, Ilanit; Fichman, Keren; Keinan, Giora

2018-01-01

Children with ASD show emotion recognition difficulties, as part of their social communication deficits. We examined facial emotion recognition (FER) in intellectually disabled children with ASD and in younger typically developing (TD) controls, matched on mental age. Our emotion-matching paradigm employed three different modalities: facial, vocal…

Emotion Recognition in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuusikko, Sanna; Haapsamo, Helena; Jansson-Verkasalo, Eira; Hurtig, Tuula; Mattila, Marja-Leena; Ebeling, Hanna; Jussila, Katja; Bolte, Sven; Moilanen, Irma

2009-01-01

We examined upper facial basic emotion recognition in 57 subjects with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (M = 13.5 years) and 33 typically developing controls (M = 14.3 years) by using a standardized computer-aided measure (The Frankfurt Test and Training of Facial Affect Recognition, FEFA). The ASD group scored lower than controls on the total…

Optimal Geometrical Set for Automated Marker Placement to Virtualized Real-Time Facial Emotions

PubMed Central

Maruthapillai, Vasanthan; Murugappan, Murugappan

2016-01-01

In recent years, real-time face recognition has been a major topic of interest in developing intelligent human-machine interaction systems. Over the past several decades, researchers have proposed different algorithms for facial expression recognition, but there has been little focus on detection in real-time scenarios. The present work proposes a new algorithmic method of automated marker placement used to classify six facial expressions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. Emotional facial expressions were captured using a webcam, while the proposed algorithm placed a set of eight virtual markers on each subject’s face. Facial feature extraction methods, including marker distance (distance between each marker to the center of the face) and change in marker distance (change in distance between the original and new marker positions), were used to extract three statistical features (mean, variance, and root mean square) from the real-time video sequence. The initial position of each marker was subjected to the optical flow algorithm for marker tracking with each emotional facial expression. Finally, the extracted statistical features were mapped into corresponding emotional facial expressions using two simple non-linear classifiers, K-nearest neighbor and probabilistic neural network. The results indicate that the proposed automated marker placement algorithm effectively placed eight virtual markers on each subject’s face and gave a maximum mean emotion classification rate of 96.94% using the probabilistic neural network. PMID:26859884

Optimal Geometrical Set for Automated Marker Placement to Virtualized Real-Time Facial Emotions.

PubMed

Maruthapillai, Vasanthan; Murugappan, Murugappan

2016-01-01

In recent years, real-time face recognition has been a major topic of interest in developing intelligent human-machine interaction systems. Over the past several decades, researchers have proposed different algorithms for facial expression recognition, but there has been little focus on detection in real-time scenarios. The present work proposes a new algorithmic method of automated marker placement used to classify six facial expressions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. Emotional facial expressions were captured using a webcam, while the proposed algorithm placed a set of eight virtual markers on each subject's face. Facial feature extraction methods, including marker distance (distance between each marker to the center of the face) and change in marker distance (change in distance between the original and new marker positions), were used to extract three statistical features (mean, variance, and root mean square) from the real-time video sequence. The initial position of each marker was subjected to the optical flow algorithm for marker tracking with each emotional facial expression. Finally, the extracted statistical features were mapped into corresponding emotional facial expressions using two simple non-linear classifiers, K-nearest neighbor and probabilistic neural network. The results indicate that the proposed automated marker placement algorithm effectively placed eight virtual markers on each subject's face and gave a maximum mean emotion classification rate of 96.94% using the probabilistic neural network.

A Fuzzy Aproach For Facial Emotion Recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gîlcă, Gheorghe; Bîzdoacă, Nicu-George

2015-09-01

This article deals with an emotion recognition system based on the fuzzy sets. Human faces are detected in images with the Viola - Jones algorithm and for its tracking in video sequences we used the Camshift algorithm. The detected human faces are transferred to the decisional fuzzy system, which is based on the variable fuzzyfication measurements of the face: eyebrow, eyelid and mouth. The system can easily determine the emotional state of a person.

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.

Emotion recognition impairment and apathy after subthalamic nucleus stimulation in Parkinson's disease have separate neural substrates.

PubMed

Drapier, D; Péron, J; Leray, E; Sauleau, P; Biseul, I; Drapier, S; Le Jeune, F; Travers, D; Bourguignon, A; Haegelen, C; Millet, B; Vérin, M

2008-09-01

To test the hypothesis that emotion recognition and apathy share the same functional circuit involving the subthalamic nucleus (STN). A consecutive series of 17 patients with advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) was assessed 3 months before (M-3) and 3 months (M+3) after STN deep brain stimulation (DBS). Mean (+/-S.D.) age at surgery was 56.9 (8.7) years. Mean disease duration at surgery was 11.8 (2.6) years. Apathy was measured using the Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES) at both M-3 and M3. Patients were also assessed using a computerised paradigm of facial emotion recognition [Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1976). Pictures of facial affect. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologist Press] before and after STN DBS. Prior to this, the Benton Facial Recognition Test was used to check that the ability to perceive faces was intact. Apathy had significantly worsened at M3 (42.5+/-8.9, p=0.006) after STN-DBS, in relation to the preoperative assessment (37.2+/-5.5). There was also a significant reduction in recognition percentages for facial expressions of fear (43.1%+/-22.9 vs. 61.6%+/-21.4, p=0.022) and sadness (52.7%+/-19.1 vs. 67.6%+/-22.8, p=0.031) after STN DBS. However, the postoperative worsening of apathy and emotion recognition impairment were not correlated. Our results confirm that the STN is involved in both the apathy and emotion recognition networks. However, the absence of any correlation between apathy and emotion recognition impairment suggests that the worsening of apathy following surgery could not be explained by a lack of facial emotion recognition and that its behavioural and cognitive components should therefore also be taken into consideration.

Does vigilance to pain make individuals experts in facial recognition of pain?

PubMed

Baum, Corinna; Kappesser, Judith; Schneider, Raphaela; Lautenbacher, Stefan

2013-01-01

It is well known that individual factors are important in the facial recognition of pain. However, it is unclear whether vigilance to pain as a pain-related attentional mechanism is among these relevant factors. Vigilance to pain may have two different effects on the recognition of facial pain expressions: pain-vigilant individuals may detect pain faces better but overinclude other facial displays, misinterpreting them as expressing pain; or they may be true experts in discriminating between pain and other facial expressions. The present study aimed to test these two hypotheses. Furthermore, pain vigilance was assumed to be a distinct predictor, the impact of which on recognition cannot be completely replaced by related concepts such as pain catastrophizing and fear of pain. Photographs of neutral, happy, angry and pain facial expressions were presented to 40 healthy participants, who were asked to classify them into the appropriate emotion categories and provide a confidence rating for each classification. Additionally, potential predictors of the discrimination performance for pain and anger faces - pain vigilance, pain-related catastrophizing, fear of pain--were assessed using self-report questionnaires. Pain-vigilant participants classified pain faces more accurately and did not misclassify anger as pain faces more frequently. However, vigilance to pain was not related to the confidence of recognition ratings. Pain catastrophizing and fear of pain did not account for the recognition performance. Moderate pain vigilance, as assessed in the present study, appears to be associated with appropriate detection of pain-related cues and not necessarily with the overinclusion of other negative cues.

Does vigilance to pain make individuals experts in facial recognition of pain?

PubMed Central

Baum, Corinna; Kappesser, Judith; Schneider, Raphaela; Lautenbacher, Stefan

2013-01-01

BACKGROUND: It is well known that individual factors are important in the facial recognition of pain. However, it is unclear whether vigilance to pain as a pain-related attentional mechanism is among these relevant factors. OBJECTIVES: Vigilance to pain may have two different effects on the recognition of facial pain expressions: pain-vigilant individuals may detect pain faces better but overinclude other facial displays, misinterpreting them as expressing pain; or they may be true experts in discriminating between pain and other facial expressions. The present study aimed to test these two hypotheses. Furthermore, pain vigilance was assumed to be a distinct predictor, the impact of which on recognition cannot be completely replaced by related concepts such as pain catastrophizing and fear of pain. METHODS: Photographs of neutral, happy, angry and pain facial expressions were presented to 40 healthy participants, who were asked to classify them into the appropriate emotion categories and provide a confidence rating for each classification. Additionally, potential predictors of the discrimination performance for pain and anger faces – pain vigilance, pain-related catastrophizing, fear of pain – were assessed using self-report questionnaires. RESULTS: Pain-vigilant participants classified pain faces more accurately and did not misclassify anger as pain faces more frequently. However, vigilance to pain was not related to the confidence of recognition ratings. Pain catastrophizing and fear of pain did not account for the recognition performance. CONCLUSIONS: Moderate pain vigilance, as assessed in the present study, appears to be associated with appropriate detection of pain-related cues and not necessarily with the overinclusion of other negative cues. PMID:23717826

A comparison of the effects of a beta-adrenergic blocker and a benzodiazepine upon the recognition of human facial expressions.

PubMed

Zangara, Andrea; Blair, R J R; Curran, H Valerie

2002-08-01

Accumulating evidence from neuropsychological and neuroimaging research suggests that facial expressions are processed by at least partially separable neurocognitive systems. Recent evidence implies that the processing of different facial expressions may also be dissociable pharmacologically by GABAergic and noradrenergic compounds, although no study has directly compared the two types of drugs. The present study therefore directly compared the effects of a benzodiazepine with those of a beta-adrenergic blocker on the ability to recognise emotional expressions. A double-blind, independent group design was used with 45 volunteers to compare the effects of diazepam (15 mg) and metoprolol (50 mg) with matched placebo. Participants were presented with morphed facial expression stimuli and asked to identify which of the six basic emotions (sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, fear and surprise) were portrayed. Control measures of mood, pulse rate and word recall were also taken. Diazepam selectively impaired participants' ability to recognise expressions of both anger and fear but not other emotional expressions. Errors were mainly mistaking fear for surprise and disgust for anger. Metoprolol did not significantly affect facial expression recognition. These findings are interpreted as providing further support for the suggestion that there are dissociable systems responsible for processing emotional expressions. The results may have implications for understanding why 'paradoxical' aggression is sometimes elicited by benzodiazepines and for extending our psychological understanding of the anxiolytic effects of these drugs.

Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis for Facial Complexion in Traditional Chinese Medicine

PubMed Central

Zhao, Changbo; Li, Guo-zheng; Li, Fufeng; Wang, Zhi; Liu, Chang

2014-01-01

Facial diagnosis is an important and very intuitive diagnostic method in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). However, due to its qualitative and experience-based subjective property, traditional facial diagnosis has a certain limitation in clinical medicine. The computerized inspection method provides classification models to recognize facial complexion (including color and gloss). However, the previous works only study the classification problems of facial complexion, which is considered as qualitative analysis in our perspective. For quantitative analysis expectation, the severity or degree of facial complexion has not been reported yet. This paper aims to make both qualitative and quantitative analysis for facial complexion. We propose a novel feature representation of facial complexion from the whole face of patients. The features are established with four chromaticity bases splitting up by luminance distribution on CIELAB color space. Chromaticity bases are constructed from facial dominant color using two-level clustering; the optimal luminance distribution is simply implemented with experimental comparisons. The features are proved to be more distinctive than the previous facial complexion feature representation. Complexion recognition proceeds by training an SVM classifier with the optimal model parameters. In addition, further improved features are more developed by the weighted fusion of five local regions. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed features achieve highest facial color recognition performance with a total accuracy of 86.89%. And, furthermore, the proposed recognition framework could analyze both color and gloss degrees of facial complexion by learning a ranking function. PMID:24967342

Glucose enhancement of a facial recognition task in young adults.

PubMed

Metzger, M M

2000-02-01

Numerous studies have reported that glucose administration enhances memory processes in both elderly and young adult subjects. Although these studies have utilized a variety of procedures and paradigms, investigations of both young and elderly subjects have typically used verbal tasks (word list recall, paragraph recall, etc.). In the present study, the effect of glucose consumption on a nonverbal, facial recognition task in young adults was examined. Lemonade sweetened with either glucose (50 g) or saccharin (23.7 mg) was consumed by college students (mean age of 21.1 years) 15 min prior to a facial recognition task. The task consisted of a familiarization phase in which subjects were presented with "target" faces, followed immediately by a recognition phase in which subjects had to identify the targets among a random array of familiar target and novel "distractor" faces. Statistical analysis indicated that there were no differences on hit rate (target identification) for subjects who consumed either saccharin or glucose prior to the test. However, further analyses revealed that subjects who consumed glucose committed significantly fewer false alarms and had (marginally) higher d-prime scores (a signal detection measure) compared to subjects who consumed saccharin prior to the test. These results parallel a previous report demonstrating glucose enhancement of a facial recognition task in probable Alzheimer's patients; however, this is believed to be the first demonstration of glucose enhancement for a facial recognition task in healthy, young adults.

Brain correlates of musical and facial emotion recognition: evidence from the dementias.

PubMed

Hsieh, S; Hornberger, M; Piguet, O; Hodges, J R

2012-07-01

The recognition of facial expressions of emotion is impaired in semantic dementia (SD) and is associated with right-sided brain atrophy in areas known to be involved in emotion processing, notably the amygdala. Whether patients with SD also experience difficulty recognizing emotions conveyed by other media, such as music, is unclear. Prior studies have used excerpts of known music from classical or film repertoire but not unfamiliar melodies designed to convey distinct emotions. Patients with SD (n = 11), Alzheimer's disease (n = 12) and healthy control participants (n = 20) underwent tests of emotion recognition in two modalities: unfamiliar musical tunes and unknown faces as well as volumetric MRI. Patients with SD were most impaired with the recognition of facial and musical emotions, particularly for negative emotions. Voxel-based morphometry showed that the labelling of emotions, regardless of modality, correlated with the degree of atrophy in the right temporal pole, amygdala and insula. The recognition of musical (but not facial) emotions was also associated with atrophy of the left anterior and inferior temporal lobe, which overlapped with regions correlating with standardized measures of verbal semantic memory. These findings highlight the common neural substrates supporting the processing of emotions by facial and musical stimuli but also indicate that the recognition of emotions from music draws upon brain regions that are associated with semantics in language. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The integration of visual context information in facial emotion recognition in 5- to 15-year-olds.

PubMed

Theurel, Anne; Witt, Arnaud; Malsert, Jennifer; Lejeune, Fleur; Fiorentini, Chiara; Barisnikov, Koviljka; Gentaz, Edouard

2016-10-01

The current study investigated the role of congruent visual context information in the recognition of facial emotional expression in 190 participants from 5 to 15years of age. Children performed a matching task that presented pictures with different facial emotional expressions (anger, disgust, happiness, fear, and sadness) in two conditions: with and without a visual context. The results showed that emotions presented with visual context information were recognized more accurately than those presented in the absence of visual context. The context effect remained steady with age but varied according to the emotion presented and the gender of participants. The findings demonstrated for the first time that children from the age of 5years are able to integrate facial expression and visual context information, and this integration improves facial emotion recognition. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cerebro-facio-thoracic dysplasia (Pascual-Castroviejo syndrome): Identification of a novel mutation, use of facial recognition analysis, and review of the literature

PubMed Central

Tender, Jennifer A.F.; Ferreira, Carlos R.

2018-01-01

BACKGROUND: Cerebro-facio-thoracic dysplasia (CFTD) is a rare, autosomal recessive disorder characterized by facial dysmorphism, cognitive impairment and distinct skeletal anomalies and has been linked to the TMCO1 defect syndrome. OBJECTIVE: To describe two siblings with features consistent with CFTD with a novel homozygous p.Arg114* pathogenic variant in the TMCO1 gene. METHODS: We conducted a literature review and summarized the clinical features and laboratory results of two siblings with a novel pathogenic variant in the TMCO1 gene. Facial recognition analysis was utilized to assess the specificity of facial traits. CONCLUSION: The novel homozygous p.Arg114* pathogenic variant in the TMCO1 gene is responsible for the clinical features of CFTD in two siblings. Facial recognition analysis allows unambiguous distinction of this syndrome against controls. PMID:29682451

The Automaticity of Emotional Face-Context Integration

PubMed Central

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

2011-01-01

Recent studies have demonstrated that context can dramatically influence the recognition of basic facial expressions, yet the nature of this phenomenon is largely unknown. In the present paper we begin to characterize the underlying process of face-context integration. Specifically, we examine whether it is a relatively controlled or automatic process. In Experiment 1 participants were motivated and instructed to avoid using the context while categorizing contextualized facial expression, or they were led to believe that the context was irrelevant. Nevertheless, they were unable to disregard the context, which exerted a strong effect on their emotion recognition. In Experiment 2, participants categorized contextualized facial expressions while engaged in a concurrent working memory task. Despite the load, the context exerted a strong influence on their recognition of facial expressions. These results suggest that facial expressions and their body contexts are integrated in an unintentional, uncontrollable, and relatively effortless manner. PMID:21707150

Classification of facial-emotion expression in the application of psychotherapy using Viola-Jones and Edge-Histogram of Oriented Gradient.

PubMed

Candra, Henry; Yuwono, Mitchell; Rifai Chai; Nguyen, Hung T; Su, Steven

2016-08-01

Psychotherapy requires appropriate recognition of patient's facial-emotion expression to provide proper treatment in psychotherapy session. To address the needs this paper proposed a facial emotion recognition system using Combination of Viola-Jones detector together with a feature descriptor we term Edge-Histogram of Oriented Gradients (E-HOG). The performance of the proposed method is compared with various feature sources including the face, the eyes, the mouth, as well as both the eyes and the mouth. Seven classes of basic emotions have been successfully identified with 96.4% accuracy using Multi-class Support Vector Machine (SVM). The proposed descriptor E-HOG is much leaner to compute compared to traditional HOG as shown by a significant improvement in processing time as high as 1833.33% (p-value = 2.43E-17) with a slight reduction in accuracy of only 1.17% (p-value = 0.0016).

[The Relationship Between Emotion Recognition and the Symptoms of Attention Deficit and Impulsivity in Adult Patients With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder].

PubMed

Baran Tatar, Zeynep; Yargıç, İlhan; Oflaz, Serap; Büyükgök, Deniz

2015-01-01

Interpersonal relationship disorders in adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can be associated with the impairment of non-verbal communication. The purpose of our study was to compare the emotion recognition, facial recognition and neuropsychological assessments of adult ADHD patients with those of healthy controls, and to thus determine the effect of neuropsychological data on the recognition of emotional expressions. This study, which was based on a case-control model, was conducted with patients diagnosed with ADHD according to the DSM-IV-TR, being followed and monitored at the adult ADHD clinic of the Psychiatry Department of the Istanbul University Istanbul Medical Faculty Hospital. The study group consisted of 40 adults (27.5% female) between the ages of 20-65 (mean age 25.96 ± 6.07; education level: 15.02±2.34 years) diagnosed with ADHD, and 40 controls who were matched/similar with the study group with respect to age, gender, and education level. In the ADHD group, 14 (35%) of the patients had concomitant diseases. Pictures of Facial Affect, the Benton Face Recognition Test, and the Continuous Performance Test were used to respectively evaluate emotion recognition, facial recognition, and attention deficit and impulsivity of the patients. It was determined that, in comparison to the control group, the ADHD group made more mistakes in recognizing all types of emotional expressions and neutral expressions. The ADHD group also demonstrated more cognitive mistakes. Facial recognition was similar in both groups. It was determined that impulsivity had a significant effect on facial recognition. The social relationship disorders observed in ADHD can be affected by emotion recognition processes. In future studies, it may be possible to investigate the effects that early psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions administered for the main symptoms of ADHD have on the impairment of emotion recognition.

Face recognition system using multiple face model of hybrid Fourier feature under uncontrolled illumination variation.

PubMed

Hwang, Wonjun; Wang, Haitao; Kim, Hyunwoo; Kee, Seok-Cheol; Kim, Junmo

2011-04-01

The authors present a robust face recognition system for large-scale data sets taken under uncontrolled illumination variations. The proposed face recognition system consists of a novel illumination-insensitive preprocessing method, a hybrid Fourier-based facial feature extraction, and a score fusion scheme. First, in the preprocessing stage, a face image is transformed into an illumination-insensitive image, called an "integral normalized gradient image," by normalizing and integrating the smoothed gradients of a facial image. Then, for feature extraction of complementary classifiers, multiple face models based upon hybrid Fourier features are applied. The hybrid Fourier features are extracted from different Fourier domains in different frequency bandwidths, and then each feature is individually classified by linear discriminant analysis. In addition, multiple face models are generated by plural normalized face images that have different eye distances. Finally, to combine scores from multiple complementary classifiers, a log likelihood ratio-based score fusion scheme is applied. The proposed system using the face recognition grand challenge (FRGC) experimental protocols is evaluated; FRGC is a large available data set. Experimental results on the FRGC version 2.0 data sets have shown that the proposed method shows an average of 81.49% verification rate on 2-D face images under various environmental variations such as illumination changes, expression changes, and time elapses.

Facial recognition using multisensor images based on localized kernel eigen spaces.

PubMed

Gundimada, Satyanadh; Asari, Vijayan K

2009-06-01

A feature selection technique along with an information fusion procedure for improving the recognition accuracy of a visual and thermal image-based facial recognition system is presented in this paper. A novel modular kernel eigenspaces approach is developed and implemented on the phase congruency feature maps extracted from the visual and thermal images individually. Smaller sub-regions from a predefined neighborhood within the phase congruency images of the training samples are merged to obtain a large set of features. These features are then projected into higher dimensional spaces using kernel methods. The proposed localized nonlinear feature selection procedure helps to overcome the bottlenecks of illumination variations, partial occlusions, expression variations and variations due to temperature changes that affect the visual and thermal face recognition techniques. AR and Equinox databases are used for experimentation and evaluation of the proposed technique. The proposed feature selection procedure has greatly improved the recognition accuracy for both the visual and thermal images when compared to conventional techniques. Also, a decision level fusion methodology is presented which along with the feature selection procedure has outperformed various other face recognition techniques in terms of recognition accuracy.

The Moving Window Technique: A Window into Developmental Changes in Attention during Facial Emotion Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Birmingham, Elina; Meixner, Tamara; Iarocci, Grace; Kanan, Christopher; Smilek, Daniel; Tanaka, James W.

2013-01-01

The strategies children employ to selectively attend to different parts of the face may reflect important developmental changes in facial emotion recognition. Using the Moving Window Technique (MWT), children aged 5-12 years and adults ("N" = 129) explored faces with a mouse-controlled window in an emotion recognition task. An…

Deficits in Facial Emotion Recognition in Schizophrenia: A Replication Study with Korean Subjects

PubMed Central

Lee, Seung Jae; Lee, Hae-Kook; Kweon, Yong-Sil; Lee, Chung Tai

2010-01-01

Objective We investigated the deficit in the recognition of facial emotions in a sample of medicated, stable Korean patients with schizophrenia using Korean facial emotion pictures and examined whether the possible impairments would corroborate previous findings. Methods Fifty-five patients with schizophrenia and 62 healthy control subjects completed the Facial Affect Identification Test with a new set of 44 colored photographs of Korean faces including the six universal emotions as well as neutral faces. Results Korean patients with schizophrenia showed impairments in the recognition of sad, fearful, and angry faces [F(1,114)=6.26, p=0.014; F(1,114)=6.18, p=0.014; F(1,114)=9.28, p=0.003, respectively], but their accuracy was no different from that of controls in the recognition of happy emotions. Higher total and three subscale scores of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) correlated with worse performance on both angry and neutral faces. Correct responses on happy stimuli were negatively correlated with negative symptom scores of the PANSS. Patients with schizophrenia also exhibited different patterns of misidentification relative to normal controls. Conclusion These findings were consistent with previous studies carried out with different ethnic groups, suggesting cross-cultural similarities in facial recognition impairment in schizophrenia. PMID:21253414

CACNA1C risk variant affects facial emotion recognition in healthy individuals.

PubMed

Nieratschker, Vanessa; Brückmann, Christof; Plewnia, Christian

2015-11-27

Recognition and correct interpretation of facial emotion is essential for social interaction and communication. Previous studies have shown that impairments in this cognitive domain are common features of several psychiatric disorders. Recent association studies identified CACNA1C as one of the most promising genetic risk factors for psychiatric disorders and previous evidence suggests that the most replicated risk variant in CACNA1C (rs1006737) is affecting emotion recognition and processing. However, studies investigating the influence of rs1006737 on this intermediate phenotype in healthy subjects at the behavioral level are largely missing to date. Here, we applied the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test, a facial emotion recognition paradigm in a cohort of 92 healthy individuals to address this question. Whereas accuracy was not affected by genotype, CACNA1C rs1006737 risk-allele carries (AA/AG) showed significantly slower mean response times compared to individuals homozygous for the G-allele, indicating that healthy risk-allele carriers require more information to correctly identify a facial emotion. Our study is the first to provide evidence for an impairing behavioral effect of the CACNA1C risk variant rs1006737 on facial emotion recognition in healthy individuals and adds to the growing number of studies pointing towards CACNA1C as affecting intermediate phenotypes of psychiatric disorders.

Art critic: Multisignal vision and speech interaction system in a gaming context.

PubMed

Reale, Michael J; Liu, Peng; Yin, Lijun; Canavan, Shaun

2013-12-01

True immersion of a player within a game can only occur when the world simulated looks and behaves as close to reality as possible. This implies that the game must correctly read and understand, among other things, the player's focus, attitude toward the objects/persons in focus, gestures, and speech. In this paper, we proposed a novel system that integrates eye gaze estimation, head pose estimation, facial expression recognition, speech recognition, and text-to-speech components for use in real-time games. Both the eye gaze and head pose components utilize underlying 3-D models, and our novel head pose estimation algorithm uniquely combines scene flow with a generic head model. The facial expression recognition module uses the local binary patterns with three orthogonal planes approach on the 2-D shape index domain rather than the pixel domain, resulting in improved classification. Our system has also been extended to use a pan-tilt-zoom camera driven by the Kinect, allowing us to track a moving player. A test game, Art Critic, is also presented, which not only demonstrates the utility of our system but also provides a template for player/non-player character (NPC) interaction in a gaming context. The player alters his/her view of the 3-D world using head pose, looks at paintings/NPCs using eye gaze, and makes an evaluation based on the player's expression and speech. The NPC artist will respond with facial expression and synthetic speech based on its personality. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations of the system are performed to illustrate the system's effectiveness.

Are face representations depth cue invariant?

PubMed

Dehmoobadsharifabadi, Armita; Farivar, Reza

2016-06-01

The visual system can process three-dimensional depth cues defining surfaces of objects, but it is unclear whether such information contributes to complex object recognition, including face recognition. The processing of different depth cues involves both dorsal and ventral visual pathways. We investigated whether facial surfaces defined by individual depth cues resulted in meaningful face representations-representations that maintain the relationship between the population of faces as defined in a multidimensional face space. We measured face identity aftereffects for facial surfaces defined by individual depth cues (Experiments 1 and 2) and tested whether the aftereffect transfers across depth cues (Experiments 3 and 4). Facial surfaces and their morphs to the average face were defined purely by one of shading, texture, motion, or binocular disparity. We obtained identification thresholds for matched (matched identity between adapting and test stimuli), non-matched (non-matched identity between adapting and test stimuli), and no-adaptation (showing only the test stimuli) conditions for each cue and across different depth cues. We found robust face identity aftereffect in both experiments. Our results suggest that depth cues do contribute to forming meaningful face representations that are depth cue invariant. Depth cue invariance would require integration of information across different areas and different pathways for object recognition, and this in turn has important implications for cortical models of visual object recognition.

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

Characterization and recognition of mixed emotional expressions in thermal face image

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saha, Priya; Bhattacharjee, Debotosh; De, Barin K.; Nasipuri, Mita

2016-05-01

Facial expressions in infrared imaging have been introduced to solve the problem of illumination, which is an integral constituent of visual imagery. The paper investigates facial skin temperature distribution on mixed thermal facial expressions of our created face database where six are basic expressions and rest 12 are a mixture of those basic expressions. Temperature analysis has been performed on three facial regions of interest (ROIs); periorbital, supraorbital and mouth. Temperature variability of the ROIs in different expressions has been measured using statistical parameters. The temperature variation measurement in ROIs of a particular expression corresponds to a vector, which is later used in recognition of mixed facial expressions. Investigations show that facial features in mixed facial expressions can be characterized by positive emotion induced facial features and negative emotion induced facial features. Supraorbital is a useful facial region that can differentiate basic expressions from mixed expressions. Analysis and interpretation of mixed expressions have been conducted with the help of box and whisker plot. Facial region containing mixture of two expressions is generally less temperature inducing than corresponding facial region containing basic expressions.

Image Classification for Web Genre Identification

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-01-01

recognition and landscape detection using the computer vision toolkit OpenCV1. For facial recognition , we researched the possibilities of using the...method for connecting these names with a face/personal photo and logo respectively. [2] METHODOLOGY For this project, we focused primarily on facial

The Effects of Sex of Subject, Sex and Attractiveness of Photo on Facial Recognition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carroo, Agatha W.; Mozingo, R.

1989-01-01

Assessed effect of sex of subject, and sex and attractiveness of photo on facial recognition with 25 male and 25 female college students. Found male subjects performed better with male faces with d' prime scores. (Author/ABL)

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.

Neutral face classification using personalized appearance models for fast and robust emotion detection.

PubMed

Chiranjeevi, Pojala; Gopalakrishnan, Viswanath; Moogi, Pratibha

2015-09-01

Facial expression recognition is one of the open problems in computer vision. Robust neutral face recognition in real time is a major challenge for various supervised learning-based facial expression recognition methods. This is due to the fact that supervised methods cannot accommodate all appearance variability across the faces with respect to race, pose, lighting, facial biases, and so on, in the limited amount of training data. Moreover, processing each and every frame to classify emotions is not required, as user stays neutral for majority of the time in usual applications like video chat or photo album/web browsing. Detecting neutral state at an early stage, thereby bypassing those frames from emotion classification would save the computational power. In this paper, we propose a light-weight neutral versus emotion classification engine, which acts as a pre-processer to the traditional supervised emotion classification approaches. It dynamically learns neutral appearance at key emotion (KE) points using a statistical texture model, constructed by a set of reference neutral frames for each user. The proposed method is made robust to various types of user head motions by accounting for affine distortions based on a statistical texture model. Robustness to dynamic shift of KE points is achieved by evaluating the similarities on a subset of neighborhood patches around each KE point using the prior information regarding the directionality of specific facial action units acting on the respective KE point. The proposed method, as a result, improves emotion recognition (ER) accuracy and simultaneously reduces computational complexity of the ER system, as validated on multiple databases.

Luminance sticker based facial expression recognition using discrete wavelet transform for physically disabled persons.

PubMed

Nagarajan, R; Hariharan, M; Satiyan, M

2012-08-01

Developing tools to assist physically disabled and immobilized people through facial expression is a challenging area of research and has attracted many researchers recently. In this paper, luminance stickers based facial expression recognition is proposed. Recognition of facial expression is carried out by employing Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) as a feature extraction method. Different wavelet families with their different orders (db1 to db20, Coif1 to Coif 5 and Sym2 to Sym8) are utilized to investigate their performance in recognizing facial expression and to evaluate their computational time. Standard deviation is computed for the coefficients of first level of wavelet decomposition for every order of wavelet family. This standard deviation is used to form a set of feature vectors for classification. In this study, conventional validation and cross validation are performed to evaluate the efficiency of the suggested feature vectors. Three different classifiers namely Artificial Neural Network (ANN), k-Nearest Neighborhood (kNN) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) are used to classify a set of eight facial expressions. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method gives very promising classification accuracies.

A New Method of Facial Expression Recognition Based on SPE Plus SVM

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ying, Zilu; Huang, Mingwei; Wang, Zhen; Wang, Zhewei

A novel method of facial expression recognition (FER) is presented, which uses stochastic proximity embedding (SPE) for data dimension reduction, and support vector machine (SVM) for expression classification. The proposed algorithm is applied to Japanese Female Facial Expression (JAFFE) database for FER, better performance is obtained compared with some traditional algorithms, such as PCA and LDA etc.. The result have further proved the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Identifying and detecting facial expressions of emotion in peripheral vision.

PubMed

Smith, Fraser W; Rossit, Stephanie

2018-01-01

Facial expressions of emotion are signals of high biological value. Whilst recognition of facial expressions has been much studied in central vision, the ability to perceive these signals in peripheral vision has only seen limited research to date, despite the potential adaptive advantages of such perception. In the present experiment, we investigate facial expression recognition and detection performance for each of the basic emotions (plus neutral) at up to 30 degrees of eccentricity. We demonstrate, as expected, a decrease in recognition and detection performance with increasing eccentricity, with happiness and surprised being the best recognized expressions in peripheral vision. In detection however, while happiness and surprised are still well detected, fear is also a well detected expression. We show that fear is a better detected than recognized expression. Our results demonstrate that task constraints shape the perception of expression in peripheral vision and provide novel evidence that detection and recognition rely on partially separate underlying mechanisms, with the latter more dependent on the higher spatial frequency content of the face stimulus.

Identifying and detecting facial expressions of emotion in peripheral vision

PubMed Central

Rossit, Stephanie

2018-01-01

Facial expressions of emotion are signals of high biological value. Whilst recognition of facial expressions has been much studied in central vision, the ability to perceive these signals in peripheral vision has only seen limited research to date, despite the potential adaptive advantages of such perception. In the present experiment, we investigate facial expression recognition and detection performance for each of the basic emotions (plus neutral) at up to 30 degrees of eccentricity. We demonstrate, as expected, a decrease in recognition and detection performance with increasing eccentricity, with happiness and surprised being the best recognized expressions in peripheral vision. In detection however, while happiness and surprised are still well detected, fear is also a well detected expression. We show that fear is a better detected than recognized expression. Our results demonstrate that task constraints shape the perception of expression in peripheral vision and provide novel evidence that detection and recognition rely on partially separate underlying mechanisms, with the latter more dependent on the higher spatial frequency content of the face stimulus. PMID:29847562

A study on facial expressions recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Jingjing

2017-09-01

In terms of communication, postures and facial expressions of such feelings like happiness, anger and sadness play important roles in conveying information. With the development of the technology, recently a number of algorithms dealing with face alignment, face landmark detection, classification, facial landmark localization and pose estimation have been put forward. However, there are a lot of challenges and problems need to be fixed. In this paper, a few technologies have been concluded and analyzed, and they all relate to handling facial expressions recognition and poses like pose-indexed based multi-view method for face alignment, robust facial landmark detection under significant head pose and occlusion, partitioning the input domain for classification, robust statistics face formalization.

Orienting to face expression during encoding improves men's recognition of own gender faces.

PubMed

Fulton, Erika K; Bulluck, Megan; Hertzog, Christopher

2015-10-01

It is unclear why women have superior episodic memory of faces, but the benefit may be partially the result of women engaging in superior processing of facial expressions. Therefore, we hypothesized that orienting instructions to attend to facial expression at encoding would significantly improve men's memory of faces and possibly reduce gender differences. We directed 203 college students (122 women) to study 120 faces under instructions to orient to either the person's gender or their emotional expression. They later took a recognition test of these faces by either judging whether they had previously studied the same person or that person with the exact same expression; the latter test evaluated recollection of specific facial details. Orienting to facial expressions during encoding significantly improved men's recognition of own-gender faces and eliminated the advantage that women had for male faces under gender orienting instructions. Although gender differences in spontaneous strategy use when orienting to faces cannot fully account for gender differences in face recognition, orienting men to facial expression during encoding is one way to significantly improve their episodic memory for male faces. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mutual information-based facial expression recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hazar, Mliki; Hammami, Mohamed; Hanêne, Ben-Abdallah

2013-12-01

This paper introduces a novel low-computation discriminative regions representation for expression analysis task. The proposed approach relies on interesting studies in psychology which show that most of the descriptive and responsible regions for facial expression are located around some face parts. The contributions of this work lie in the proposition of new approach which supports automatic facial expression recognition based on automatic regions selection. The regions selection step aims to select the descriptive regions responsible or facial expression and was performed using Mutual Information (MI) technique. For facial feature extraction, we have applied Local Binary Patterns Pattern (LBP) on Gradient image to encode salient micro-patterns of facial expressions. Experimental studies have shown that using discriminative regions provide better results than using the whole face regions whilst reducing features vector dimension.

Facial recognition: a cognitive study of elderly dementia patients and normal older adults.

PubMed

Zandi, T; Cooper, M; Garrison, L

1992-01-01

Dementia patients' and normal elderlies' recognition of familiar, ordinary emotional and facial expressions was tested. In three conditions subjects were required to name the emotions depicted in pictures and to produce them while presented with the verbal labels of the expressions. The dementia patients' best performance occurred when they had access to the verbal labels while viewing the pictures. The major deficiency in facial recognition was found to be dysnomia related. Findings of this study suggest that the connection between the gnostic units of expression and the gnostic units of verbal labeling is not impaired significantly among the dementia patients.

Emotion recognition impairment in traumatic brain injury compared with schizophrenia spectrum: similar deficits with different origins.

PubMed

Mancuso, Mauro; Magnani, Nadia; Cantagallo, Anna; Rossi, Giulia; Capitani, Donatella; Galletti, Vania; Cardamone, Giuseppe; Robertson, Ian Hamilton

2015-02-01

The aim of our study was to identify the common and separate mechanisms that might underpin emotion recognition impairment in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and schizophrenia (Sz) compared with healthy controls (HCs). We recruited 21 Sz outpatients, 24 severe TBI outpatients, and 38 HCs, and we used eye-tracking to compare facial emotion processing performance. Both Sz and TBI patients were significantly poorer at recognizing facial emotions compared with HC. Sz patients showed a different way of exploring the Pictures of Facial Affects stimuli and were significantly worse in recognition of neutral expressions. Selective or sustained attention deficits in TBI may reduce efficient emotion recognition, whereas in Sz, there is a more strategic deficit underlying the observed problem. There would seem to be scope for adjustment of effective rehabilitative training focused on emotion recognition.

Impact of Social Cognition on Alcohol Dependence Treatment Outcome: Poorer Facial Emotion Recognition Predicts Relapse/Dropout.

PubMed

Rupp, Claudia I; Derntl, Birgit; Osthaus, Friederike; Kemmler, Georg; Fleischhacker, W Wolfgang

2017-12-01

Despite growing evidence for neurobehavioral deficits in social cognition in alcohol use disorder (AUD), the clinical relevance remains unclear, and little is known about its impact on treatment outcome. This study prospectively investigated the impact of neurocognitive social abilities at treatment onset on treatment completion. Fifty-nine alcohol-dependent patients were assessed with measures of social cognition including 3 core components of empathy via paradigms measuring: (i) emotion recognition (the ability to recognize emotions via facial expression), (ii) emotional perspective taking, and (iii) affective responsiveness at the beginning of inpatient treatment for alcohol dependence. Subjective measures were also obtained, including estimates of task performance and a self-report measure of empathic abilities (Interpersonal Reactivity Index). According to treatment outcomes, patients were divided into a patient group with a regular treatment course (e.g., with planned discharge and without relapse during treatment) or an irregular treatment course (e.g., relapse and/or premature and unplanned termination of treatment, "dropout"). Compared with patients completing treatment in a regular fashion, patients with relapse and/or dropout of treatment had significantly poorer facial emotion recognition ability at treatment onset. Additional logistic regression analyses confirmed these results and identified poor emotion recognition performance as a significant predictor for relapse/dropout. Self-report (subjective) measures did not correspond with neurobehavioral social cognition measures, respectively objective task performance. Analyses of individual subtypes of facial emotions revealed poorer recognition particularly of disgust, anger, and no (neutral faces) emotion in patients with relapse/dropout. Social cognition in AUD is clinically relevant. Less successful treatment outcome was associated with poorer facial emotion recognition ability at the beginning of treatment. Impaired facial emotion recognition represents a neurocognitive risk factor that should be taken into account in alcohol dependence treatment. Treatments targeting the improvement of these social cognition deficits in AUD may offer a promising future approach. Copyright © 2017 by the Research Society on Alcoholism.

Violent media consumption and the recognition of dynamic facial expressions.

PubMed

Kirsh, Steven J; Mounts, Jeffrey R W; Olczak, Paul V

2006-05-01

This study assessed the speed of recognition of facial emotional expressions (happy and angry) as a function of violent media consumption. Color photos of calm facial expressions morphed to either an angry or a happy facial expression. Participants were asked to make a speeded identification of the emotion (happiness or anger) during the morph. Results indicated that, independent of trait aggressiveness, participants high in violent media consumption responded slower to depictions of happiness and faster to depictions of anger than participants low in violent media consumption. Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to current models of aggressive behavior.

Research of Face Recognition with Fisher Linear Discriminant

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rahim, R.; Afriliansyah, T.; Winata, H.; Nofriansyah, D.; Ratnadewi; Aryza, S.

2018-01-01

Face identification systems are developing rapidly, and these developments drive the advancement of biometric-based identification systems that have high accuracy. However, to develop a good face recognition system and to have high accuracy is something that’s hard to find. Human faces have diverse expressions and attribute changes such as eyeglasses, mustache, beard and others. Fisher Linear Discriminant (FLD) is a class-specific method that distinguishes facial image images into classes and also creates distance between classes and intra classes so as to produce better classification.

Psychopathy and facial emotion recognition ability in patients with bipolar affective disorder with or without delinquent behaviors.

PubMed

Demirel, Husrev; Yesilbas, Dilek; Ozver, Ismail; Yuksek, Erhan; Sahin, Feyzi; Aliustaoglu, Suheyla; Emul, Murat

2014-04-01

It is well known that patients with bipolar disorder are more prone to violence and have more criminal behaviors than general population. A strong relationship between criminal behavior and inability to empathize and imperceptions to other person's feelings and facial expressions increases the risk of delinquent behaviors. In this study, we aimed to investigate the deficits of facial emotion recognition ability in euthymic bipolar patients who committed an offense and compare with non-delinquent euthymic patients with bipolar disorder. Fifty-five euthymic patients with delinquent behaviors and 54 non-delinquent euthymic bipolar patients as a control group were included in the study. Ekman's Facial Emotion Recognition Test, sociodemographic data, Hare Psychopathy Checklist, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Young Mania Rating Scale were applied to both groups. There were no significant differences between case and control groups in the meaning of average age, gender, level of education, mean age onset of disease and suicide attempt (p>0.05). The three types of most committed delinquent behaviors in patients with euthymic bipolar disorder were as follows: injury (30.8%), threat or insult (20%) and homicide (12.7%). The best accurate percentage of identified facial emotion was "happy" (>99%, for both) while the worst misidentified facial emotion was "fear" in both groups (<50%, for both). The total accuracy rate of recognition toward facial emotions was significantly impaired in patients with delinquent behaviors than non-delinquent ones (p<0.05). The accuracy rate of recognizing the fear expressions was significantly worse in the case group than in the control group (p<0.05). In addition, it tended to be worse toward angry facial expressions in criminal euthymic bipolar patients. The response times toward happy, fear, disgusted and angry expressions had been significantly longer in the case group than in the control group (p<0.05). This study is the first, searching the ability of facial emotion recognition in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder who had delinquent behaviors. We have shown that patients with bipolar disorder who had delinquent behaviors may have some social interaction problems i.e., misrecognizing fearful and modestly anger facial emotions and need some more time to response facial emotions even in remission. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Towards Multimodal Emotion Recognition in E-Learning Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bahreini, Kiavash; Nadolski, Rob; Westera, Wim

2016-01-01

This paper presents a framework (FILTWAM (Framework for Improving Learning Through Webcams And Microphones)) for real-time emotion recognition in e-learning by using webcams. FILTWAM offers timely and relevant feedback based upon learner's facial expressions and verbalizations. FILTWAM's facial expression software module has been developed and…

The association between PTSD and facial affect recognition.

PubMed

Williams, Christian L; Milanak, Melissa E; Judah, Matt R; Berenbaum, Howard

2018-05-05

The major aims of this study were to examine how, if at all, having higher levels of PTSD would be associated with performance on a facial affect recognition task in which facial expressions of emotion are superimposed on emotionally valenced, non-face images. College students with trauma histories (N = 90) completed a facial affect recognition task as well as measures of exposure to traumatic events, and PTSD symptoms. When the face and context matched, participants with higher levels of PTSD were significantly more accurate. When the face and context were mismatched, participants with lower levels of PTSD were more accurate than were those with higher levels of PTSD. These findings suggest that PTSD is associated with how people process affective information. Furthermore, these results suggest that the enhanced attention of people with higher levels of PTSD to affective information can be either beneficial or detrimental to their ability to accurately identify facial expressions of emotion. Limitations, future directions and clinical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Facial expression recognition based on weber local descriptor and sparse representation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ouyang, Yan

2018-03-01

Automatic facial expression recognition has been one of the research hotspots in the area of computer vision for nearly ten years. During the decade, many state-of-the-art methods have been proposed which perform very high accurate rate based on the face images without any interference. Nowadays, many researchers begin to challenge the task of classifying the facial expression images with corruptions and occlusions and the Sparse Representation based Classification framework has been wildly used because it can robust to the corruptions and occlusions. Therefore, this paper proposed a novel facial expression recognition method based on Weber local descriptor (WLD) and Sparse representation. The method includes three parts: firstly the face images are divided into many local patches, and then the WLD histograms of each patch are extracted, finally all the WLD histograms features are composed into a vector and combined with SRC to classify the facial expressions. The experiment results on the Cohn-Kanade database show that the proposed method is robust to occlusions and corruptions.

Wavelet decomposition based principal component analysis for face recognition using MATLAB

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sharma, Mahesh Kumar; Sharma, Shashikant; Leeprechanon, Nopbhorn; Ranjan, Aashish

2016-03-01

For the realization of face recognition systems in the static as well as in the real time frame, algorithms such as principal component analysis, independent component analysis, linear discriminate analysis, neural networks and genetic algorithms are used for decades. This paper discusses an approach which is a wavelet decomposition based principal component analysis for face recognition. Principal component analysis is chosen over other algorithms due to its relative simplicity, efficiency, and robustness features. The term face recognition stands for identifying a person from his facial gestures and having resemblance with factor analysis in some sense, i.e. extraction of the principal component of an image. Principal component analysis is subjected to some drawbacks, mainly the poor discriminatory power and the large computational load in finding eigenvectors, in particular. These drawbacks can be greatly reduced by combining both wavelet transform decomposition for feature extraction and principal component analysis for pattern representation and classification together, by analyzing the facial gestures into space and time domain, where, frequency and time are used interchangeably. From the experimental results, it is envisaged that this face recognition method has made a significant percentage improvement in recognition rate as well as having a better computational efficiency.

Decoding facial expressions based on face-selective and motion-sensitive areas.

PubMed

Liang, Yin; Liu, Baolin; Xu, Junhai; Zhang, Gaoyan; Li, Xianglin; Wang, Peiyuan; Wang, Bin

2017-06-01

Humans can easily recognize others' facial expressions. Among the brain substrates that enable this ability, considerable attention has been paid to face-selective areas; in contrast, whether motion-sensitive areas, which clearly exhibit sensitivity to facial movements, are involved in facial expression recognition remained unclear. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study used multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to explore facial expression decoding in both face-selective and motion-sensitive areas. In a block design experiment, participants viewed facial expressions of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise) in images, videos, and eyes-obscured videos. Due to the use of multiple stimulus types, the impacts of facial motion and eye-related information on facial expression decoding were also examined. It was found that motion-sensitive areas showed significant responses to emotional expressions and that dynamic expressions could be successfully decoded in both face-selective and motion-sensitive areas. Compared with static stimuli, dynamic expressions elicited consistently higher neural responses and decoding performance in all regions. A significant decrease in both activation and decoding accuracy due to the absence of eye-related information was also observed. Overall, the findings showed that emotional expressions are represented in motion-sensitive areas in addition to conventional face-selective areas, suggesting that motion-sensitive regions may also effectively contribute to facial expression recognition. The results also suggested that facial motion and eye-related information played important roles by carrying considerable expression information that could facilitate facial expression recognition. Hum Brain Mapp 38:3113-3125, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Emotional face processing deficit in schizophrenia: A replication study in a South African Xhosa population.

PubMed

Leppänen, J M; Niehaus, D J H; Koen, L; Du Toit, E; Schoeman, R; Emsley, R

2006-06-01

Schizophrenia is associated with a deficit in the recognition of negative emotions from facial expressions. The present study examined the universality of this finding by studying facial expression recognition in African Xhosa population. Forty-four Xhosa patients with schizophrenia and forty healthy controls were tested with a computerized task requiring rapid perceptual discrimination of matched positive (i.e. happy), negative (i.e. angry), and neutral faces. Patients were equally accurate as controls in recognizing happy faces but showed a marked impairment in recognition of angry faces. The impairment was particularly pronounced for high-intensity (open-mouth) angry faces. Patients also exhibited more false happy and angry responses to neutral faces than controls. No correlation between level of education or illness duration and emotion recognition was found but the deficit in the recognition of negative emotions was more pronounced in familial compared to non-familial cases of schizophrenia. These findings suggest that the deficit in the recognition of negative facial expressions may constitute a universal neurocognitive marker of schizophrenia.

The Impact of Sex Differences on Odor Identification and Facial Affect Recognition in Patients with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders.

PubMed

Mossaheb, Nilufar; Kaufmann, Rainer M; Schlögelhofer, Monika; Aninilkumparambil, Thushara; Himmelbauer, Claudia; Gold, Anna; Zehetmayer, Sonja; Hoffmann, Holger; Traue, Harald C; Aschauer, Harald

2018-01-01

Social interactive functions such as facial emotion recognition and smell identification have been shown to differ between women and men. However, little is known about how these differences are mirrored in patients with schizophrenia and how these abilities interact with each other and with other clinical variables in patients vs. healthy controls. Standardized instruments were used to assess facial emotion recognition [Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling (FEEL)] and smell identification [University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT)] in 51 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and 79 healthy controls; furthermore, working memory functions and clinical variables were assessed. In both the univariate and the multivariate results, illness showed a significant influence on UPSIT and FEEL. The inclusion of age and working memory in the MANOVA resulted in a differential effect with sex and working memory as remaining significant factors. Duration of illness was correlated with both emotion recognition and smell identification in men only, whereas immediate general psychopathology and negative symptoms were associated with emotion recognition only in women. Being affected by schizophrenia spectrum disorder impacts one's ability to correctly recognize facial affects and identify odors. Converging evidence suggests a link between the investigated basic and social cognitive abilities in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders with a strong contribution of working memory and differential effects of modulators in women vs. men.

Identification of computer-generated facial composites.

PubMed

Kovera, M B; Penrod, S D; Pappas, C; Thill, D L

1997-04-01

Two studies examined the effectiveness of the Mac-a-Mug Pro, a computerized facial composite production system. In the first study, college freshmen prepared from memory composites of other students and faculty from their former high schools. Other students who had attended the same high schools could not recognize the composites of either students or faculty members when the composites of individuals known to them (n = 10) were mixed with composites of a large number (n = 40) of strangers. Neither preparer familiarity with the target, preparer-assessed composite quality, nor viewer familiarity predicted composite recognition. Study 2 indicated that naive witnesses who viewed the composites could not select the people depicted in the composites from photo lineups (1 target and 4 foils). The results raise questions about the efficacy of composite systems as tools to promote recognition of suspects in criminal contexts.

Neuroanatomical substrates involved in unrelated false facial recognition.

PubMed

Ronzon-Gonzalez, Eliane; Hernandez-Castillo, Carlos R; Pasaye, Erick H; Vaca-Palomares, Israel; Fernandez-Ruiz, Juan

2017-11-22

Identifying faces is a process central for social interaction and a relevant factor in eyewitness theory. False recognition is a critical mistake during an eyewitness's identification scenario because it can lead to a wrongful conviction. Previous studies have described neural areas related to false facial recognition using the standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, triggering related false recognition. Nonetheless, misidentification of faces without trying to elicit false memories (unrelated false recognition) in a police lineup could involve different cognitive processes, and distinct neural areas. To delve into the neural circuitry of unrelated false recognition, we evaluated the memory and response confidence of participants while watching faces photographs in an fMRI task. Functional activations of unrelated false recognition were identified by contrasting the activation on this condition vs. the activations related to recognition (hits) and correct rejections. The results identified the right precentral and cingulate gyri as areas with distinctive activations during false recognition events suggesting a conflict resulting in a dysfunction during memory retrieval. High confidence suggested that about 50% of misidentifications may be related to an unconscious process. These findings add to our understanding of the construction of facial memories and its biological basis, and the fallibility of the eyewitness testimony.

Relationships between alexithymia, affect recognition, and empathy after traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Neumann, Dawn; Zupan, Barbra; Malec, James F; Hammond, Flora

2014-01-01

To determine (1) alexithymia, affect recognition, and empathy differences in participants with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI); (2) the amount of affect recognition variance explained by alexithymia; and (3) the amount of empathy variance explained by alexithymia and affect recognition. Sixty adults with moderate-to-severe TBI; 60 age and gender-matched controls. Participants were evaluated for alexithymia (difficulty identifying feelings, difficulty describing feelings, and externally-oriented thinking); facial and vocal affect recognition; and affective and cognitive empathy (empathic concern and perspective-taking, respectively). Participants with TBI had significantly higher alexithymia; poorer facial and vocal affect recognition; and lower empathy scores. For TBI participants, facial and vocal affect recognition variances were significantly explained by alexithymia (12% and 8%, respectively); however, the majority of the variances were accounted for by externally-oriented thinking alone. Affect recognition and alexithymia significantly accounted for 16.5% of cognitive empathy. Again, the majority of the variance was primarily explained by externally-oriented thinking. Affect recognition and alexithymia did not explain affective empathy. Results suggest that people who have a tendency to avoid thinking about emotions (externally-oriented thinking) are more likely to have problems recognizing others' emotions and assuming others' points of view. Clinical implications are discussed.

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…

Person-independent facial expression analysis by fusing multiscale cell features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhou, Lubing; Wang, Han

2013-03-01

Automatic facial expression recognition is an interesting and challenging task. To achieve satisfactory accuracy, deriving a robust facial representation is especially important. A novel appearance-based feature, the multiscale cell local intensity increasing patterns (MC-LIIP), to represent facial images and conduct person-independent facial expression analysis is presented. The LIIP uses a decimal number to encode the texture or intensity distribution around each pixel via pixel-to-pixel intensity comparison. To boost noise resistance, MC-LIIP carries out comparison computation on the average values of scalable cells instead of individual pixels. The facial descriptor fuses region-based histograms of MC-LIIP features from various scales, so as to encode not only textural microstructures but also the macrostructures of facial images. Finally, a support vector machine classifier is applied for expression recognition. Experimental results on the CK+ and Karolinska directed emotional faces databases show the superiority of the proposed method.

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.

Oxytocin Reduces Face Processing Time but Leaves Recognition Accuracy and Eye-Gaze Unaffected.

PubMed

Hubble, Kelly; Daughters, Katie; Manstead, Antony S R; Rees, Aled; Thapar, Anita; van Goozen, Stephanie H M

2017-01-01

Previous studies have found that oxytocin (OXT) can improve the recognition of emotional facial expressions; it has been proposed that this effect is mediated by an increase in attention to the eye-region of faces. Nevertheless, evidence in support of this claim is inconsistent, and few studies have directly tested the effect of oxytocin on emotion recognition via altered eye-gaze Methods: In a double-blind, within-subjects, randomized control experiment, 40 healthy male participants received 24 IU intranasal OXT and placebo in two identical experimental sessions separated by a 2-week interval. Visual attention to the eye-region was assessed on both occasions while participants completed a static facial emotion recognition task using medium intensity facial expressions. Although OXT had no effect on emotion recognition accuracy, recognition performance was improved because face processing was faster across emotions under the influence of OXT. This effect was marginally significant (p<.06). Consistent with a previous study using dynamic stimuli, OXT had no effect on eye-gaze patterns when viewing static emotional faces and this was not related to recognition accuracy or face processing time. These findings suggest that OXT-induced enhanced facial emotion recognition is not necessarily mediated by an increase in attention to the eye-region of faces, as previously assumed. We discuss several methodological issues which may explain discrepant findings and suggest the effect of OXT on visual attention may differ depending on task requirements. (JINS, 2017, 23, 23-33).

Visual Scan Paths and Recognition of Facial Identity in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development

PubMed Central

Wilson, C. Ellie; Palermo, Romina; Brock, Jon

2012-01-01

Background Previous research suggests that many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have impaired facial identity recognition, and also exhibit abnormal visual scanning of faces. Here, two hypotheses accounting for an association between these observations were tested: i) better facial identity recognition is associated with increased gaze time on the Eye region; ii) better facial identity recognition is associated with increased eye-movements around the face. Methodology and Principal Findings Eye-movements of 11 children with ASD and 11 age-matched typically developing (TD) controls were recorded whilst they viewed a series of faces, and then completed a two alternative forced-choice recognition memory test for the faces. Scores on the memory task were standardized according to age. In both groups, there was no evidence of an association between the proportion of time spent looking at the Eye region of faces and age-standardized recognition performance, thus the first hypothesis was rejected. However, the ‘Dynamic Scanning Index’ – which was incremented each time the participant saccaded into and out of one of the core-feature interest areas – was strongly associated with age-standardized face recognition scores in both groups, even after controlling for various other potential predictors of performance. Conclusions and Significance In support of the second hypothesis, results suggested that increased saccading between core-features was associated with more accurate face recognition ability, both in typical development and ASD. Causal directions of this relationship remain undetermined. PMID:22666378

Perceived Parenting Mediates Serotonin Transporter Gene (5-HTTLPR) and Neural System Function during Facial Recognition: A Pilot Study.

PubMed

Nishikawa, Saori; Toshima, Tamotsu; Kobayashi, Masao

2015-01-01

This study examined changes in prefrontal oxy-Hb levels measured by NIRS (Near-Infrared Spectroscopy) during a facial-emotion recognition task in healthy adults, testing a mediational/moderational model of these variables. Fifty-three healthy adults (male = 35, female = 18) aged between 22 to 37 years old (mean age = 24.05 years old) provided saliva samples, completed a EMBU questionnaire (Swedish acronym for Egna Minnen Beträffande Uppfostran [My memories of upbringing]), and participated in a facial-emotion recognition task during NIRS recording. There was a main effect of maternal rejection on RoxH (right frontal activation during an ambiguous task), and a gene × environment (G × E) interaction on RoxH, suggesting that individuals who carry the SL or LL genotype and who endorse greater perceived maternal rejection show less right frontal activation than SL/LL carriers with lower perceived maternal rejection. Finally, perceived parenting style played a mediating role in right frontal activation via the 5-HTTLPR genotype. Early-perceived parenting might influence neural activity in an uncertain situation i.e. rating ambiguous faces among individuals with certain genotypes. This preliminary study makes a small contribution to the mapping of an influence of gene and behaviour on the neural system. More such attempts should be made in order to clarify the links.

Perceived Parenting Mediates Serotonin Transporter Gene (5-HTTLPR) and Neural System Function during Facial Recognition: A Pilot Study

PubMed Central

Nishikawa, Saori

2015-01-01

This study examined changes in prefrontal oxy-Hb levels measured by NIRS (Near-Infrared Spectroscopy) during a facial-emotion recognition task in healthy adults, testing a mediational/moderational model of these variables. Fifty-three healthy adults (male = 35, female = 18) aged between 22 to 37 years old (mean age = 24.05 years old) provided saliva samples, completed a EMBU questionnaire (Swedish acronym for Egna Minnen Beträffande Uppfostran [My memories of upbringing]), and participated in a facial-emotion recognition task during NIRS recording. There was a main effect of maternal rejection on RoxH (right frontal activation during an ambiguous task), and a gene × environment (G×E) interaction on RoxH, suggesting that individuals who carry the SL or LL genotype and who endorse greater perceived maternal rejection show less right frontal activation than SL/LL carriers with lower perceived maternal rejection. Finally, perceived parenting style played a mediating role in right frontal activation via the 5-HTTLPR genotype. Early-perceived parenting might influence neural activity in an uncertain situation i.e. rating ambiguous faces among individuals with certain genotypes. This preliminary study makes a small contribution to the mapping of an influence of gene and behaviour on the neural system. More such attempts should be made in order to clarify the links. PMID:26418317

Teaching Emotion Recognition Skills to Children with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ryan, Christian; Charragain, Caitriona Ni

2010-01-01

Autism is associated with difficulty interacting with others and an impaired ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion. Previous teaching programmes have not addressed weak central coherence. Emotion recognition training focused on components of facial expressions. The training was administered in small groups ranging from 4 to 7…

Why the long face? The importance of vertical image structure for biological "barcodes" underlying face recognition.

PubMed

Spence, Morgan L; Storrs, Katherine R; Arnold, Derek H

2014-07-29

Humans are experts at face recognition. The mechanisms underlying this complex capacity are not fully understood. Recently, it has been proposed that face recognition is supported by a coarse-scale analysis of visual information contained in horizontal bands of contrast distributed along the vertical image axis-a biological facial "barcode" (Dakin & Watt, 2009). A critical prediction of the facial barcode hypothesis is that the distribution of image contrast along the vertical axis will be more important for face recognition than image distributions along the horizontal axis. Using a novel paradigm involving dynamic image distortions, a series of experiments are presented examining famous face recognition impairments from selectively disrupting image distributions along the vertical or horizontal image axes. Results show that disrupting the image distribution along the vertical image axis is more disruptive for recognition than matched distortions along the horizontal axis. Consistent with the facial barcode hypothesis, these results suggest that human face recognition relies disproportionately on appropriately scaled distributions of image contrast along the vertical image axis. © 2014 ARVO.

Meta-Analysis of Facial Emotion Recognition in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia: Comparison With Alzheimer Disease and Healthy Controls.

PubMed

Bora, Emre; Velakoulis, Dennis; Walterfang, Mark

2016-07-01

Behavioral disturbances and lack of empathy are distinctive clinical features of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) in comparison to Alzheimer disease (AD). The aim of this meta-analytic review was to compare facial emotion recognition performances of bvFTD with healthy controls and AD. The current meta-analysis included a total of 19 studies and involved comparisons of 288 individuals with bvFTD and 329 healthy controls and 162 bvFTD and 147 patients with AD. Facial emotion recognition was significantly impaired in bvFTD in comparison to the healthy controls (d = 1.81) and AD (d = 1.23). In bvFTD, recognition of negative emotions, especially anger (d = 1.48) and disgust (d = 1.41), were severely impaired. Emotion recognition was significantly impaired in bvFTD in comparison to AD in all emotions other than happiness. Impairment of emotion recognition is a relatively specific feature of bvFTD. Routine assessment of social-cognitive abilities including emotion recognition can be helpful in better differentiating between cortical dementias such as bvFTD and AD. © The Author(s) 2016.

Support vector machine for automatic pain recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Monwar, Md Maruf; Rezaei, Siamak

2009-02-01

Facial expressions are a key index of emotion and the interpretation of such expressions of emotion is critical to everyday social functioning. In this paper, we present an efficient video analysis technique for recognition of a specific expression, pain, from human faces. We employ an automatic face detector which detects face from the stored video frame using skin color modeling technique. For pain recognition, location and shape features of the detected faces are computed. These features are then used as inputs to a support vector machine (SVM) for classification. We compare the results with neural network based and eigenimage based automatic pain recognition systems. The experiment results indicate that using support vector machine as classifier can certainly improve the performance of automatic pain recognition system.

A small-world network model of facial emotion recognition.

PubMed

Takehara, Takuma; Ochiai, Fumio; Suzuki, Naoto

2016-01-01

Various models have been proposed to increase understanding of the cognitive basis of facial emotions. Despite those efforts, interactions between facial emotions have received minimal attention. If collective behaviours relating to each facial emotion in the comprehensive cognitive system could be assumed, specific facial emotion relationship patterns might emerge. In this study, we demonstrate that the frameworks of complex networks can effectively capture those patterns. We generate 81 facial emotion images (6 prototypes and 75 morphs) and then ask participants to rate degrees of similarity in 3240 facial emotion pairs in a paired comparison task. A facial emotion network constructed on the basis of similarity clearly forms a small-world network, which features an extremely short average network distance and close connectivity. Further, even if two facial emotions have opposing valences, they are connected within only two steps. In addition, we show that intermediary morphs are crucial for maintaining full network integration, whereas prototypes are not at all important. These results suggest the existence of collective behaviours in the cognitive systems of facial emotions and also describe why people can efficiently recognize facial emotions in terms of information transmission and propagation. For comparison, we construct three simulated networks--one based on the categorical model, one based on the dimensional model, and one random network. The results reveal that small-world connectivity in facial emotion networks is apparently different from those networks, suggesting that a small-world network is the most suitable model for capturing the cognitive basis of facial emotions.

Compensatory premotor activity during affective face processing in subclinical carriers of a single mutant Parkin allele.

PubMed

Anders, Silke; Sack, Benjamin; Pohl, Anna; Münte, Thomas; Pramstaller, Peter; Klein, Christine; Binkofski, Ferdinand

2012-04-01

Patients with Parkinson's disease suffer from significant motor impairments and accompanying cognitive and affective dysfunction due to progressive disturbances of basal ganglia-cortical gating loops. Parkinson's disease has a long presymptomatic stage, which indicates a substantial capacity of the human brain to compensate for dopaminergic nerve degeneration before clinical manifestation of the disease. Neuroimaging studies provide evidence that increased motor-related cortical activity can compensate for progressive dopaminergic nerve degeneration in carriers of a single mutant Parkin or PINK1 gene, who show a mild but significant reduction of dopamine metabolism in the basal ganglia in the complete absence of clinical motor signs. However, it is currently unknown whether similar compensatory mechanisms are effective in non-motor basal ganglia-cortical gating loops. Here, we ask whether asymptomatic Parkin mutation carriers show altered patterns of brain activity during processing of facial gestures, and whether this might compensate for latent facial emotion recognition deficits. Current theories in social neuroscience assume that execution and perception of facial gestures are linked by a special class of visuomotor neurons ('mirror neurons') in the ventrolateral premotor cortex/pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann area 44/6). We hypothesized that asymptomatic Parkin mutation carriers would show increased activity in this area during processing of affective facial gestures, replicating the compensatory motor effects that have previously been observed in these individuals. Additionally, Parkin mutation carriers might show altered activity in other basal ganglia-cortical gating loops. Eight asymptomatic heterozygous Parkin mutation carriers and eight matched controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging and a subsequent facial emotion recognition task. As predicted, Parkin mutation carriers showed significantly stronger activity in the right ventrolateral premotor cortex during execution and perception of affective facial gestures than healthy controls. Furthermore, Parkin mutation carriers showed a slightly reduced ability to recognize facial emotions that was least severe in individuals who showed the strongest increase of ventrolateral premotor activity. In addition, Parkin mutation carriers showed a significantly weaker than normal increase of activity in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex (inferior frontal gyrus pars orbitalis, Brodmann area 47), which was unrelated to facial emotion recognition ability. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that compensatory activity in the ventrolateral premotor cortex during processing of affective facial gestures can reduce impairments in facial emotion recognition in subclinical Parkin mutation carriers. A breakdown of this compensatory mechanism might lead to the impairment of facial expressivity and facial emotion recognition observed in manifest Parkinson's disease.

Compensatory premotor activity during affective face processing in subclinical carriers of a single mutant Parkin allele

PubMed Central

Sack, Benjamin; Pohl, Anna; Münte, Thomas; Pramstaller, Peter; Klein, Christine; Binkofski, Ferdinand

2012-01-01

Patients with Parkinson's disease suffer from significant motor impairments and accompanying cognitive and affective dysfunction due to progressive disturbances of basal ganglia–cortical gating loops. Parkinson's disease has a long presymptomatic stage, which indicates a substantial capacity of the human brain to compensate for dopaminergic nerve degeneration before clinical manifestation of the disease. Neuroimaging studies provide evidence that increased motor-related cortical activity can compensate for progressive dopaminergic nerve degeneration in carriers of a single mutant Parkin or PINK1 gene, who show a mild but significant reduction of dopamine metabolism in the basal ganglia in the complete absence of clinical motor signs. However, it is currently unknown whether similar compensatory mechanisms are effective in non-motor basal ganglia–cortical gating loops. Here, we ask whether asymptomatic Parkin mutation carriers show altered patterns of brain activity during processing of facial gestures, and whether this might compensate for latent facial emotion recognition deficits. Current theories in social neuroscience assume that execution and perception of facial gestures are linked by a special class of visuomotor neurons (‘mirror neurons’) in the ventrolateral premotor cortex/pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann area 44/6). We hypothesized that asymptomatic Parkin mutation carriers would show increased activity in this area during processing of affective facial gestures, replicating the compensatory motor effects that have previously been observed in these individuals. Additionally, Parkin mutation carriers might show altered activity in other basal ganglia–cortical gating loops. Eight asymptomatic heterozygous Parkin mutation carriers and eight matched controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging and a subsequent facial emotion recognition task. As predicted, Parkin mutation carriers showed significantly stronger activity in the right ventrolateral premotor cortex during execution and perception of affective facial gestures than healthy controls. Furthermore, Parkin mutation carriers showed a slightly reduced ability to recognize facial emotions that was least severe in individuals who showed the strongest increase of ventrolateral premotor activity. In addition, Parkin mutation carriers showed a significantly weaker than normal increase of activity in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex (inferior frontal gyrus pars orbitalis, Brodmann area 47), which was unrelated to facial emotion recognition ability. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that compensatory activity in the ventrolateral premotor cortex during processing of affective facial gestures can reduce impairments in facial emotion recognition in subclinical Parkin mutation carriers. A breakdown of this compensatory mechanism might lead to the impairment of facial expressivity and facial emotion recognition observed in manifest Parkinson's disease. PMID:22434215

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

Empathy, but not mimicry restriction, influences the recognition of change in emotional facial expressions.

PubMed

Kosonogov, Vladimir; Titova, Alisa; Vorobyeva, Elena

2015-01-01

The current study addressed the hypothesis that empathy and the restriction of facial muscles of observers can influence recognition of emotional facial expressions. A sample of 74 participants recognized the subjective onset of emotional facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral) in a series of morphed face photographs showing a gradual change (frame by frame) from one expression to another. The high-empathy (as measured by the Empathy Quotient) participants recognized emotional facial expressions at earlier photographs from the series than did low-empathy ones, but there was no difference in the exploration time. Restriction of facial muscles of observers (with plasters and a stick in mouth) did not influence the responses. We discuss these findings in the context of the embodied simulation theory and previous data on empathy.

Use of Facial Recognition Software to Identify Disaster Victims With Facial Injuries.

PubMed

Broach, John; Yong, Rothsovann; Manuell, Mary-Elise; Nichols, Constance

2017-10-01

After large-scale disasters, victim identification frequently presents a challenge and a priority for responders attempting to reunite families and ensure proper identification of deceased persons. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether currently commercially available facial recognition software can successfully identify disaster victims with facial injuries. Photos of 106 people were taken before and after application of moulage designed to simulate traumatic facial injuries. These photos as well as photos from volunteers' personal photo collections were analyzed by using facial recognition software to determine whether this technology could accurately identify a person with facial injuries. The study results suggest that a responder could expect to get a correct match between submitted photos and photos of injured patients between 39% and 45% of the time and a much higher percentage of correct returns if submitted photos were of optimal quality with percentages correct exceeding 90% in most situations. The present results suggest that the use of this software would provide significant benefit to responders. Although a correct result was returned only 40% of the time, this would still likely represent a benefit for a responder trying to identify hundreds or thousands of victims. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:568-572).

Emotion recognition and social skills in child and adolescent offspring of parents with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Horton, Leslie E; Bridgwater, Miranda A; Haas, Gretchen L

2017-05-01

Emotion recognition, a social cognition domain, is impaired in people with schizophrenia and contributes to social dysfunction. Whether impaired emotion recognition emerges as a manifestation of illness or predates symptoms is unclear. Findings from studies of emotion recognition impairments in first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia are mixed and, to our knowledge, no studies have investigated the link between emotion recognition and social functioning in that population. This study examined facial affect recognition and social skills in 16 offspring of parents with schizophrenia (familial high-risk/FHR) compared to 34 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC), ages 7-19. As hypothesised, FHR children exhibited impaired overall accuracy, accuracy in identifying fearful faces, and overall recognition speed relative to controls. Age-adjusted facial affect recognition accuracy scores predicted parent's overall rating of their child's social skills for both groups. This study supports the presence of facial affect recognition deficits in FHR children. Importantly, as the first known study to suggest the presence of these deficits in young, asymptomatic FHR children, it extends findings to a developmental stage predating symptoms. Further, findings point to a relationship between early emotion recognition and social skills. Improved characterisation of deficits in FHR children could inform early intervention.

Detecting facial emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia using dynamic stimuli of varying intensities.

PubMed

Hargreaves, A; Mothersill, O; Anderson, M; Lawless, S; Corvin, A; Donohoe, G

2016-10-28

Deficits in facial emotion recognition have been associated with functional impairments in patients with Schizophrenia (SZ). Whilst a strong ecological argument has been made for the use of both dynamic facial expressions and varied emotion intensities in research, SZ emotion recognition studies to date have primarily used static stimuli of a singular, 100%, intensity of emotion. To address this issue, the present study aimed to investigate accuracy of emotion recognition amongst patients with SZ and healthy subjects using dynamic facial emotion stimuli of varying intensities. To this end an emotion recognition task (ERT) designed by Montagne (2007) was adapted and employed. 47 patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of SZ and 51 healthy participants were assessed for emotion recognition. Results of the ERT were tested for correlation with performance in areas of cognitive ability typically found to be impaired in psychosis, including IQ, memory, attention and social cognition. Patients were found to perform less well than healthy participants at recognising each of the 6 emotions analysed. Surprisingly, however, groups did not differ in terms of impact of emotion intensity on recognition accuracy; for both groups higher intensity levels predicted greater accuracy, but no significant interaction between diagnosis and emotional intensity was found for any of the 6 emotions. Accuracy of emotion recognition was, however, more strongly correlated with cognition in the patient cohort. Whilst this study demonstrates the feasibility of using ecologically valid dynamic stimuli in the study of emotion recognition accuracy, varying the intensity of the emotion displayed was not demonstrated to impact patients and healthy participants differentially, and thus may not be a necessary variable to include in emotion recognition research. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Learning the moves: the effect of familiarity and facial motion on person recognition across large changes in viewing format.

PubMed

Roark, Dana A; O'Toole, Alice J; Abdi, Hervé; Barrett, Susan E

2006-01-01

Familiarity with a face or person can support recognition in tasks that require generalization to novel viewing contexts. Using naturalistic viewing conditions requiring recognition of people from face or whole body gait stimuli, we investigated the effects of familiarity, facial motion, and direction of learning/test transfer on person recognition. Participants were familiarized with previously unknown people from gait videos and were tested on faces (experiment 1a) or were familiarized with faces and were tested with gait videos (experiment 1b). Recognition was more accurate when learning from the face and testing with the gait videos, than when learning from the gait videos and testing with the face. The repetition of a single stimulus, either the face or gait, produced strong recognition gains across transfer conditions. Also, the presentation of moving faces resulted in better performance than that of static faces. In experiment 2, we investigated the role of facial motion further by testing recognition with static profile images. Motion provided no benefit for recognition, indicating that structure-from-motion is an unlikely source of the motion advantage found in the first set of experiments.

A system for tracking and recognizing pedestrian faces using a network of loosely coupled cameras

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gagnon, L.; Laliberté, F.; Foucher, S.; Branzan Albu, A.; Laurendeau, D.

2006-05-01

A face recognition module has been developed for an intelligent multi-camera video surveillance system. The module can recognize a pedestrian face in terms of six basic emotions and the neutral state. Face and facial features detection (eyes, nasal root, nose and mouth) are first performed using cascades of boosted classifiers. These features are used to normalize the pose and dimension of the face image. Gabor filters are then sampled on a regular grid covering the face image to build a facial feature vector that feeds a nearest neighbor classifier with a cosine distance similarity measure for facial expression interpretation and face model construction. A graphical user interface allows the user to adjust the module parameters.

A review of the changing culture and social context relating to forensic facial depiction of the dead.

PubMed

Wilkinson, Caroline

2014-12-01

The recognition of a decedent by a family member is commonplace in forensic investigation and is often employed as identity confirmation. However, it is recognised that misidentification from facial recognition is also common and faces of the dead may be extremely difficult to recognise due to decomposition or external damage, and even immediate post-mortem changes may be significant enough to confuse an observer. The depiction of faces of the dead can be a useful tool for promoting recognition leading to identification and post-mortem facial depiction is described as the interpretation of human remains in order to suggest the living appearance of an individual. This paper provides an historical context relating to the changing view of society to the presentation and publication of post-mortem facial depictions and discusses the current ethical, practical and academic challenges associated with these images. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selective impairment of facial recognition due to a haematoma restricted to the right fusiform and lateral occipital region

PubMed Central

Wada, Y; Yamamoto, T

2001-01-01

A 67 year old right handed Japanese man developed prosopagnosia caused by a haemorrhage. His only deficit was the inability to perceive and discriminate unfamiliar faces, and to recognise familiar faces. He did not show deficits in visual or visuospatial perception of non-facial stimuli, alexia, visual agnosia, or topographical disorientation. Brain MRI showed a haematoma limited to the right fusiform and the lateral occipital region. Single photon emission computed tomography confirmed that there was no decreased blood flow in the opposite left cerebral hemisphere. The present case indicates that a well placed small right fusiform gyrus and the adjacent area can cause isolated impairment of facial recognition. As far as we know, there has been no published case that has demonstrated this exact lesion site, which was indicated by recent functional MRI studies as the most critical area in facial recognition.

 PMID:11459906

Interference with facial emotion recognition by verbal but not visual loads.

PubMed

Reed, Phil; Steed, Ian

2015-12-01

The ability to recognize emotions through facial characteristics is critical for social functioning, but is often impaired in those with a developmental or intellectual disability. The current experiments explored the degree to which interfering with the processing capacities of typically-developing individuals would produce a similar inability to recognize emotions through the facial elements of faces displaying particular emotions. It was found that increasing the cognitive load (in an attempt to model learning impairments in a typically developing population) produced deficits in correctly identifying emotions from facial elements. However, this effect was much more pronounced when using a concurrent verbal task than when employing a concurrent visual task, suggesting that there is a substantial verbal element to the labeling and subsequent recognition of emotions. This concurs with previous work conducted with those with developmental disabilities that suggests emotion recognition deficits are connected with language deficits. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Acquisition Level Definitions and Observables for Human Targets Urban Operations and the Global War on Terrorism

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-03-01

added to address such worn or carried objects, and facial recognition . The definitions also address commercial and modified commercial vehicles that...or revolver - Uniform worn by French or US or Chinese infantry - Facial recognition /identification (A particular person can be discriminated out of a

Face Processing and Facial Emotion Recognition in Adults with Down Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barisnikov, Koviljka; Hippolyte, Loyse; Van der Linden, Martial

2008-01-01

Face processing and facial expression recognition was investigated in 17 adults with Down syndrome, and results were compared with those of a child control group matched for receptive vocabulary. On the tasks involving faces without emotional content, the adults with Down syndrome performed significantly worse than did the controls. However, their…

Acquisition Level Definitions and Observables for Human Targets, Urban Operations, and the Global War on Terrorism

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-04-08

category, feature identification, has been added to address such worn or carried objects, and facial recognition . The definitions also address commercial...Cell phone or revolver − Uniform worn by French or US or Chinese infantry − Facial recognition /identification (A particular person can be

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…

Sex Differences in Facial Scanning: Similarities and Dissimilarities between Infants and Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rennels, Jennifer L.; Cummings, Andrew J.

2013-01-01

When face processing studies find sex differences, male infants appear better at face recognition than female infants, whereas female adults appear better at face recognition than male adults. Both female infants and adults, however, discriminate emotional expressions better than males. To investigate if sex and age differences in facial scanning…

Reduced Reliance on Optimal Facial Information for Identity Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leonard, Hayley C.; Annaz, Dagmara; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette; Johnson, Mark H.

2013-01-01

Previous research into face processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has revealed atypical biases toward particular facial information during identity recognition. Specifically, a focus on features (or high spatial frequencies [HSFs]) has been reported for both face and nonface processing in ASD. The current study investigated the development…

Biases in facial and vocal emotion recognition in chronic schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Dondaine, Thibaut; Robert, Gabriel; Péron, Julie; Grandjean, Didier; Vérin, Marc; Drapier, Dominique; Millet, Bruno

2014-01-01

There has been extensive research on impaired emotion recognition in schizophrenia in the facial and vocal modalities. The literature points to biases toward non-relevant emotions for emotional faces but few studies have examined biases in emotional recognition across different modalities (facial and vocal). In order to test emotion recognition biases, we exposed 23 patients with stabilized chronic schizophrenia and 23 healthy controls (HCs) to emotional facial and vocal tasks asking them to rate emotional intensity on visual analog scales. We showed that patients with schizophrenia provided higher intensity ratings on the non-target scales (e.g., surprise scale for fear stimuli) than HCs for the both tasks. Furthermore, with the exception of neutral vocal stimuli, they provided the same intensity ratings on the target scales as the HCs. These findings suggest that patients with chronic schizophrenia have emotional biases when judging emotional stimuli in the visual and vocal modalities. These biases may stem from a basic sensorial deficit, a high-order cognitive dysfunction, or both. The respective roles of prefrontal-subcortical circuitry and the basal ganglia are discussed. PMID:25202287

Quantifying facial expression recognition across viewing conditions.

PubMed

Goren, Deborah; Wilson, Hugh R

2006-04-01

Facial expressions are key to social interactions and to assessment of potential danger in various situations. Therefore, our brains must be able to recognize facial expressions when they are transformed in biologically plausible ways. We used synthetic happy, sad, angry and fearful faces to determine the amount of geometric change required to recognize these emotions during brief presentations. Five-alternative forced choice conditions involving central viewing, peripheral viewing and inversion were used to study recognition among the four emotions. Two-alternative forced choice was used to study affect discrimination when spatial frequency information in the stimulus was modified. The results show an emotion and task-dependent pattern of detection. Facial expressions presented with low peak frequencies are much harder to discriminate from neutral than faces defined by either mid or high peak frequencies. Peripheral presentation of faces also makes recognition much more difficult, except for happy faces. Differences between fearful detection and recognition tasks are probably due to common confusions with sadness when recognizing fear from among other emotions. These findings further support the idea that these emotions are processed separately from each other.

Strength Is in Numbers: Can Concordant Artificial Listeners Improve Prediction of Emotion from Speech?

PubMed

Martinelli, Eugenio; Mencattini, Arianna; Daprati, Elena; Di Natale, Corrado

2016-01-01

Humans can communicate their emotions by modulating facial expressions or the tone of their voice. Albeit numerous applications exist that enable machines to read facial emotions and recognize the content of verbal messages, methods for speech emotion recognition are still in their infancy. Yet, fast and reliable applications for emotion recognition are the obvious advancement of present 'intelligent personal assistants', and may have countless applications in diagnostics, rehabilitation and research. Taking inspiration from the dynamics of human group decision-making, we devised a novel speech emotion recognition system that applies, for the first time, a semi-supervised prediction model based on consensus. Three tests were carried out to compare this algorithm with traditional approaches. Labeling performances relative to a public database of spontaneous speeches are reported. The novel system appears to be fast, robust and less computationally demanding than traditional methods, allowing for easier implementation in portable voice-analyzers (as used in rehabilitation, research, industry, etc.) and for applications in the research domain (such as real-time pairing of stimuli to participants' emotional state, selective/differential data collection based on emotional content, etc.).

Implementation of age and gender recognition system for intelligent digital signage

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Sang-Heon; Sohn, Myoung-Kyu; Kim, Hyunduk

2015-12-01

Intelligent digital signage systems transmit customized advertising and information by analyzing users and customers, unlike existing system that presented advertising in the form of broadcast without regard to type of customers. Currently, development of intelligent digital signage system has been pushed forward vigorously. In this study, we designed a system capable of analyzing gender and age of customers based on image obtained from camera, although there are many different methods for analyzing customers. We conducted age and gender recognition experiments using public database. The age/gender recognition experiments were performed through histogram matching method by extracting Local binary patterns (LBP) features after facial area on input image was normalized. The results of experiment showed that gender recognition rate was as high as approximately 97% on average. Age recognition was conducted based on categorization into 5 age classes. Age recognition rates for women and men were about 67% and 68%, respectively when that conducted separately for different gender.

Interest and attention in facial recognition.

PubMed

Burgess, Melinda C R; Weaver, George E

2003-04-01

When applied to facial recognition, the levels of processing paradigm has yielded consistent results: faces processed in deep conditions are recognized better than faces processed under shallow conditions. However, there are multiple explanations for this occurrence. The own-race advantage in facial recognition, the tendency to recognize faces from one's own race better than faces from another race, is also consistently shown but not clearly explained. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that the levels of processing findings in facial recognition are a result of interest and attention, not differences in processing. This hypothesis was tested for both own and other faces with 105 Caucasian general psychology students. Levels of processing was manipulated as a between-subjects variable; students were asked to answer one of four types of study questions, e.g., "deep" or "shallow" processing questions, while viewing the study faces. Students' recognition of a subset of previously presented Caucasian and African-American faces from a test-set with an equal number of distractor faces was tested. They indicated their interest in and attention to the task. The typical levels of processing effect was observed with better recognition performance in the deep conditions than in the shallow conditions for both own- and other-race faces. The typical own-race advantage was also observed regardless of level of processing condition. For both own- and other-race faces, level of processing explained a significant portion of the recognition variance above and beyond what was explained by interest in and attention to the task.

Stereotypes and prejudice affect the recognition of emotional body postures.

PubMed

Bijlstra, Gijsbert; Holland, Rob W; Dotsch, Ron; Wigboldus, Daniel H J

2018-03-26

Most research on emotion recognition focuses on facial expressions. However, people communicate emotional information through bodily cues as well. Prior research on facial expressions has demonstrated that emotion recognition is modulated by top-down processes. Here, we tested whether this top-down modulation generalizes to the recognition of emotions from body postures. We report three studies demonstrating that stereotypes and prejudice about men and women may affect how fast people classify various emotional body postures. Our results suggest that gender cues activate gender associations, which affect the recognition of emotions from body postures in a top-down fashion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Object and Facial Recognition in Augmented and Virtual Reality: Investigation into Software, Hardware and Potential Uses

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schulte, Erin

2017-01-01

As augmented and virtual reality grows in popularity, and more researchers focus on its development, other fields of technology have grown in the hopes of integrating with the up-and-coming hardware currently on the market. Namely, there has been a focus on how to make an intuitive, hands-free human-computer interaction (HCI) utilizing AR and VR that allows users to control their technology with little to no physical interaction with hardware. Computer vision, which is utilized in devices such as the Microsoft Kinect, webcams and other similar hardware has shown potential in assisting with the development of a HCI system that requires next to no human interaction with computing hardware and software. Object and facial recognition are two subsets of computer vision, both of which can be applied to HCI systems in the fields of medicine, security, industrial development and other similar areas.

Modulation of α power and functional connectivity during facial affect recognition.

PubMed

Popov, Tzvetan; Miller, Gregory A; Rockstroh, Brigitte; Weisz, Nathan

2013-04-03

Research has linked oscillatory activity in the α frequency range, particularly in sensorimotor cortex, to processing of social actions. Results further suggest involvement of sensorimotor α in the processing of facial expressions, including affect. The sensorimotor face area may be critical for perception of emotional face expression, but the role it plays is unclear. The present study sought to clarify how oscillatory brain activity contributes to or reflects processing of facial affect during changes in facial expression. Neuromagnetic oscillatory brain activity was monitored while 30 volunteers viewed videos of human faces that changed their expression from neutral to fearful, neutral, or happy expressions. Induced changes in α power during the different morphs, source analysis, and graph-theoretic metrics served to identify the role of α power modulation and cross-regional coupling by means of phase synchrony during facial affect recognition. Changes from neutral to emotional faces were associated with a 10-15 Hz power increase localized in bilateral sensorimotor areas, together with occipital power decrease, preceding reported emotional expression recognition. Graph-theoretic analysis revealed that, in the course of a trial, the balance between sensorimotor power increase and decrease was associated with decreased and increased transregional connectedness as measured by node degree. Results suggest that modulations in α power facilitate early registration, with sensorimotor cortex including the sensorimotor face area largely functionally decoupled and thereby protected from additional, disruptive input and that subsequent α power decrease together with increased connectedness of sensorimotor areas facilitates successful facial affect recognition.

The effect of forced choice on facial emotion recognition: a comparison to open verbal classification of emotion labels

PubMed Central

Limbrecht-Ecklundt, Kerstin; Scheck, Andreas; Jerg-Bretzke, Lucia; Walter, Steffen; Hoffmann, Holger; Traue, Harald C.

2013-01-01

Objective: This article includes the examination of potential methodological problems of the application of a forced choice response format in facial emotion recognition. Methodology: 33 subjects were presented with validated facial stimuli. The task was to make a decision about which emotion was shown. In addition, the subjective certainty concerning the decision was recorded. Results: The detection rates are 68% for fear, 81% for sadness, 85% for anger, 87% for surprise, 88% for disgust, and 94% for happiness, and are thus well above the random probability. Conclusion: This study refutes the concern that the use of forced choice formats may not adequately reflect actual recognition performance. The use of standardized tests to examine emotion recognition ability leads to valid results and can be used in different contexts. For example, the images presented here appear suitable for diagnosing deficits in emotion recognition in the context of psychological disorders and for mapping treatment progress. PMID:23798981

Face identity recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral studies.

PubMed

Weigelt, Sarah; Koldewyn, Kami; Kanwisher, Nancy

2012-03-01

Face recognition--the ability to recognize a person from their facial appearance--is essential for normal social interaction. Face recognition deficits have been implicated in the most common disorder of social interaction: autism. Here we ask: is face identity recognition in fact impaired in people with autism? Reviewing behavioral studies we find no strong evidence for a qualitative difference in how facial identity is processed between those with and without autism: markers of typical face identity recognition, such as the face inversion effect, seem to be present in people with autism. However, quantitatively--i.e., how well facial identity is remembered or discriminated--people with autism perform worse than typical individuals. This impairment is particularly clear in face memory and in face perception tasks in which a delay intervenes between sample and test, and less so in tasks with no memory demand. Although some evidence suggests that this deficit may be specific to faces, further evidence on this question is necessary. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Action recognition is sensitive to the identity of the actor.

PubMed

Ferstl, Ylva; Bülthoff, Heinrich; de la Rosa, Stephan

2017-09-01

Recognizing who is carrying out an action is essential for successful human interaction. The cognitive mechanisms underlying this ability are little understood and have been subject of discussions in embodied approaches to action recognition. Here we examine one solution, that visual action recognition processes are at least partly sensitive to the actor's identity. We investigated the dependency between identity information and action related processes by testing the sensitivity of neural action recognition processes to clothing and facial identity information with a behavioral adaptation paradigm. Our results show that action adaptation effects are in fact modulated by both clothing information and the actor's facial identity. The finding demonstrates that neural processes underlying action recognition are sensitive to identity information (including facial identity) and thereby not exclusively tuned to actions. We suggest that such response properties are useful to help humans in knowing who carried out an action. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Identifying differences in biased affective information processing in major depression.

PubMed

Gollan, Jackie K; Pane, Heather T; McCloskey, Michael S; Coccaro, Emil F

2008-05-30

This study investigates the extent to which participants with major depression differ from healthy comparison participants in the irregularities in affective information processing, characterized by deficits in facial expression recognition, intensity categorization, and reaction time to identifying emotionally salient and neutral information. Data on diagnoses, symptom severity, and affective information processing using a facial recognition task were collected from 66 participants, male and female between ages 18 and 54 years, grouped by major depressive disorder (N=37) or healthy non-psychiatric (N=29) status. Findings from MANCOVAs revealed that major depression was associated with a significantly longer reaction time to sad facial expressions compared with healthy status. Also, depressed participants demonstrated a negative bias towards interpreting neutral facial expressions as sad significantly more often than healthy participants. In turn, healthy participants interpreted neutral faces as happy significantly more often than depressed participants. No group differences were observed for facial expression recognition and intensity categorization. The observed effects suggest that depression has significant effects on the perception of the intensity of negative affective stimuli, delayed speed of processing sad affective information, and biases towards interpreting neutral faces as sad.

A framework for the recognition of 3D faces and expressions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Chao; Barreto, Armando

2006-04-01

Face recognition technology has been a focus both in academia and industry for the last couple of years because of its wide potential applications and its importance to meet the security needs of today's world. Most of the systems developed are based on 2D face recognition technology, which uses pictures for data processing. With the development of 3D imaging technology, 3D face recognition emerges as an alternative to overcome the difficulties inherent with 2D face recognition, i.e. sensitivity to illumination conditions and orientation positioning of the subject. But 3D face recognition still needs to tackle the problem of deformation of facial geometry that results from the expression changes of a subject. To deal with this issue, a 3D face recognition framework is proposed in this paper. It is composed of three subsystems: an expression recognition system, a system for the identification of faces with expression, and neutral face recognition system. A system for the recognition of faces with one type of expression (happiness) and neutral faces was implemented and tested on a database of 30 subjects. The results proved the feasibility of this framework.

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.

IntraFace

PubMed Central

De la Torre, Fernando; Chu, Wen-Sheng; Xiong, Xuehan; Vicente, Francisco; Ding, Xiaoyu; Cohn, Jeffrey

2016-01-01

Within the last 20 years, there has been an increasing interest in the computer vision community in automated facial image analysis algorithms. This has been driven by applications in animation, market research, autonomous-driving, surveillance, and facial editing among others. To date, there exist several commercial packages for specific facial image analysis tasks such as facial expression recognition, facial attribute analysis or face tracking. However, free and easy-to-use software that incorporates all these functionalities is unavailable. This paper presents IntraFace (IF), a publicly-available software package for automated facial feature tracking, head pose estimation, facial attribute recognition, and facial expression analysis from video. In addition, IFincludes a newly develop technique for unsupervised synchrony detection to discover correlated facial behavior between two or more persons, a relatively unexplored problem in facial image analysis. In tests, IF achieved state-of-the-art results for emotion expression and action unit detection in three databases, FERA, CK+ and RU-FACS; measured audience reaction to a talk given by one of the authors; and discovered synchrony for smiling in videos of parent-infant interaction. IF is free of charge for academic use at http://www.humansensing.cs.cmu.edu/intraface/. PMID:27346987

IntraFace.

PubMed

De la Torre, Fernando; Chu, Wen-Sheng; Xiong, Xuehan; Vicente, Francisco; Ding, Xiaoyu; Cohn, Jeffrey

2015-05-01

Within the last 20 years, there has been an increasing interest in the computer vision community in automated facial image analysis algorithms. This has been driven by applications in animation, market research, autonomous-driving, surveillance, and facial editing among others. To date, there exist several commercial packages for specific facial image analysis tasks such as facial expression recognition, facial attribute analysis or face tracking. However, free and easy-to-use software that incorporates all these functionalities is unavailable. This paper presents IntraFace (IF), a publicly-available software package for automated facial feature tracking, head pose estimation, facial attribute recognition, and facial expression analysis from video. In addition, IFincludes a newly develop technique for unsupervised synchrony detection to discover correlated facial behavior between two or more persons, a relatively unexplored problem in facial image analysis. In tests, IF achieved state-of-the-art results for emotion expression and action unit detection in three databases, FERA, CK+ and RU-FACS; measured audience reaction to a talk given by one of the authors; and discovered synchrony for smiling in videos of parent-infant interaction. IF is free of charge for academic use at http://www.humansensing.cs.cmu.edu/intraface/.

Testosterone reduces conscious detection of signals serving social correction: implications for antisocial behavior.

PubMed

van Honk, Jack; Schutter, Dennis J L G

2007-08-01

Elevated levels of testosterone have repeatedly been associated with antisocial behavior, but the psychobiological mechanisms underlying this effect are unknown. However, testosterone is evidently capable of altering the processing of facial threat, and facial signals of fear and anger serve sociality through their higher-level empathy-provoking and socially corrective properties. We investigated the hypothesis that testosterone predisposes people to antisocial behavior by reducing conscious recognition of facial threat. In a within-subjects design, testosterone (0.5 mg) or placebo was administered to 16 female volunteers. Afterward, a task with morphed stimuli indexed their sensitivity for consciously recognizing the facial expressions of threat (disgust, fear, and anger) and nonthreat (surprise, sadness, and happiness). Testosterone induced a significant reduction in the conscious recognition of facial threat overall. Separate analyses for the three categories of threat faces indicated that this effect was reliable for angry facial expressions exclusively. This testosterone-induced impairment in the conscious detection of the socially corrective facial signal of anger may predispose individuals to antisocial behavior.

Forensic Facial Reconstruction: The Final Frontier.

PubMed

Gupta, Sonia; Gupta, Vineeta; Vij, Hitesh; Vij, Ruchieka; Tyagi, Nutan

2015-09-01

Forensic facial reconstruction can be used to identify unknown human remains when other techniques fail. Through this article, we attempt to review the different methods of facial reconstruction reported in literature. There are several techniques of doing facial reconstruction, which vary from two dimensional drawings to three dimensional clay models. With the advancement in 3D technology, a rapid, efficient and cost effective computerized 3D forensic facial reconstruction method has been developed which has brought down the degree of error previously encountered. There are several methods of manual facial reconstruction but the combination Manchester method has been reported to be the best and most accurate method for the positive recognition of an individual. Recognition allows the involved government agencies to make a list of suspected victims'. This list can then be narrowed down and a positive identification may be given by the more conventional method of forensic medicine. Facial reconstruction allows visual identification by the individual's family and associates to become easy and more definite.

The Face of the Chameleon: The Experience of Facial Mimicry for the Mimicker and the Mimickee

PubMed Central

Kulesza, Wojciech Marek; Cisłak, Aleksandra; Vallacher, Robin R.; Nowak, Andrzej; Czekiel, Martyna; Bedynska, Sylwia

2015-01-01

ABSTRACT This research addressed three questions concerning facial mimicry: (a) Does the relationship between mimicry and liking characterize all facial expressions, or is it limited to specific expressions? (b) Is the relationship between facial mimicry and liking symmetrical for the mimicker and the mimickee? (c) Does conscious mimicry have consequences for emotion recognition? A paradigm is introduced in which participants interact over a computer setup with a confederate whose prerecorded facial displays of emotion are synchronized with participants’ behavior to create the illusion of social interaction. In Experiment 1, the confederate did or did not mimic participants’ facial displays of various subsets of basic emotions. Mimicry promoted greater liking for the confederate regardless of which emotions were mimicked. Experiment 2 reversed these roles: participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the confederate’s facial displays. Mimicry did not affect liking for the confederate but it did impair emotion recognition. PMID:25811746

An in-depth cognitive examination of individuals with superior face recognition skills.

PubMed

Bobak, Anna K; Bennetts, Rachel J; Parris, Benjamin A; Jansari, Ashok; Bate, Sarah

2016-09-01

Previous work has reported the existence of "super-recognisers" (SRs), or individuals with extraordinary face recognition skills. However, the precise underpinnings of this ability have not yet been investigated. In this paper we examine (a) the face-specificity of super recognition, (b) perception of facial identity in SRs, (c) whether SRs present with enhancements in holistic processing and (d) the consistency of these findings across different SRs. A detailed neuropsychological investigation into six SRs indicated domain-specificity in three participants, with some evidence of enhanced generalised visuo-cognitive or socio-emotional processes in the remaining individuals. While superior face-processing skills were restricted to face memory in three of the SRs, enhancements to facial identity perception were observed in the others. Notably, five of the six participants showed at least some evidence of enhanced holistic processing. These findings indicate cognitive heterogeneity in the presentation of superior face recognition, and have implications for our theoretical understanding of the typical face-processing system and the identification of superior face-processing skills in applied settings. Copyright © 2016 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.

Adjunctive selective estrogen receptor modulator increases neural activity in the hippocampus and inferior frontal gyrus during emotional face recognition in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Ji, E; Weickert, C S; Lenroot, R; Kindler, J; Skilleter, A J; Vercammen, A; White, C; Gur, R E; Weickert, T W

2016-05-03

Estrogen has been implicated in the development and course of schizophrenia with most evidence suggesting a neuroprotective effect. Treatment with raloxifene, a selective estrogen receptor modulator, can reduce symptom severity, improve cognition and normalize brain activity during learning in schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia are especially impaired in the identification of negative facial emotions. The present study was designed to determine the extent to which adjunctive raloxifene treatment would alter abnormal neural activity during angry facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia. Twenty people with schizophrenia (12 men, 8 women) participated in a 13-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial of adjunctive raloxifene treatment (120 mg per day orally) and performed a facial emotion recognition task during functional magnetic resonance imaging after each treatment phase. Two-sample t-tests in regions of interest selected a priori were performed to assess activation differences between raloxifene and placebo conditions during the recognition of angry faces. Adjunctive raloxifene significantly increased activation in the right hippocampus and left inferior frontal gyrus compared with the placebo condition (family-wise error, P<0.05). There was no significant difference in performance accuracy or reaction time between active and placebo conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence suggesting that adjunctive raloxifene treatment changes neural activity in brain regions associated with facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia. These findings support the hypothesis that estrogen plays a modifying role in schizophrenia and shows that adjunctive raloxifene treatment may reverse abnormal neural activity during facial emotion recognition, which is relevant to impaired social functioning in men and women with schizophrenia.

[Emotional facial recognition difficulties as primary deficit in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review].

PubMed

Rodrigo-Ruiz, D; Perez-Gonzalez, J C; Cejudo, J

2017-08-16

It has recently been warned that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show a deficit in emotional competence and emotional intelligence, specifically in their ability to emotional recognition. A systematic review of the scientific literature in reference to the emotional recognition of facial expressions in children with ADHD is presented in order to establish or rule the existence of emotional deficits as primary dysfunction in this disorder and, where appropriate, the effect size of the differences against normal development or neurotypical children. The results reveal the recent interest in the issue and the lack of information. Although there is no complete agreement, most of the studies show that emotional recognition of facial expressions is affected in children with ADHD, showing them significantly less accurate than children from control groups in recognizing emotions communicated through facial expressions. A part of these studies make comparisons on the recognition of different discrete emotions; having observed that children with ADHD tend to a greater difficulty recognizing negative emotions, especially anger, fear, and disgust. These results have direct implications for the educational and clinical diagnosis of ADHD; and for the educational intervention for children with ADHD, emotional education might entail an advantageous aid.

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.

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.

Predictive codes of familiarity and context during the perceptual learning of facial identities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Apps, Matthew A. J.; Tsakiris, Manos

2013-11-01

Face recognition is a key component of successful social behaviour. However, the computational processes that underpin perceptual learning and recognition as faces transition from unfamiliar to familiar are poorly understood. In predictive coding, learning occurs through prediction errors that update stimulus familiarity, but recognition is a function of both stimulus and contextual familiarity. Here we show that behavioural responses on a two-option face recognition task can be predicted by the level of contextual and facial familiarity in a computational model derived from predictive-coding principles. Using fMRI, we show that activity in the superior temporal sulcus varies with the contextual familiarity in the model, whereas activity in the fusiform face area covaries with the prediction error parameter that updated facial familiarity. Our results characterize the key computations underpinning the perceptual learning of faces, highlighting that the functional properties of face-processing areas conform to the principles of predictive coding.

Facial Expression Recognition: Can Preschoolers with Cochlear Implants and Hearing Aids Catch It?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Yifang; Su, Yanjie; Fang, Ping; Zhou, Qingxia

2011-01-01

Tager-Flusberg and Sullivan (2000) presented a cognitive model of theory of mind (ToM), in which they thought ToM included two components--a social-perceptual component and a social-cognitive component. Facial expression recognition (FER) is an ability tapping the social-perceptual component. Previous findings suggested that normal hearing…

Attention to Social Stimuli and Facial Identity Recognition Skills in Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilson, C. E.; Brock, J.; Palermo, R.

2010-01-01

Background: Previous research suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a reduced preference for viewing social stimuli in the environment and impaired facial identity recognition. Methods: Here, we directly tested a link between these two phenomena in 13 ASD children and 13 age-matched typically developing (TD) controls.…

Facial Emotion Recognition in Children with High Functioning Autism and Children with Social Phobia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Nina; Beidel, Deborah C.; Sarver, Dustin E.; Sims, Valerie

2012-01-01

Recognizing facial affect is essential for effective social functioning. This study examines emotion recognition abilities in children aged 7-13 years with High Functioning Autism (HFA = 19), Social Phobia (SP = 17), or typical development (TD = 21). Findings indicate that all children identified certain emotions more quickly (e.g., happy [less…

Deficits in Facial Expression Recognition in Male Adolescents with Early-Onset or Adolescence-Onset Conduct Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fairchild, Graeme; Van Goozen, Stephanie H. M.; Calder, Andrew J.; Stollery, Sarah J.; Goodyer, Ian M.

2009-01-01

Background: We examined whether conduct disorder (CD) is associated with deficits in facial expression recognition and, if so, whether these deficits are specific to the early-onset form of CD, which emerges in childhood. The findings could potentially inform the developmental taxonomic theory of antisocial behaviour, which suggests that…

An Inner Face Advantage in Children's Recognition of Familiar Peers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ge, Liezhong; Anzures, Gizelle; Wang, Zhe; Kelly, David J.; Pascalis, Olivier; Quinn, Paul C.; Slater, Alan M.; Yang, Zhiliang; Lee, Kang

2008-01-01

Children's recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with…

On the facilitative effects of face motion on face recognition and its development

PubMed Central

Xiao, Naiqi G.; Perrotta, Steve; Quinn, Paul C.; Wang, Zhe; Sun, Yu-Hao P.; Lee, Kang

2014-01-01

For the past century, researchers have extensively studied human face processing and its development. These studies have advanced our understanding of not only face processing, but also visual processing in general. However, most of what we know about face processing was investigated using static face images as stimuli. Therefore, an important question arises: to what extent does our understanding of static face processing generalize to face processing in real-life contexts in which faces are mostly moving? The present article addresses this question by examining recent studies on moving face processing to uncover the influence of facial movements on face processing and its development. First, we describe evidence on the facilitative effects of facial movements on face recognition and two related theoretical hypotheses: the supplementary information hypothesis and the representation enhancement hypothesis. We then highlight several recent studies suggesting that facial movements optimize face processing by activating specific face processing strategies that accommodate to task requirements. Lastly, we review the influence of facial movements on the development of face processing in the first year of life. We focus on infants' sensitivity to facial movements and explore the facilitative effects of facial movements on infants' face recognition performance. We conclude by outlining several future directions to investigate moving face processing and emphasize the importance of including dynamic aspects of facial information to further understand face processing in real-life contexts. PMID:25009517

Intraspecific Variation in Learning: Worker Wasps Are Less Able to Learn and Remember Individual Conspecific Faces than Queen Wasps.

PubMed

Tibbetts, Elizabeth A; Injaian, Allison; Sheehan, Michael J; Desjardins, Nicole

2018-05-01

Research on individual recognition often focuses on species-typical recognition abilities rather than assessing intraspecific variation in recognition. As individual recognition is cognitively costly, the capacity for recognition may vary within species. We test how individual face recognition differs between nest-founding queens (foundresses) and workers in Polistes fuscatus paper wasps. Individual recognition mediates dominance interactions among foundresses. Three previously published experiments have shown that foundresses (1) benefit by advertising their identity with distinctive facial patterns that facilitate recognition, (2) have robust memories of individuals, and (3) rapidly learn to distinguish between face images. Like foundresses, workers have variable facial patterns and are capable of individual recognition. However, worker dominance interactions are muted. Therefore, individual recognition may be less important for workers than for foundresses. We find that (1) workers with unique faces receive amounts of aggression similar to those of workers with common faces, indicating that wasps do not benefit from advertising their individual identity with a unique appearance; (2) workers lack robust memories for individuals, as they cannot remember unique conspecifics after a 6-day separation; and (3) workers learn to distinguish between facial images more slowly than foundresses during training. The recognition differences between foundresses and workers are notable because Polistes lack discrete castes; foundresses and workers are morphologically similar, and workers can take over as queens. Overall, social benefits and receiver capacity for individual recognition are surprisingly plastic.

Identification and intensity of disgust: Distinguishing visual, linguistic and facial expressions processing in Parkinson disease.

PubMed

Sedda, Anna; Petito, Sara; Guarino, Maria; Stracciari, Andrea

2017-07-14

Most of the studies since now show an impairment for facial displays of disgust recognition in Parkinson disease. A general impairment in disgust processing in patients with Parkinson disease might adversely affect their social interactions, given the relevance of this emotion for human relations. However, despite the importance of faces, disgust is also expressed through other format of visual stimuli such as sentences and visual images. The aim of our study was to explore disgust processing in a sample of patients affected by Parkinson disease, by means of various tests tackling not only facial recognition but also other format of visual stimuli through which disgust can be recognized. Our results confirm that patients are impaired in recognizing facial displays of disgust. Further analyses show that patients are also impaired and slower for other facial expressions, with the only exception of happiness. Notably however, patients with Parkinson disease processed visual images and sentences as controls. Our findings show a dissociation within different formats of visual stimuli of disgust, suggesting that Parkinson disease is not characterized by a general compromising of disgust processing, as often suggested. The involvement of the basal ganglia-frontal cortex system might spare some cognitive components of emotional processing, related to memory and culture, at least for disgust. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Configural and Featural Face Processing Influences on Emotion Recognition in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder.

PubMed

Van Rheenen, Tamsyn E; Joshua, Nicole; Castle, David J; Rossell, Susan L

2017-03-01

Emotion recognition impairments have been demonstrated in schizophrenia (Sz), but are less consistent and lesser in magnitude in bipolar disorder (BD). This may be related to the extent to which different face processing strategies are engaged during emotion recognition in each of these disorders. We recently showed that Sz patients had impairments in the use of both featural and configural face processing strategies, whereas BD patients were impaired only in the use of the latter. Here we examine the influence that these impairments have on facial emotion recognition in these cohorts. Twenty-eight individuals with Sz, 28 individuals with BD, and 28 healthy controls completed a facial emotion labeling task with two conditions designed to separate the use of featural and configural face processing strategies; part-based and whole-face emotion recognition. Sz patients performed worse than controls on both conditions, and worse than BD patients on the whole-face condition. BD patients performed worse than controls on the whole-face condition only. Configural processing deficits appear to influence the recognition of facial emotions in BD, whereas both configural and featural processing abnormalities impair emotion recognition in Sz. This may explain discrepancies in the profiles of emotion recognition between the disorders. (JINS, 2017, 23, 287-291).

[Face recognition in patients with schizophrenia].

PubMed

Doi, Hirokazu; Shinohara, Kazuyuki

2012-07-01

It is well known that patients with schizophrenia show severe deficiencies in social communication skills. These deficiencies are believed to be partly derived from abnormalities in face recognition. However, the exact nature of these abnormalities exhibited by schizophrenic patients with respect to face recognition has yet to be clarified. In the present paper, we review the main findings on face recognition deficiencies in patients with schizophrenia, particularly focusing on abnormalities in the recognition of facial expression and gaze direction, which are the primary sources of information of others' mental states. The existing studies reveal that the abnormal recognition of facial expression and gaze direction in schizophrenic patients is attributable to impairments in both perceptual processing of visual stimuli, and cognitive-emotional responses to social information. Furthermore, schizophrenic patients show malfunctions in distributed neural regions, ranging from the fusiform gyrus recruited in the structural encoding of facial stimuli, to the amygdala which plays a primary role in the detection of the emotional significance of stimuli. These findings were obtained from research in patient groups with heterogeneous characteristics. Because previous studies have indicated that impairments in face recognition in schizophrenic patients might vary according to the types of symptoms, it is of primary importance to compare the nature of face recognition deficiencies and the impairments of underlying neural functions across sub-groups of patients.

Automatic recognition of emotions from facial expressions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xue, Henry; Gertner, Izidor

2014-06-01

In the human-computer interaction (HCI) process it is desirable to have an artificial intelligent (AI) system that can identify and categorize human emotions from facial expressions. Such systems can be used in security, in entertainment industries, and also to study visual perception, social interactions and disorders (e.g. schizophrenia and autism). In this work we survey and compare the performance of different feature extraction algorithms and classification schemes. We introduce a faster feature extraction method that resizes and applies a set of filters to the data images without sacrificing the accuracy. In addition, we have enhanced SVM to multiple dimensions while retaining the high accuracy rate of SVM. The algorithms were tested using the Japanese Female Facial Expression (JAFFE) Database and the Database of Faces (AT&T Faces).

The effect of emotion on keystroke: an experimental study using facial feedback hypothesis.

PubMed

Tsui, Wei-Hsuan; Lee, Poming; Hsiao, Tzu-Chien

2013-01-01

The automatic emotion recognition technology is an important part of building intelligent systems to prevent the computers acting inappropriately. A novel approach for recognizing emotional state by their keystroke typing patterns on a standard keyboard was developed in recent years. However, there was very limited investigation about the phenomenon itself in the previous literatures. Hence, in our study, we conduct a controlled experiment to collect subjects' keystroke data in the different emotional states induced by facial feedback. We examine the difference of the keystroke data between positive and negative emotional states. The results prove the significance in the differences in the typing patterns under positive and negative emotions for all subjects. Our study provides an evidence for the reasonability about developing the technique of emotion recognition by keystroke.

Memory deficits for facial identity in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

PubMed

Savaskan, Egemen; Summermatter, Daniel; Schroeder, Clemens; Schächinger, Hartmut

2018-01-01

Faces are among the most relevant social stimuli revealing an encounter's identity and actual emotional state. Deficits in facial recognition may be an early sign of cognitive decline leading to social deficits. The main objective of the present study is to investigate if individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment show recognition deficits in facial identity. Thirty-seven individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment, multiple-domain (15 female; age: 75±8 yrs.) and forty-one healthy volunteers (24 female; age 71±6 yrs.) participated. All participants completed a human portrait memory test presenting unfamiliar faces with happy and angry emotional expressions. Five and thirty minutes later, old and new neutral faces were presented, and discrimination sensitivity (d') and response bias (C) were assessed as signal detection parameters of cued facial identity recognition. Memory performance was lower in amnestic mild cognitive impairment as compared to control subjects, mainly because of an altered response bias towards an increased false alarm rate (favoring false OLD ascription of NEW items). In both groups, memory performance declined between the early and later testing session, and was always better for acquired happy than angry faces. Facial identity memory is impaired in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Liberalization of the response bias may reflect a socially motivated compensatory mechanism maintaining an almost identical recognition hit rate of OLD faces in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Effects of levodopa-carbidopa-entacapone and smoked cocaine on facial affect recognition in cocaine smokers.

PubMed

Bedi, Gillinder; Shiffrin, Laura; Vadhan, Nehal P; Nunes, Edward V; Foltin, Richard W; Bisaga, Adam

2016-04-01

In addition to difficulties in daily social functioning, regular cocaine users have decrements in social processing (the cognitive and affective processes underlying social behavior) relative to non-users. Little is known, however, about the effects of clinically-relevant pharmacological agents, such as cocaine and potential treatment medications, on social processing in cocaine users. Such drug effects could potentially alleviate or compound baseline social processing decrements in cocaine abusers. Here, we assessed the individual and combined effects of smoked cocaine and a potential treatment medication, levodopa-carbidopa-entacapone (LCE), on facial emotion recognition in cocaine smokers. Healthy non-treatment-seeking cocaine smokers (N = 14; two female) completed this 11-day inpatient within-subjects study. Participants received LCE (titrated to 400mg/100mg/200mg b.i.d.) for five days with the remaining time on placebo. The order of medication administration was counterbalanced. Facial emotion recognition was measured twice during target LCE dosing and twice on placebo: once without cocaine and once after repeated cocaine doses. LCE increased the response threshold for identification of facial fear, biasing responses away from fear identification. Cocaine had no effect on facial emotion recognition. Results highlight the possibility for candidate pharmacotherapies to have unintended impacts on social processing in cocaine users, potentially exacerbating already existing difficulties in this population. © The Author(s) 2016.

Age Deficits in Facial Affect Recognition: The Influence of Dynamic Cues.

PubMed

Grainger, Sarah A; Henry, Julie D; Phillips, Louise H; Vanman, Eric J; Allen, Roy

2017-07-01

Older adults have difficulties in identifying most facial expressions of emotion. However, most aging studies have presented static photographs of intense expressions, whereas in everyday experience people see emotions that develop and change. The present study was designed to assess whether age-related difficulties with emotion recognition are reduced when more ecologically valid (i.e., dynamic) stimuli are used. We examined the effect of stimuli format (i.e., static vs. dynamic) on facial affect recognition in two separate studies that included independent samples and distinct stimuli sets. In addition to younger and older participants, a middle-aged group was included in Study 1 and eye gaze patterns were assessed in Study 2. Across both studies, older adults performed worse than younger adults on measures of facial affect recognition. In Study 1, older and-middle aged adults benefited from dynamic stimuli, but only when the emotional displays were subtle. Younger adults gazed more at the eye region of the face relative to older adults (Study 2), but dynamic presentation increased attention towards the eye region for younger adults only. Together, these studies provide important and novel insights into the specific circumstances in which older adults may be expected to experience difficulties in perceiving facial emotions. © The Author 2015. 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.

Automated facial attendance logger for students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Krithika, L. B.; Kshitish, S.; Kishore, M. R.

2017-11-01

From the past two decades, various spheres of activity are in the aspect of ‘Face recognition’ as an essential tool. The complete series of actions of face recognition is composed of 3 stages: Face Detection, Feature Extraction and Recognition. In this paper, we make an effort to put forth a new application of face recognition and detection in education. The proposed system scans the classroom and detects the face of the students in class and matches the scanned face with the templates that is available in the database and updates the attendance of the respective students.

Facial emotion recognition deficits following moderate-severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): re-examining the valence effect and the role of emotion intensity.

PubMed

Rosenberg, Hannah; McDonald, Skye; Dethier, Marie; Kessels, Roy P C; Westbrook, R Frederick

2014-11-01

Many individuals who sustain moderate-severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are poor at recognizing emotional expressions, with a greater impairment in recognizing negative (e.g., fear, disgust, sadness, and anger) than positive emotions (e.g., happiness and surprise). It has been questioned whether this "valence effect" might be an artifact of the wide use of static facial emotion stimuli (usually full-blown expressions) which differ in difficulty rather than a real consequence of brain impairment. This study aimed to investigate the valence effect in TBI, while examining emotion recognition across different intensities (low, medium, and high). Twenty-seven individuals with TBI and 28 matched control participants were tested on the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT). The TBI group was more impaired in overall emotion recognition, and less accurate recognizing negative emotions. However, examining the performance across the different intensities indicated that this difference was driven by some emotions (e.g., happiness) being much easier to recognize than others (e.g., fear and surprise). Our findings indicate that individuals with TBI have an overall deficit in facial emotion recognition, and that both people with TBI and control participants found some emotions more difficult than others. These results suggest that conventional measures of facial affect recognition that do not examine variance in the difficulty of emotions may produce erroneous conclusions about differential impairment. They also cast doubt on the notion that dissociable neural pathways underlie the recognition of positive and negative emotions, which are differentially affected by TBI and potentially other neurological or psychiatric disorders.

Differential amygdala response during facial recognition in patients with schizophrenia: an fMRI study.

PubMed

Kosaka, H; Omori, M; Murata, T; Iidaka, T; Yamada, H; Okada, T; Takahashi, T; Sadato, N; Itoh, H; Yonekura, Y; Wada, Y

2002-09-01

Human lesion or neuroimaging studies suggest that amygdala is involved in facial emotion recognition. Although impairments in recognition of facial and/or emotional expression have been reported in schizophrenia, there are few neuroimaging studies that have examined differential brain activation during facial recognition between patients with schizophrenia and normal controls. To investigate amygdala responses during facial recognition in schizophrenia, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study with 12 right-handed medicated patients with schizophrenia and 12 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. The experiment task was a type of emotional intensity judgment task. During the task period, subjects were asked to view happy (or angry/disgusting/sad) and neutral faces simultaneously presented every 3 s and to judge which face was more emotional (positive or negative face discrimination). Imaging data were investigated in voxel-by-voxel basis for single-group analysis and for between-group analysis according to the random effect model using Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM). No significant difference in task accuracy was found between the schizophrenic and control groups. Positive face discrimination activated the bilateral amygdalae of both controls and schizophrenics, with more prominent activation of the right amygdala shown in the schizophrenic group. Negative face discrimination activated the bilateral amygdalae in the schizophrenic group whereas the right amygdala alone in the control group, although no significant group difference was found. Exaggerated amygdala activation during emotional intensity judgment found in the schizophrenic patients may reflect impaired gating of sensory input containing emotion. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science B.V.

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.

EMG-based speech recognition using hidden markov models with global control variables.

PubMed

Lee, Ki-Seung

2008-03-01

It is well known that a strong relationship exists between human voices and the movement of articulatory facial muscles. In this paper, we utilize this knowledge to implement an automatic speech recognition scheme which uses solely surface electromyogram (EMG) signals. The sequence of EMG signals for each word is modelled by a hidden Markov model (HMM) framework. The main objective of the work involves building a model for state observation density when multichannel observation sequences are given. The proposed model reflects the dependencies between each of the EMG signals, which are described by introducing a global control variable. We also develop an efficient model training method, based on a maximum likelihood criterion. In a preliminary study, 60 isolated words were used as recognition variables. EMG signals were acquired from three articulatory facial muscles. The findings indicate that such a system may have the capacity to recognize speech signals with an accuracy of up to 87.07%, which is superior to the independent probabilistic model.

Human fatigue expression recognition through image-based dynamic multi-information and bimodal deep learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Lei; Wang, Zengcai; Wang, Xiaojin; Qi, Yazhou; Liu, Qing; Zhang, Guoxin

2016-09-01

Human fatigue is an important cause of traffic accidents. To improve the safety of transportation, we propose, in this paper, a framework for fatigue expression recognition using image-based facial dynamic multi-information and a bimodal deep neural network. First, the landmark of face region and the texture of eye region, which complement each other in fatigue expression recognition, are extracted from facial image sequences captured by a single camera. Then, two stacked autoencoder neural networks are trained for landmark and texture, respectively. Finally, the two trained neural networks are combined by learning a joint layer on top of them to construct a bimodal deep neural network. The model can be used to extract a unified representation that fuses landmark and texture modalities together and classify fatigue expressions accurately. The proposed system is tested on a human fatigue dataset obtained from an actual driving environment. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method performs stably and robustly, and that the average accuracy achieves 96.2%.

Recognition and Posing of Emotional Expressions by Abused Children and Their Mothers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Camras, Linda A.; And Others

1988-01-01

A total of 20 abused and 20 nonabused pairs of children of three-seven years and their mothers participated in a facial expression posing task and a facial expression recognition task. Findings suggest that abused children may not observe as often as nonabused children do the easily interpreted voluntary displays of emotion by their mothers. (RH)

On the Suitability of Mobile Cloud Computing at the Tactical Edge

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-04-23

geolocation; Facial recognition (photo identification/classification); Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); and Fusion of Electronic...could benefit most from MCC are those with large processing overhead, low bandwidth requirements, and a need for large database support (e.g., facial ... recognition , language translation). The effect—specifically on the communication links—of supporting these applications at the tactical edge

Positive, but Not Negative, Facial Expressions Facilitate 3-Month-Olds' Recognition of an Individual Face

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brenna, Viola; Proietti, Valentina; Montirosso, Rosario; Turati, Chiara

2013-01-01

The current study examined whether and how the presence of a positive or a negative emotional expression may affect the face recognition process at 3 months of age. Using a familiarization procedure, Experiment 1 demonstrated that positive (i.e., happiness), but not negative (i.e., fear and anger) facial expressions facilitate infants' ability to…

A voxel-based lesion study on facial emotion recognition after penetrating brain injury

PubMed Central

Dal Monte, Olga; Solomon, Jeffrey M.; Schintu, Selene; Knutson, Kristine M.; Strenziok, Maren; Pardini, Matteo; Leopold, Anne; Raymont, Vanessa; Grafman, Jordan

2013-01-01

The ability to read emotions in the face of another person is an important social skill that can be impaired in subjects with traumatic brain injury (TBI). To determine the brain regions that modulate facial emotion recognition, we conducted a whole-brain analysis using a well-validated facial emotion recognition task and voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) in a large sample of patients with focal penetrating TBIs (pTBIs). Our results revealed that individuals with pTBI performed significantly worse than normal controls in recognizing unpleasant emotions. VLSM mapping results showed that impairment in facial emotion recognition was due to damage in a bilateral fronto-temporo-limbic network, including medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), anterior cingulate cortex, left insula and temporal areas. Beside those common areas, damage to the bilateral and anterior regions of PFC led to impairment in recognizing unpleasant emotions, whereas bilateral posterior PFC and left temporal areas led to impairment in recognizing pleasant emotions. Our findings add empirical evidence that the ability to read pleasant and unpleasant emotions in other people's faces is a complex process involving not only a common network that includes bilateral fronto-temporo-limbic lobes, but also other regions depending on emotional valence. PMID:22496440

Facial recognition of happiness among older adults with active and remitted major depression.

PubMed

Shiroma, Paulo R; Thuras, Paul; Johns, Brian; Lim, Kelvin O

2016-09-30

Biased emotion processing in depression might be a trait characteristic independent of mood improvement and a vulnerable factor to develop further depressive episodes. This phenomenon of among older adults with depression has not been adequately examined. In a 2-year cross-sectional study, 59 older patients with either active or remitted major depression, or never-depressed, completed a facial emotion recognition task (FERT) to probe perceptual bias of happiness. The results showed that depressed patients, compared with never depressed subjects, had a significant lower sensitivity to identify happiness particularly at moderate intensity of facial stimuli. Patients in remission from a previous major depressive episode but with none or minimal symptoms had similar sensitivity rate to identify happy facial expressions as compared to patients with an active depressive episode. Further studies would be necessary to confirm whether recognition of happy expression reflects a persistent perceptual bias of major depression in older adults. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Local intensity area descriptor for facial recognition in ideal and noise conditions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tran, Chi-Kien; Tseng, Chin-Dar; Chao, Pei-Ju; Ting, Hui-Min; Chang, Liyun; Huang, Yu-Jie; Lee, Tsair-Fwu

2017-03-01

We propose a local texture descriptor, local intensity area descriptor (LIAD), which is applied for human facial recognition in ideal and noisy conditions. Each facial image is divided into small regions from which LIAD histograms are extracted and concatenated into a single feature vector to represent the facial image. The recognition is performed using a nearest neighbor classifier with histogram intersection and chi-square statistics as dissimilarity measures. Experiments were conducted with LIAD using the ORL database of faces (Olivetti Research Laboratory, Cambridge), the Face94 face database, the Georgia Tech face database, and the FERET database. The results demonstrated the improvement in accuracy of our proposed descriptor compared to conventional descriptors [local binary pattern (LBP), uniform LBP, local ternary pattern, histogram of oriented gradients, and local directional pattern]. Moreover, the proposed descriptor was less sensitive to noise and had low histogram dimensionality. Thus, it is expected to be a powerful texture descriptor that can be used for various computer vision problems.

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.

Development of a Support Application and a Textbook for Practicing Facial Expression Detection for Students with Visual Impairment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Hirotaka; Ando, Akinobu; Itagaki, Shota; Kawada, Taku; Davis, Darold; Nagai, Nobuyuki

2017-01-01

Until now, when practicing facial expression recognition skills in nonverbal communication areas of SST, judgment of facial expression was not quantitative because the subjects of SST were judged by teachers. Therefore, we thought whether SST could be performed using facial expression detection devices that can quantitatively measure facial…

Automatic 2.5-D Facial Landmarking and Emotion Annotation for Social Interaction Assistance.

PubMed

Zhao, Xi; Zou, Jianhua; Li, Huibin; Dellandrea, Emmanuel; Kakadiaris, Ioannis A; Chen, Liming

2016-09-01

People with low vision, Alzheimer's disease, and autism spectrum disorder experience difficulties in perceiving or interpreting facial expression of emotion in their social lives. Though automatic facial expression recognition (FER) methods on 2-D videos have been extensively investigated, their performance was constrained by challenges in head pose and lighting conditions. The shape information in 3-D facial data can reduce or even overcome these challenges. However, high expenses of 3-D cameras prevent their widespread use. Fortunately, 2.5-D facial data from emerging portable RGB-D cameras provide a good balance for this dilemma. In this paper, we propose an automatic emotion annotation solution on 2.5-D facial data collected from RGB-D cameras. The solution consists of a facial landmarking method and a FER method. Specifically, we propose building a deformable partial face model and fit the model to a 2.5-D face for localizing facial landmarks automatically. In FER, a novel action unit (AU) space-based FER method has been proposed. Facial features are extracted using landmarks and further represented as coordinates in the AU space, which are classified into facial expressions. Evaluated on three publicly accessible facial databases, namely EURECOM, FRGC, and Bosphorus databases, the proposed facial landmarking and expression recognition methods have achieved satisfactory results. Possible real-world applications using our algorithms have also been discussed.

Real-time face and gesture analysis for human-robot interaction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wallhoff, Frank; Rehrl, Tobias; Mayer, Christoph; Radig, Bernd

2010-05-01

Human communication relies on a large number of different communication mechanisms like spoken language, facial expressions, or gestures. Facial expressions and gestures are one of the main nonverbal communication mechanisms and pass large amounts of information between human dialog partners. Therefore, to allow for intuitive human-machine interaction, a real-time capable processing and recognition of facial expressions, hand and head gestures are of great importance. We present a system that is tackling these challenges. The input features for the dynamic head gestures and facial expressions are obtained from a sophisticated three-dimensional model, which is fitted to the user in a real-time capable manner. Applying this model different kinds of information are extracted from the image data and afterwards handed over to a real-time capable data-transferring framework, the so-called Real-Time DataBase (RTDB). In addition to the head and facial-related features, also low-level image features regarding the human hand - optical flow, Hu-moments are stored into the RTDB for the evaluation process of hand gestures. In general, the input of a single camera is sufficient for the parallel evaluation of the different gestures and facial expressions. The real-time capable recognition of the dynamic hand and head gestures are performed via different Hidden Markov Models, which have proven to be a quick and real-time capable classification method. On the other hand, for the facial expressions classical decision trees or more sophisticated support vector machines are used for the classification process. These obtained results of the classification processes are again handed over to the RTDB, where other processes (like a Dialog Management Unit) can easily access them without any blocking effects. In addition, an adjustable amount of history can be stored by the RTDB buffer unit.

Action and Emotion Recognition from Point Light Displays: An Investigation of Gender Differences

PubMed Central

Alaerts, Kaat; Nackaerts, Evelien; Meyns, Pieter; Swinnen, Stephan P.; Wenderoth, Nicole

2011-01-01

Folk psychology advocates the existence of gender differences in socio-cognitive functions such as ‘reading’ the mental states of others or discerning subtle differences in body-language. A female advantage has been demonstrated for emotion recognition from facial expressions, but virtually nothing is known about gender differences in recognizing bodily stimuli or body language. The aim of the present study was to investigate potential gender differences in a series of tasks, involving the recognition of distinct features from point light displays (PLDs) depicting bodily movements of a male and female actor. Although recognition scores were considerably high at the overall group level, female participants were more accurate than males in recognizing the depicted actions from PLDs. Response times were significantly higher for males compared to females on PLD recognition tasks involving (i) the general recognition of ‘biological motion’ versus ‘non-biological’ (or ‘scrambled’ motion); or (ii) the recognition of the ‘emotional state’ of the PLD-figures. No gender differences were revealed for a control test (involving the identification of a color change in one of the dots) and for recognizing the gender of the PLD-figure. In addition, previous findings of a female advantage on a facial emotion recognition test (the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test’ (Baron-Cohen, 2001)) were replicated in this study. Interestingly, a strong correlation was revealed between emotion recognition from bodily PLDs versus facial cues. This relationship indicates that inter-individual or gender-dependent differences in recognizing emotions are relatively generalized across facial and bodily emotion perception. Moreover, the tight correlation between a subject's ability to discern subtle emotional cues from PLDs and the subject's ability to basically discriminate biological from non-biological motion provides indications that differences in emotion recognition may - at least to some degree – be related to more basic differences in processing biological motion per se. PMID:21695266

Action and emotion recognition from point light displays: an investigation of gender differences.

PubMed

Alaerts, Kaat; Nackaerts, Evelien; Meyns, Pieter; Swinnen, Stephan P; Wenderoth, Nicole

2011-01-01

Folk psychology advocates the existence of gender differences in socio-cognitive functions such as 'reading' the mental states of others or discerning subtle differences in body-language. A female advantage has been demonstrated for emotion recognition from facial expressions, but virtually nothing is known about gender differences in recognizing bodily stimuli or body language. The aim of the present study was to investigate potential gender differences in a series of tasks, involving the recognition of distinct features from point light displays (PLDs) depicting bodily movements of a male and female actor. Although recognition scores were considerably high at the overall group level, female participants were more accurate than males in recognizing the depicted actions from PLDs. Response times were significantly higher for males compared to females on PLD recognition tasks involving (i) the general recognition of 'biological motion' versus 'non-biological' (or 'scrambled' motion); or (ii) the recognition of the 'emotional state' of the PLD-figures. No gender differences were revealed for a control test (involving the identification of a color change in one of the dots) and for recognizing the gender of the PLD-figure. In addition, previous findings of a female advantage on a facial emotion recognition test (the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test' (Baron-Cohen, 2001)) were replicated in this study. Interestingly, a strong correlation was revealed between emotion recognition from bodily PLDs versus facial cues. This relationship indicates that inter-individual or gender-dependent differences in recognizing emotions are relatively generalized across facial and bodily emotion perception. Moreover, the tight correlation between a subject's ability to discern subtle emotional cues from PLDs and the subject's ability to basically discriminate biological from non-biological motion provides indications that differences in emotion recognition may - at least to some degree - be related to more basic differences in processing biological motion per se.

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.

Deficits in facial affect recognition among antisocial populations: a meta-analysis.

PubMed

Marsh, Abigail A; Blair, R J R

2008-01-01

Individuals with disorders marked by antisocial behavior frequently show deficits in recognizing displays of facial affect. Antisociality may be associated with specific deficits in identifying fearful expressions, which would implicate dysfunction in neural structures that subserve fearful expression processing. A meta-analysis of 20 studies was conducted to assess: (a) if antisocial populations show any consistent deficits in recognizing six emotional expressions; (b) beyond any generalized impairment, whether specific fear recognition deficits are apparent; and (c) if deficits in fear recognition are a function of task difficulty. Results show a robust link between antisocial behavior and specific deficits in recognizing fearful expressions. This impairment cannot be attributed solely to task difficulty. These results suggest dysfunction among antisocial individuals in specified neural substrates, namely the amygdala, involved in processing fearful facial affect.

Schizotypy and impaired basic face recognition? Another non-confirmatory study.

PubMed

Bell, Vaughan; Halligan, Peter

2015-12-01

Although schizotypy has been found to be reliably associated with a reduced recognition of facial affect, the few studies that have tested the association between basic face recognition abilities and schizotypy have found mixed results. This study formally tested the association in a large non-clinical sample with established neurological measures of face recognition. Two hundred and twenty-seven participants completed the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences schizotypy scale and completed the Famous Faces Test and the Cardiff Repeated Recognition Test for Faces. No association between any schizotypal dimension and performance on either of the facial recognition and learning tests was found. The null results can be accepted with a high degree of confidence. Further additional evidence is provided for a lack of association between schizotypy and basic face recognition deficits. © 2014 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Nelson, Cynthia Lee

There is a need in security systems to rapidly and accurately grant access of authorized personnel to a secure facility while denying access to unauthorized personnel. In many cases this role is filled by security personnel, which can be very costly. Systems that can perform this role autonomously without sacrificing accuracy or speed of throughput are very appealing. To address the issue of autonomous facility access through the use of technology, the idea of a ''secure portal'' is introduced. A secure portal is a defined zone where state-of-the-art technology can be implemented to grant secure area access or to allowmore » special privileges for an individual. Biometric technologies are of interest because they are generally more difficult to defeat than technologies such as badge swipe and keypad entry. The biometric technologies selected for this concept were facial and gait recognition. They were chosen since they require less user cooperation than other biometrics such as fingerprint, iris, and hand geometry and because they have the most potential for flexibility in deployment. The secure portal concept could be implemented within the boundaries of an entry area to a facility. As a person is approaching a badge and/or PIN portal, face and gait information can be gathered and processed. The biometric information could be fused for verification against the information that is gathered from the badge. This paper discusses a facial recognition technology that was developed for the purposes of providing high verification probabilities with low false alarm rates, which would be required of an autonomous entry control system. In particular, a 3-D facial recognition approach using Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis is described. Gait recognition technology, based on Hidden Markov Models has been explored, but those results are not included in this paper. Fusion approaches for combining the results of the biometrics would be the next step in realizing the secure portal concept.« less

LBP and SIFT based facial expression recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sumer, Omer; Gunes, Ece O.

2015-02-01

This study compares the performance of local binary patterns (LBP) and scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) with support vector machines (SVM) in automatic classification of discrete facial expressions. Facial expression recognition is a multiclass classification problem and seven classes; happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, fear and comtempt are classified. Using SIFT feature vectors and linear SVM, 93.1% mean accuracy is acquired on CK+ database. On the other hand, the performance of LBP-based classifier with linear SVM is reported on SFEW using strictly person independent (SPI) protocol. Seven-class mean accuracy on SFEW is 59.76%. Experiments on both databases showed that LBP features can be used in a fairly descriptive way if a good localization of facial points and partitioning strategy are followed.

Weighted Feature Gaussian Kernel SVM for Emotion Recognition

PubMed Central

Jia, Qingxuan

2016-01-01

Emotion recognition with weighted feature based on facial expression is a challenging research topic and has attracted great attention in the past few years. This paper presents a novel method, utilizing subregion recognition rate to weight kernel function. First, we divide the facial expression image into some uniform subregions and calculate corresponding recognition rate and weight. Then, we get a weighted feature Gaussian kernel function and construct a classifier based on Support Vector Machine (SVM). At last, the experimental results suggest that the approach based on weighted feature Gaussian kernel function has good performance on the correct rate in emotion recognition. The experiments on the extended Cohn-Kanade (CK+) dataset show that our method has achieved encouraging recognition results compared to the state-of-the-art methods. PMID:27807443

Executive cognitive functioning and the recognition of facial expressions of emotion in incarcerated violent offenders, non-violent offenders, and controls.

PubMed

Hoaken, Peter N S; Allaby, David B; Earle, Jeff

2007-01-01

Violence is a social problem that carries enormous costs; however, our understanding of its etiology is quite limited. A large body of research exists, which suggests a relationship between abnormalities of the frontal lobe and aggression; as a result, many researchers have implicated deficits in so-called "executive function" as an antecedent to aggressive behaviour. Another possibility is that violence may be related to problems interpreting facial expressions of emotion, a deficit associated with many forms of psychopathology, and an ability linked to the prefrontal cortex. The current study investigated performance on measures of executive function and on a facial-affect recognition task in 20 violent offenders, 20 non-violent offenders, and 20 controls. In support of our hypotheses, both offender groups performed significantly more poorly on measures of executive function relative to controls. In addition, violent offenders were significantly poorer on the facial-affect recognition task than either of the other two groups. Interestingly, scores on these measures were significantly correlated, with executive deficits associated with difficulties accurately interpreting facial affect. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of a broader understanding of violent behaviour. Copyright 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Varying face occlusion detection and iterative recovery for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Meng; Hu, Zhengping; Sun, Zhe; Zhao, Shuhuan; Sun, Mei

2017-05-01

In most sparse representation methods for face recognition (FR), occlusion problems were usually solved via removing the occlusion part of both query samples and training samples to perform the recognition process. This practice ignores the global feature of facial image and may lead to unsatisfactory results due to the limitation of local features. Considering the aforementioned drawback, we propose a method called varying occlusion detection and iterative recovery for FR. The main contributions of our method are as follows: (1) to detect an accurate occlusion area of facial images, an image processing and intersection-based clustering combination method is used for occlusion FR; (2) according to an accurate occlusion map, the new integrated facial images are recovered iteratively and put into a recognition process; and (3) the effectiveness on recognition accuracy of our method is verified by comparing it with three typical occlusion map detection methods. Experiments show that the proposed method has a highly accurate detection and recovery performance and that it outperforms several similar state-of-the-art methods against partial contiguous occlusion.

Violent video game players and non-players differ on facial emotion recognition.

PubMed

Diaz, Ruth L; Wong, Ulric; Hodgins, David C; Chiu, Carina G; Goghari, Vina M

2016-01-01

Violent video game playing has been associated with both positive and negative effects on cognition. We examined whether playing two or more hours of violent video games a day, compared to not playing video games, was associated with a different pattern of recognition of five facial emotions, while controlling for general perceptual and cognitive differences that might also occur. Undergraduate students were categorized as violent video game players (n = 83) or non-gamers (n = 69) and completed a facial recognition task, consisting of an emotion recognition condition and a control condition of gender recognition. Additionally, participants completed questionnaires assessing their video game and media consumption, aggression, and mood. Violent video game players recognized fearful faces both more accurately and quickly and disgusted faces less accurately than non-gamers. Desensitization to violence, constant exposure to fear and anxiety during game playing, and the habituation to unpleasant stimuli, are possible mechanisms that could explain these results. Future research should evaluate the effects of violent video game playing on emotion processing and social cognition more broadly. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Facial affect recognition deficit as a marker of genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia.

PubMed

Alfimova, Margarita V; Abramova, Lilia I; Barhatova, Aleksandra I; Yumatova, Polina E; Lyachenko, Galina L; Golimbet, Vera E

2009-05-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility that affect recognition impairments are associated with genetic liability to schizophrenia. In a group of 55 unaffected relatives of schizophrenia patients (parents and siblings) we examined the capacity to detect facially expressed emotions and its relationship to schizotypal personality, neurocognitive functioning, and the subject's actual emotional state. The relatives were compared with 103 schizophrenia patients and 99 healthy subjects without any family history of psychoses. Emotional stimuli were nine black-and-white photos of actors, who portrayed six basic emotions as well as interest, contempt, and shame. The results evidenced the affect recognition deficit in relatives, though milder than that in patients themselves. No correlation between the deficit and schizotypal personality measured with SPQ was detected in the group of relatives. Neither cognitive functioning, including attention, verbal memory and linguistic ability, nor actual emotional states accounted for their affect recognition impairments. The results suggest that the facial affect recognition deficit in schizophrenia may be related to genetic predisposition to the disorder and may serve as an endophenotype in molecular-genetic studies.

Emotion Recognition in Face and Body Motion in Bulimia Nervosa.

PubMed

Dapelo, Marcela Marin; Surguladze, Simon; Morris, Robin; Tchanturia, Kate

2017-11-01

Social cognition has been studied extensively in anorexia nervosa (AN), but there are few studies in bulimia nervosa (BN). This study investigated the ability of people with BN to recognise emotions in ambiguous facial expressions and in body movement. Participants were 26 women with BN, who were compared with 35 with AN, and 42 healthy controls. Participants completed an emotion recognition task by using faces portraying blended emotions, along with a body emotion recognition task by using videos of point-light walkers. The results indicated that BN participants exhibited difficulties recognising disgust in less-ambiguous facial expressions, and a tendency to interpret non-angry faces as anger, compared with healthy controls. These difficulties were similar to those found in AN. There were no significant differences amongst the groups in body motion emotion recognition. The findings suggest that difficulties with disgust and anger recognition in facial expressions may be shared transdiagnostically in people with eating disorders. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

Recognition of computerized facial approximations by familiar assessors.

PubMed

Richard, Adam H; Monson, Keith L

2017-11-01

Studies testing the effectiveness of facial approximations typically involve groups of participants who are unfamiliar with the approximated individual(s). This limitation requires the use of photograph arrays including a picture of the subject for comparison to the facial approximation. While this practice is often necessary due to the difficulty in obtaining a group of assessors who are familiar with the approximated subject, it may not accurately simulate the thought process of the target audience (friends and family members) in comparing a mental image of the approximated subject to the facial approximation. As part of a larger process to evaluate the effectiveness and best implementation of the ReFace facial approximation software program, the rare opportunity arose to conduct a recognition study using assessors who were personally acquainted with the subjects of the approximations. ReFace facial approximations were generated based on preexisting medical scans, and co-workers of the scan donors were tested on whether they could accurately pick out the approximation of their colleague from arrays of facial approximations. Results from the study demonstrated an overall poor recognition performance (i.e., where a single choice within a pool is not enforced) for individuals who were familiar with the approximated subjects. Out of 220 recognition tests only 10.5% resulted in the assessor selecting the correct approximation (or correctly choosing not to make a selection when the array consisted only of foils), an outcome that was not significantly different from the 9% random chance rate. When allowed to select multiple approximations the assessors felt resembled the target individual, the overall sensitivity for ReFace approximations was 16.0% and the overall specificity was 81.8%. These results differ markedly from the results of a previous study using assessors who were unfamiliar with the approximated subjects. Some possible explanations for this disparity in performance were examined, and it was ultimately concluded that ReFace facial approximations may have limited effectiveness if used in the traditional way. However, some promising alternative uses are explored that may expand the utility of facial approximations for aiding in the identification of unknown human remains. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Enhanced technologies for unattended ground sensor systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hartup, David C.

2010-04-01

Progress in several technical areas is being leveraged to advantage in Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) systems. This paper discusses advanced technologies that are appropriate for use in UGS systems. While some technologies provide evolutionary improvements, other technologies result in revolutionary performance advancements for UGS systems. Some specific technologies discussed include wireless cameras and viewers, commercial PDA-based system programmers and monitors, new materials and techniques for packaging improvements, low power cueing sensor radios, advanced long-haul terrestrial and SATCOM radios, and networked communications. Other technologies covered include advanced target detection algorithms, high pixel count cameras for license plate and facial recognition, small cameras that provide large stand-off distances, video transmissions of target activity instead of still images, sensor fusion algorithms, and control center hardware. The impact of each technology on the overall UGS system architecture is discussed, along with the advantages provided to UGS system users. Areas of analysis include required camera parameters as a function of stand-off distance for license plate and facial recognition applications, power consumption for wireless cameras and viewers, sensor fusion communication requirements, and requirements to practically implement video transmission through UGS systems. Examples of devices that have already been fielded using technology from several of these areas are given.

Brief Report: Representational Momentum for Dynamic Facial Expressions in Pervasive Developmental Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Uono, Shota; Sato, Wataru; Toichi, Motomi

2010-01-01

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…

Influence of gender in the recognition of basic facial expressions: A critical literature review

PubMed Central

Forni-Santos, Larissa; Osório, Flávia L

2015-01-01

AIM: To conduct a systematic literature review about the influence of gender on the recognition of facial expressions of six basic emotions. METHODS: We made a systematic search with the search terms (face OR facial) AND (processing OR recognition OR perception) AND (emotional OR emotion) AND (gender or sex) in PubMed, PsycINFO, LILACS, and SciELO electronic databases for articles assessing outcomes related to response accuracy and latency and emotional intensity. The articles selection was performed according to parameters set by COCHRANE. The reference lists of the articles found through the database search were checked for additional references of interest. RESULTS: In respect to accuracy, women tend to perform better than men when all emotions are considered as a set. Regarding specific emotions, there seems to be no gender-related differences in the recognition of happiness, whereas results are quite heterogeneous in respect to the remaining emotions, especially sadness, anger, and disgust. Fewer articles dealt with the parameters of response latency and emotional intensity, which hinders the generalization of their findings, especially in the face of their methodological differences. CONCLUSION: The analysis of the studies conducted to date do not allow for definite conclusions concerning the role of the observer’s gender in the recognition of facial emotion, mostly because of the absence of standardized methods of investigation. PMID:26425447

Unsupervised learning of facial emotion decoding skills.

PubMed

Huelle, Jan O; Sack, Benjamin; Broer, Katja; Komlewa, Irina; Anders, Silke

2014-01-01

Research on the mechanisms underlying human facial emotion recognition has long focussed on genetically determined neural algorithms and often neglected the question of how these algorithms might be tuned by social learning. Here we show that facial emotion decoding skills can be significantly and sustainably improved by practice without an external teaching signal. Participants saw video clips of dynamic facial expressions of five different women and were asked to decide which of four possible emotions (anger, disgust, fear, and sadness) was shown in each clip. Although no external information about the correctness of the participant's response or the sender's true affective state was provided, participants showed a significant increase of facial emotion recognition accuracy both within and across two training sessions two days to several weeks apart. We discuss several similarities and differences between the unsupervised improvement of facial decoding skills observed in the current study, unsupervised perceptual learning of simple stimuli described in previous studies and practice effects often observed in cognitive tasks.

Unsupervised learning of facial emotion decoding skills

PubMed Central

Huelle, Jan O.; Sack, Benjamin; Broer, Katja; Komlewa, Irina; Anders, Silke

2013-01-01

Research on the mechanisms underlying human facial emotion recognition has long focussed on genetically determined neural algorithms and often neglected the question of how these algorithms might be tuned by social learning. Here we show that facial emotion decoding skills can be significantly and sustainably improved by practice without an external teaching signal. Participants saw video clips of dynamic facial expressions of five different women and were asked to decide which of four possible emotions (anger, disgust, fear, and sadness) was shown in each clip. Although no external information about the correctness of the participant’s response or the sender’s true affective state was provided, participants showed a significant increase of facial emotion recognition accuracy both within and across two training sessions two days to several weeks apart. We discuss several similarities and differences between the unsupervised improvement of facial decoding skills observed in the current study, unsupervised perceptual learning of simple visual stimuli described in previous studies and practice effects often observed in cognitive tasks. PMID:24578686

Employing Textual and Facial Emotion Recognition to Design an Affective Tutoring System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Hao-Chiang Koong; Wang, Cheng-Hung; Chao, Ching-Ju; Chien, Ming-Kuan

2012-01-01

Emotional expression in Artificial Intelligence has gained lots of attention in recent years, people applied its affective computing not only in enhancing and realizing the interaction between computers and human, it also makes computer more humane. In this study, emotional expressions were applied into intelligent tutoring system, where learners'…

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.

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.

Strength Is in Numbers: Can Concordant Artificial Listeners Improve Prediction of Emotion from Speech?

PubMed Central

Martinelli, Eugenio; Mencattini, Arianna; Di Natale, Corrado

2016-01-01

Humans can communicate their emotions by modulating facial expressions or the tone of their voice. Albeit numerous applications exist that enable machines to read facial emotions and recognize the content of verbal messages, methods for speech emotion recognition are still in their infancy. Yet, fast and reliable applications for emotion recognition are the obvious advancement of present ‘intelligent personal assistants’, and may have countless applications in diagnostics, rehabilitation and research. Taking inspiration from the dynamics of human group decision-making, we devised a novel speech emotion recognition system that applies, for the first time, a semi-supervised prediction model based on consensus. Three tests were carried out to compare this algorithm with traditional approaches. Labeling performances relative to a public database of spontaneous speeches are reported. The novel system appears to be fast, robust and less computationally demanding than traditional methods, allowing for easier implementation in portable voice-analyzers (as used in rehabilitation, research, industry, etc.) and for applications in the research domain (such as real-time pairing of stimuli to participants’ emotional state, selective/differential data collection based on emotional content, etc.). PMID:27563724

Development of the Ability to Use Facial, Situational, and Vocal Cues to Infer Others' Affective States.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Farber, Ellen A.; Moely, Barbara E.

Results of two studies investigating children's abilities to use different kinds of cues to infer another's affective state are reported in this paper. In the first study, 48 children (3, 4, and 6 to 7 years of age) were given three different kinds of tasks (interpersonal task, facial recognition task, and vocal recognition task). A cross-age…

Developmental prosopagnosia and the Benton Facial Recognition Test.

PubMed

Duchaine, Bradley C; Nakayama, Ken

2004-04-13

The Benton Facial Recognition Test is used for clinical and research purposes, but evidence suggests that it is possible to pass the test with impaired face discrimination abilities. The authors tested 11 patients with developmental prosopagnosia using this test, and a majority scored in the normal range. Consequently, scores in the normal range should be interpreted cautiously, and testing should always be supplemented by other face tests.

Externalizing and Internalizing Symptoms Moderate Longitudinal Patterns of Facial Emotion Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rosen, Tamara E.; Lerner, Matthew D.

2016-01-01

Facial emotion recognition (FER) is thought to be a key deficit domain in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the extant literature is based solely on cross-sectional studies; thus, little is known about even short-term intra-individual dynamics of FER in ASD over time. The present study sought to examine trajectories of FER in ASD youth over…

Hierarchical ensemble of global and local classifiers for face recognition.

PubMed

Su, Yu; Shan, Shiguang; Chen, Xilin; Gao, Wen

2009-08-01

In the literature of psychophysics and neurophysiology, many studies have shown that both global and local features are crucial for face representation and recognition. This paper proposes a novel face recognition method which exploits both global and local discriminative features. In this method, global features are extracted from the whole face images by keeping the low-frequency coefficients of Fourier transform, which we believe encodes the holistic facial information, such as facial contour. For local feature extraction, Gabor wavelets are exploited considering their biological relevance. After that, Fisher's linear discriminant (FLD) is separately applied to the global Fourier features and each local patch of Gabor features. Thus, multiple FLD classifiers are obtained, each embodying different facial evidences for face recognition. Finally, all these classifiers are combined to form a hierarchical ensemble classifier. We evaluate the proposed method using two large-scale face databases: FERET and FRGC version 2.0. Experiments show that the results of our method are impressively better than the best known results with the same evaluation protocol.

Morphological and population genomic evidence that human faces have evolved to signal individual identity.

PubMed

Sheehan, Michael J; Nachman, Michael W

2014-09-16

Facial recognition plays a key role in human interactions, and there has been great interest in understanding the evolution of human abilities for individual recognition and tracking social relationships. Individual recognition requires sufficient cognitive abilities and phenotypic diversity within a population for discrimination to be possible. Despite the importance of facial recognition in humans, the evolution of facial identity has received little attention. Here we demonstrate that faces evolved to signal individual identity under negative frequency-dependent selection. Faces show elevated phenotypic variation and lower between-trait correlations compared with other traits. Regions surrounding face-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms show elevated diversity consistent with frequency-dependent selection. Genetic variation maintained by identity signalling tends to be shared across populations and, for some loci, predates the origin of Homo sapiens. Studies of human social evolution tend to emphasize cognitive adaptations, but we show that social evolution has shaped patterns of human phenotypic and genetic diversity as well.

Face recognition using facial expression: a novel approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Singh, Deepak Kumar; Gupta, Priya; Tiwary, U. S.

2008-04-01

Facial expressions are undoubtedly the most effective nonverbal communication. The face has always been the equation of a person's identity. The face draws the demarcation line between identity and extinction. Each line on the face adds an attribute to the identity. These lines become prominent when we experience an emotion and these lines do not change completely with age. In this paper we have proposed a new technique for face recognition which focuses on the facial expressions of the subject to identify his face. This is a grey area on which not much light has been thrown earlier. According to earlier researches it is difficult to alter the natural expression. So our technique will be beneficial for identifying occluded or intentionally disguised faces. The test results of the experiments conducted prove that this technique will give a new direction in the field of face recognition. This technique will provide a strong base to the area of face recognition and will be used as the core method for critical defense security related issues.

Eye tracking reveals a crucial role for facial motion in recognition of faces by infants

PubMed Central

Xiao, Naiqi G.; Quinn, Paul C.; Liu, Shaoying; Ge, Liezhong; Pascalis, Olivier; Lee, Kang

2015-01-01

Current knowledge about face processing in infancy comes largely from studies using static face stimuli, but faces that infants see in the real world are mostly moving ones. To bridge this gap, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Asian infants (N = 118) were familiarized with either moving or static Asian female faces and then their face recognition was tested with static face images. Eye tracking methodology was used to record eye movements during familiarization and test phases. The results showed a developmental change in eye movement patterns, but only for the moving faces. In addition, the more infants shifted their fixations across facial regions, the better was their face recognition, but only for the moving faces. The results suggest that facial movement influences the way faces are encoded from early in development. PMID:26010387

Multivariate Pattern Classification of Facial Expressions Based on Large-Scale Functional Connectivity.

PubMed

Liang, Yin; Liu, Baolin; Li, Xianglin; Wang, Peiyuan

2018-01-01

It is an important question how human beings achieve efficient recognition of others' facial expressions in cognitive neuroscience, and it has been identified that specific cortical regions show preferential activation to facial expressions in previous studies. However, the potential contributions of the connectivity patterns in the processing of facial expressions remained unclear. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study explored whether facial expressions could be decoded from the functional connectivity (FC) patterns using multivariate pattern analysis combined with machine learning algorithms (fcMVPA). We employed a block design experiment and collected neural activities while participants viewed facial expressions of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise). Both static and dynamic expression stimuli were included in our study. A behavioral experiment after scanning confirmed the validity of the facial stimuli presented during the fMRI experiment with classification accuracies and emotional intensities. We obtained whole-brain FC patterns for each facial expression and found that both static and dynamic facial expressions could be successfully decoded from the FC patterns. Moreover, we identified the expression-discriminative networks for the static and dynamic facial expressions, which span beyond the conventional face-selective areas. Overall, these results reveal that large-scale FC patterns may also contain rich expression information to accurately decode facial expressions, suggesting a novel mechanism, which includes general interactions between distributed brain regions, and that contributes to the human facial expression recognition.

Multivariate Pattern Classification of Facial Expressions Based on Large-Scale Functional Connectivity

PubMed Central

Liang, Yin; Liu, Baolin; Li, Xianglin; Wang, Peiyuan

2018-01-01

It is an important question how human beings achieve efficient recognition of others’ facial expressions in cognitive neuroscience, and it has been identified that specific cortical regions show preferential activation to facial expressions in previous studies. However, the potential contributions of the connectivity patterns in the processing of facial expressions remained unclear. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study explored whether facial expressions could be decoded from the functional connectivity (FC) patterns using multivariate pattern analysis combined with machine learning algorithms (fcMVPA). We employed a block design experiment and collected neural activities while participants viewed facial expressions of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise). Both static and dynamic expression stimuli were included in our study. A behavioral experiment after scanning confirmed the validity of the facial stimuli presented during the fMRI experiment with classification accuracies and emotional intensities. We obtained whole-brain FC patterns for each facial expression and found that both static and dynamic facial expressions could be successfully decoded from the FC patterns. Moreover, we identified the expression-discriminative networks for the static and dynamic facial expressions, which span beyond the conventional face-selective areas. Overall, these results reveal that large-scale FC patterns may also contain rich expression information to accurately decode facial expressions, suggesting a novel mechanism, which includes general interactions between distributed brain regions, and that contributes to the human facial expression recognition. PMID:29615882

Selective attention to emotional cues and emotion recognition in healthy subjects: the role of mineralocorticoid receptor stimulation.

PubMed

Schultebraucks, Katharina; Deuter, Christian E; Duesenberg, Moritz; Schulze, Lars; Hellmann-Regen, Julian; Domke, Antonia; Lockenvitz, Lisa; Kuehl, Linn K; Otte, Christian; Wingenfeld, Katja

2016-09-01

Selective attention toward emotional cues and emotion recognition of facial expressions are important aspects of social cognition. Stress modulates social cognition through cortisol, which acts on glucocorticoid (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) in the brain. We examined the role of MR activation on attentional bias toward emotional cues and on emotion recognition. We included 40 healthy young women and 40 healthy young men (mean age 23.9 ± 3.3), who either received 0.4 mg of the MR agonist fludrocortisone or placebo. A dot-probe paradigm was used to test for attentional biases toward emotional cues (happy and sad faces). Moreover, we used a facial emotion recognition task to investigate the ability to recognize emotional valence (anger and sadness) from facial expression in four graded categories of emotional intensity (20, 30, 40, and 80 %). In the emotional dot-probe task, we found a main effect of treatment and a treatment × valence interaction. Post hoc analyses revealed an attentional bias away from sad faces after placebo intake and a shift in selective attention toward sad faces compared to placebo. We found no attentional bias toward happy faces after fludrocortisone or placebo intake. In the facial emotion recognition task, there was no main effect of treatment. MR stimulation seems to be important in modulating quick, automatic emotional processing, i.e., a shift in selective attention toward negative emotional cues. Our results confirm and extend previous findings of MR function. However, we did not find an effect of MR stimulation on emotion recognition.

Theory of Mind, Emotion Recognition and Social Perception in Individuals at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis: findings from the NAPLS-2 cohort.

PubMed

Barbato, Mariapaola; Liu, Lu; Cadenhead, Kristin S; Cannon, Tyrone D; Cornblatt, Barbara A; McGlashan, Thomas H; Perkins, Diana O; Seidman, Larry J; Tsuang, Ming T; Walker, Elaine F; Woods, Scott W; Bearden, Carrie E; Mathalon, Daniel H; Heinssen, Robert; Addington, Jean

2015-09-01

Social cognition, the mental operations that underlie social interactions, is a major construct to investigate in schizophrenia. Impairments in social cognition are present before the onset of psychosis, and even in unaffected first-degree relatives, suggesting that social cognition may be a trait marker of the illness. In a large cohort of individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) and healthy controls, three domains of social cognition (theory of mind, facial emotion recognition and social perception) were assessed to clarify which domains are impaired in this population. Six-hundred and seventy-five CHR individuals and 264 controls, who were part of the multi-site North American Prodromal Longitudinal Study, completed The Awareness of Social Inference Test , the Penn Emotion Recognition task , the Penn Emotion Differentiation task , and the Relationship Across Domains , measures of theory of mind, facial emotion recognition, and social perception, respectively. Social cognition was not related to positive and negative symptom severity, but was associated with age and IQ. CHR individuals demonstrated poorer performance on all measures of social cognition. However, after controlling for age and IQ, the group differences remained significant for measures of theory of mind and social perception, but not for facial emotion recognition. Theory of mind and social perception are impaired in individuals at CHR for psychosis. Age and IQ seem to play an important role in the arising of deficits in facial affect recognition. Future studies should examine the stability of social cognition deficits over time and their role, if any, in the development of psychosis.

Image jitter enhances visual performance when spatial resolution is impaired.

PubMed

Watson, Lynne M; Strang, Niall C; Scobie, Fraser; Love, Gordon D; Seidel, Dirk; Manahilov, Velitchko

2012-09-06

Visibility of low-spatial frequency stimuli improves when their contrast is modulated at 5 to 10 Hz compared with stationary stimuli. Therefore, temporal modulations of visual objects could enhance the performance of low vision patients who primarily perceive images of low-spatial frequency content. We investigated the effect of retinal-image jitter on word recognition speed and facial emotion recognition in subjects with central visual impairment. Word recognition speed and accuracy of facial emotion discrimination were measured in volunteers with AMD under stationary and jittering conditions. Computer-driven and optoelectronic approaches were used to induce retinal-image jitter with duration of 100 or 166 ms and amplitude within the range of 0.5 to 2.6° visual angle. Word recognition speed was also measured for participants with simulated (Bangerter filters) visual impairment. Text jittering markedly enhanced word recognition speed for people with severe visual loss (101 ± 25%), while for those with moderate visual impairment, this effect was weaker (19 ± 9%). The ability of low vision patients to discriminate the facial emotions of jittering images improved by a factor of 2. A prototype of optoelectronic jitter goggles produced similar improvement in facial emotion discrimination. Word recognition speed in participants with simulated visual impairment was enhanced for interjitter intervals over 100 ms and reduced for shorter intervals. Results suggest that retinal-image jitter with optimal frequency and amplitude is an effective strategy for enhancing visual information processing in the absence of spatial detail. These findings will enable the development of novel tools to improve the quality of life of low vision patients.

Recognition of Facially Expressed Emotions and Visual Search Strategies in Adults with Asperger Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Falkmer, Marita; Bjallmark, Anna; Larsson, Matilda; Falkmer, Torbjorn

2011-01-01

Can the disadvantages persons with Asperger syndrome frequently experience with reading facially expressed emotions be attributed to a different visual perception, affecting their scanning patterns? Visual search strategies, particularly regarding the importance of information from the eye area, and the ability to recognise facially expressed…

Pervasive influence of idiosyncratic associative biases during facial emotion recognition.

PubMed

El Zein, Marwa; Wyart, Valentin; Grèzes, Julie

2018-06-11

Facial morphology has been shown to influence perceptual judgments of emotion in a way that is shared across human observers. Here we demonstrate that these shared associations between facial morphology and emotion coexist with strong variations unique to each human observer. Interestingly, a large part of these idiosyncratic associations does not vary on short time scales, emerging from stable inter-individual differences in the way facial morphological features influence emotion recognition. Computational modelling of decision-making and neural recordings of electrical brain activity revealed that both shared and idiosyncratic face-emotion associations operate through a common biasing mechanism rather than an increased sensitivity to face-associated emotions. Together, these findings emphasize the underestimated influence of idiosyncrasies on core social judgments and identify their neuro-computational signatures.

Impaired perception of facial emotion in developmental prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Biotti, Federica; Cook, Richard

2016-08-01

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterised by difficulties recognising faces. Despite severe difficulties recognising facial identity, expression recognition is typically thought to be intact in DP; case studies have described individuals who are able to correctly label photographic displays of facial emotion, and no group differences have been reported. This pattern of deficits suggests a locus of impairment relatively late in the face processing stream, after the divergence of expression and identity analysis pathways. To date, however, there has been little attempt to investigate emotion recognition systematically in a large sample of developmental prosopagnosics using sensitive tests. In the present study, we describe three complementary experiments that examine emotion recognition in a sample of 17 developmental prosopagnosics. In Experiment 1, we investigated observers' ability to make binary classifications of whole-face expression stimuli drawn from morph continua. In Experiment 2, observers judged facial emotion using only the eye-region (the rest of the face was occluded). Analyses of both experiments revealed diminished ability to classify facial expressions in our sample of developmental prosopagnosics, relative to typical observers. Imprecise expression categorisation was particularly evident in those individuals exhibiting apperceptive profiles, associated with problems encoding facial shape accurately. Having split the sample of prosopagnosics into apperceptive and non-apperceptive subgroups, only the apperceptive prosopagnosics were impaired relative to typical observers. In our third experiment, we examined the ability of observers' to classify the emotion present within segments of vocal affect. Despite difficulties judging facial emotion, the prosopagnosics exhibited excellent recognition of vocal affect. Contrary to the prevailing view, our results suggest that many prosopagnosics do experience difficulties classifying expressions, particularly those with apperceptive profiles. These individuals may have difficulties forming view-invariant structural descriptions at an early stage in the face processing stream, before identity and expression pathways diverge. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facial Recognition of Happiness Is Impaired in Musicians with High Music Performance Anxiety.

PubMed

Sabino, Alini Daniéli Viana; Camargo, Cristielli M; Chagas, Marcos Hortes N; Osório, Flávia L

2018-01-01

Music performance anxiety (MPA) can be defined as a lasting and intense apprehension connected with musical performance in public. Studies suggest that MPA can be regarded as a subtype of social anxiety. Since individuals with social anxiety have deficits in the recognition of facial emotion, we hypothesized that musicians with high levels of MPA would share similar impairments. The aim of this study was to compare parameters of facial emotion recognition (FER) between musicians with high and low MPA. 150 amateur and professional musicians with different musical backgrounds were assessed in respect to their level of MPA and completed a dynamic FER task. The outcomes investigated were accuracy, response time, emotional intensity, and response bias. Musicians with high MPA were less accurate in the recognition of happiness ( p  = 0.04; d  = 0.34), had increased response bias toward fear ( p  = 0.03), and increased response time to facial emotions as a whole ( p  = 0.02; d  = 0.39). Musicians with high MPA displayed FER deficits that were independent of general anxiety levels and possibly of general cognitive capacity. These deficits may favor the maintenance and exacerbation of experiences of anxiety during public performance, since cues of approval, satisfaction, and encouragement are not adequately recognized.

Autonomic imbalance is associated with reduced facial recognition in somatoform disorders.

PubMed

Pollatos, Olga; Herbert, Beate M; Wankner, Sarah; Dietel, Anja; Wachsmuth, Cornelia; Henningsen, Peter; Sack, Martin

2011-10-01

Somatoform disorders are characterized by the presence of multiple somatic symptoms. While the accuracy of perceiving bodily signal (interoceptive awareness) is only sparely investigated in somatoform disorders, recent research has associated autonomic imbalance with cognitive and emotional difficulties in stress-related diseases. This study aimed to investigate how sympathovagal reactivity interacts with performance in recognizing emotions in faces (facial recognition task). Using a facial recognition and appraisal task, skin conductance levels (SCLs), heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) were assessed in 26 somatoform patients and compared to healthy controls. Interoceptive awareness was assessed by a heartbeat detection task. We found evidence for a sympathovagal imbalance in somatoform disorders characterized by low parasympathetic reactivity during emotional tasks and increased sympathetic activation during baseline. Somatoform patients exhibited a reduced recognition performance for neutral and sad emotional expressions only. Possible confounding variables such as alexithymia, anxiety or depression were taken into account. Interoceptive awareness was reduced in somatoform patients. Our data demonstrate an imbalance in sympathovagal activation in somatoform disorders associated with decreased parasympathetic activation. This might account for difficulties in processing of sad and neutral facial expressions in somatoform patients which might be a pathogenic mechanism for increased everyday vulnerability. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Near-infrared face recognition utilizing open CV software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sellami, Louiza; Ngo, Hau; Fowler, Chris J.; Kearney, Liam M.

2014-06-01

Commercially available hardware, freely available algorithms, and authors' developed software are synergized successfully to detect and recognize subjects in an environment without visible light. This project integrates three major components: an illumination device operating in near infrared (NIR) spectrum, a NIR capable camera and a software algorithm capable of performing image manipulation, facial detection and recognition. Focusing our efforts in the near infrared spectrum allows the low budget system to operate covertly while still allowing for accurate face recognition. In doing so a valuable function has been developed which presents potential benefits in future civilian and military security and surveillance operations.

Emotion categories and dimensions in the facial communication of affect: An integrated approach.

PubMed

Mehu, Marc; Scherer, Klaus R

2015-12-01

We investigated the role of facial behavior in emotional communication, using both categorical and dimensional approaches. We used a corpus of enacted emotional expressions (GEMEP) in which professional actors are instructed, with the help of scenarios, to communicate a variety of emotional experiences. The results of Study 1 replicated earlier findings showing that only a minority of facial action units are associated with specific emotional categories. Likewise, facial behavior did not show a specific association with particular emotional dimensions. Study 2 showed that facial behavior plays a significant role both in the detection of emotions and in the judgment of their dimensional aspects, such as valence, arousal, dominance, and unpredictability. In addition, a mediation model revealed that the association between facial behavior and recognition of the signaler's emotional intentions is mediated by perceived emotional dimensions. We conclude that, from a production perspective, facial action units convey neither specific emotions nor specific emotional dimensions, but are associated with several emotions and several dimensions. From the perceiver's perspective, facial behavior facilitated both dimensional and categorical judgments, and the former mediated the effect of facial behavior on recognition accuracy. The classification of emotional expressions into discrete categories may, therefore, rely on the perception of more general dimensions such as valence and arousal and, presumably, the underlying appraisals that are inferred from facial movements. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

The face of fear and anger: Facial width-to-height ratio biases recognition of angry and fearful expressions.

PubMed

Deska, Jason C; Lloyd, E Paige; Hugenberg, Kurt

2018-04-01

The ability to rapidly and accurately decode facial expressions is adaptive for human sociality. Although judgments of emotion are primarily determined by musculature, static face structure can also impact emotion judgments. The current work investigates how facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), a stable feature of all faces, influences perceivers' judgments of expressive displays of anger and fear (Studies 1a, 1b, & 2), and anger and happiness (Study 3). Across 4 studies, we provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that perceivers more readily see anger on faces with high fWHR compared with those with low fWHR, which instead facilitates the recognition of fear and happiness. This bias emerges when participants are led to believe that targets displaying otherwise neutral faces are attempting to mask an emotion (Studies 1a & 1b), and is evident when faces display an emotion (Studies 2 & 3). Together, these studies suggest that target facial width-to-height ratio biases ascriptions of emotion with consequences for emotion recognition speed and accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Facial Expression Influences Face Identity Recognition During the Attentional Blink

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Emotional stimuli (e.g., negative facial expressions) enjoy prioritized memory access when task relevant, consistent with their ability to capture attention. Whether emotional expression also impacts on memory access when task-irrelevant is important for arbitrating between feature-based and object-based attentional capture. Here, the authors address this question in 3 experiments using an attentional blink task with face photographs as first and second target (T1, T2). They demonstrate reduced neutral T2 identity recognition after angry or happy T1 expression, compared to neutral T1, and this supports attentional capture by a task-irrelevant feature. Crucially, after neutral T1, T2 identity recognition was enhanced and not suppressed when T2 was angry—suggesting that attentional capture by this task-irrelevant feature may be object-based and not feature-based. As an unexpected finding, both angry and happy facial expressions suppress memory access for competing objects, but only angry facial expression enjoyed privileged memory access. This could imply that these 2 processes are relatively independent from one another. PMID:25286076

Facial expression influences face identity recognition during the attentional blink.

PubMed

Bach, Dominik R; Schmidt-Daffy, Martin; Dolan, Raymond J

2014-12-01

Emotional stimuli (e.g., negative facial expressions) enjoy prioritized memory access when task relevant, consistent with their ability to capture attention. Whether emotional expression also impacts on memory access when task-irrelevant is important for arbitrating between feature-based and object-based attentional capture. Here, the authors address this question in 3 experiments using an attentional blink task with face photographs as first and second target (T1, T2). They demonstrate reduced neutral T2 identity recognition after angry or happy T1 expression, compared to neutral T1, and this supports attentional capture by a task-irrelevant feature. Crucially, after neutral T1, T2 identity recognition was enhanced and not suppressed when T2 was angry-suggesting that attentional capture by this task-irrelevant feature may be object-based and not feature-based. As an unexpected finding, both angry and happy facial expressions suppress memory access for competing objects, but only angry facial expression enjoyed privileged memory access. This could imply that these 2 processes are relatively independent from one another.

Facial recognition using simulated prosthetic pixelized vision.

PubMed

Thompson, Robert W; Barnett, G David; Humayun, Mark S; Dagnelie, Gislin

2003-11-01

To evaluate a model of simulated pixelized prosthetic vision using noncontiguous circular phosphenes, to test the effects of phosphene and grid parameters on facial recognition. A video headset was used to view a reference set of four faces, followed by a partially averted image of one of those faces viewed through a square pixelizing grid that contained 10x10 to 32x32 dots separated by gaps. The grid size, dot size, gap width, dot dropout rate, and gray-scale resolution were varied separately about a standard test condition, for a total of 16 conditions. All tests were first performed at 99% contrast and then repeated at 12.5% contrast. Discrimination speed and performance were influenced by all stimulus parameters. The subjects achieved highly significant facial recognition accuracy for all high-contrast tests except for grids with 70% random dot dropout and two gray levels. In low-contrast tests, significant facial recognition accuracy was achieved for all but the most adverse grid parameters: total grid area less than 17% of the target image, 70% dropout, four or fewer gray levels, and a gap of 40.5 arcmin. For difficult test conditions, a pronounced learning effect was noticed during high-contrast trials, and a more subtle practice effect on timing was evident during subsequent low-contrast trials. These findings suggest that reliable face recognition with crude pixelized grids can be learned and may be possible, even with a crude visual prosthesis.

Cognitive contributions to theory of mind ability in children with a traumatic head injury.

PubMed

Levy, Naomi Kahana; Milgram, Noach

2016-01-01

The objective of the current study is to examine the contribution of intellectual abilities, executive functions (EF), and facial emotion recognition to difficulties in Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities in children with a traumatic head injury. Israeli children with a traumatic head injury were compared with their non-injured counterparts. Each group included 18 children (12 males) ages 7-13. Measurements included reading the mind in the eyes, facial emotion recognition, reasoning the other's characteristics based on motive and outcome, Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices, similarities and digit span (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Revised 95 subscales), verbal fluency, and the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Functions. Non-injured children performed significantly better on ToM, abstract reasoning, and EF measures compared with children with a traumatic head injury. However, differences in ToM abilities between the groups were no longer significant after controlling for abstract reasoning, working memory, verbal fluency, or facial emotion recognition. Impaired ToM recognition and reasoning abilities after a head injury may result from other cognitive impairments. In children with mild and moderate head injury, poorer performance on ToM tasks may reflect poorer abstract reasoning, a general tendency to concretize stimuli, working memory and verbal fluency deficits, and difficulties in facial emotion recognition, rather than deficits in the ability to understand the other's thoughts and emotions. ToM impairments may be secondary to a range of cognitive deficits in determining social outcomes in this population.

The perception and identification of facial emotions in individuals with autism spectrum disorders using the Let's Face It! Emotion Skills Battery.

PubMed

Tanaka, James W; Wolf, Julie M; Klaiman, Cheryl; Koenig, Kathleen; Cockburn, Jeffrey; Herlihy, Lauren; Brown, Carla; Stahl, Sherin S; South, Mikle; McPartland, James C; Kaiser, Martha D; Schultz, Robert T

2012-12-01

Although impaired social-emotional ability is a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the perceptual skills and mediating strategies contributing to the social deficits of autism are not well understood. A perceptual skill that is fundamental to effective social communication is the ability to accurately perceive and interpret facial emotions. To evaluate the expression processing of participants with ASD, we designed the Let's Face It! Emotion Skills Battery (LFI! Battery), a computer-based assessment composed of three subscales measuring verbal and perceptual skills implicated in the recognition of facial emotions. We administered the LFI! Battery to groups of participants with ASD and typically developing control (TDC) participants that were matched for age and IQ. On the Name Game labeling task, participants with ASD (N = 68) performed on par with TDC individuals (N = 66) in their ability to name the facial emotions of happy, sad, disgust and surprise and were only impaired in their ability to identify the angry expression. On the Matchmaker Expression task that measures the recognition of facial emotions across different facial identities, the ASD participants (N = 66) performed reliably worse than TDC participants (N = 67) on the emotions of happy, sad, disgust, frighten and angry. In the Parts-Wholes test of perceptual strategies of expression, the TDC participants (N = 67) displayed more holistic encoding for the eyes than the mouths in expressive faces whereas ASD participants (N = 66) exhibited the reverse pattern of holistic recognition for the mouth and analytic recognition of the eyes. In summary, findings from the LFI! Battery show that participants with ASD were able to label the basic facial emotions (with the exception of angry expression) on par with age- and IQ-matched TDC participants. However, participants with ASD were impaired in their ability to generalize facial emotions across different identities and showed a tendency to recognize the mouth feature holistically and the eyes as isolated parts. © 2012 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry © 2012 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

2D DOST based local phase pattern for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moniruzzaman, Md.; Alam, Mohammad S.

2017-05-01

A new two dimensional (2-D) Discrete Orthogonal Stcokwell Transform (DOST) based Local Phase Pattern (LPP) technique has been proposed for efficient face recognition. The proposed technique uses 2-D DOST as preliminary preprocessing and local phase pattern to form robust feature signature which can effectively accommodate various 3D facial distortions and illumination variations. The S-transform, is an extension of the ideas of the continuous wavelet transform (CWT), is also known for its local spectral phase properties in time-frequency representation (TFR). It provides a frequency dependent resolution of the time-frequency space and absolutely referenced local phase information while maintaining a direct relationship with the Fourier spectrum which is unique in TFR. After utilizing 2-D Stransform as the preprocessing and build local phase pattern from extracted phase information yield fast and efficient technique for face recognition. The proposed technique shows better correlation discrimination compared to alternate pattern recognition techniques such as wavelet or Gabor based face recognition. The performance of the proposed method has been tested using the Yale and extended Yale facial database under different environments such as illumination variation and 3D changes in facial expressions. Test results show that the proposed technique yields better performance compared to alternate time-frequency representation (TFR) based face recognition techniques.

Multi-pose facial correction based on Gaussian process with combined kernel function

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shi, Shuyan; Ji, Ruirui; Zhang, Fan

2018-04-01

In order to improve the recognition rate of various postures, this paper proposes a method of facial correction based on Gaussian Process which build a nonlinear regression model between the front and the side face with combined kernel function. The face images with horizontal angle from -45° to +45° can be properly corrected to front faces. Finally, Support Vector Machine is employed for face recognition. Experiments on CAS PEAL R1 face database show that Gaussian process can weaken the influence of pose changes and improve the accuracy of face recognition to certain extent.

A Web-based Game for Teaching Facial Expressions to Schizophrenic Patients.

PubMed

Gülkesen, Kemal Hakan; Isleyen, Filiz; Cinemre, Buket; Samur, Mehmet Kemal; Sen Kaya, Semiha; Zayim, Nese

2017-07-12

Recognizing facial expressions is an important social skill. In some psychological disorders such as schizophrenia, loss of this skill may complicate the patient's daily life. Prior research has shown that information technology may help to develop facial expression recognition skills through educational software and games. To examine if a computer game designed for teaching facial expressions would improve facial expression recognition skills of patients with schizophrenia. We developed a website composed of eight serious games. Thirty-two patients were given a pre-test composed of 21 facial expression photographs. Eighteen patients were in the study group while 14 were in the control group. Patients in the study group were asked to play the games on the website. After a period of one month, we performed a post-test for all patients. The median score of the correct answers was 17.5 in the control group whereas it was 16.5 in the study group (of 21) in pretest. The median post-test score was 18 in the control group (p=0.052) whereas it was 20 in the study group (p<0.001). Computer games may be used for the purpose of educating people who have difficulty in recognizing facial expressions.

Sex, Sexual Orientation, and Identification of Positive and Negative Facial Affect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rahman, Qazi; Wilson, Glenn D.; Abrahams, Sharon

2004-01-01

Sex and sexual orientation related differences in processing of happy and sad facial emotions were examined using an experimental facial emotion recognition paradigm with a large sample (N=240). Analysis of covariance (controlling for age and IQ) revealed that women (irrespective of sexual orientation) had faster reaction times than men for…

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…

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.

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.

[Emotion Recognition in Patients with Peripheral Facial Paralysis - A Pilot Study].

PubMed

Konnerth, V; Mohr, G; von Piekartz, H

2016-02-01

The perception of emotions is an important component in enabling human beings to social interaction in everyday life. Thus, the ability to recognize the emotions of the other one's mime is a key prerequisite for this. The following study aimed at evaluating the ability of subjects with 'peripheral facial paresis' to perceive emotions in healthy individuals. A pilot study was conducted in which 13 people with 'peripheral facial paresis' participated. This assessment included the 'Facially Expressed Emotion Labeling-Test' (FEEL-Test), the 'Facial-Laterality-Recognition Test' (FLR-Test) and the 'Toronto-Alexithymie-Scale 26' (TAS 26). The results were compared with data of healthy people from other studies. In contrast to healthy patients, the subjects with 'facial paresis' show more difficulties in recognizing basic emotions; however the results are not significant. The participants show a significant lower level of speed (right/left: p<0.001) concerning the perception of facial laterality compared to healthy people. With regard to the alexithymia, the tested group reveals significantly higher results (p<0.001) compared to the unimpaired people. The present pilot study does not prove any impact on this specific patient group's ability to recognize emotions and facial laterality. For future studies the research question should be verified in a larger sample size. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Effects of Head Impact Acceleration on Human Performance: Overview and Preliminary Battery Identification.

DTIC Science & Technology

1983-05-01

A. L. Personal communication. 1982. Benton, A. L., & Van Allen, M. W. Impairment in facial recognition in patients with cerebral disease. Cortex...patients. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psycholology, 1977, 45, 684-688. (a) Levin, H. S., Grossman, R. G., Kelly, P. J. Impairment of facial ... recognition after closed head injuries of varying severity. Cortex, 1977, 13, 110-130. (b) Miller, E. Simple and choice reaction time following severe

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.

Test battery for measuring the perception and recognition of facial expressions of emotion

PubMed Central

Wilhelm, Oliver; Hildebrandt, Andrea; Manske, Karsten; Schacht, Annekathrin; Sommer, Werner

2014-01-01

Despite the importance of perceiving and recognizing facial expressions in everyday life, there is no comprehensive test battery for the multivariate assessment of these abilities. As a first step toward such a compilation, we present 16 tasks that measure the perception and recognition of facial emotion expressions, and data illustrating each task's difficulty and reliability. The scoring of these tasks focuses on either the speed or accuracy of performance. A sample of 269 healthy young adults completed all tasks. In general, accuracy and reaction time measures for emotion-general scores showed acceptable and high estimates of internal consistency and factor reliability. Emotion-specific scores yielded lower reliabilities, yet high enough to encourage further studies with such measures. Analyses of task difficulty revealed that all tasks are suitable for measuring emotion perception and emotion recognition related abilities in normal populations. PMID:24860528

Callous-unemotional traits and empathy deficits: Mediating effects of affective perspective-taking and facial emotion recognition.

PubMed

Lui, Joyce H L; Barry, Christopher T; Sacco, Donald F

2016-09-01

Although empathy deficits are thought to be associated with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, findings remain equivocal and little is known about what specific abilities may underlie these purported deficits. Affective perspective-taking (APT) and facial emotion recognition may be implicated, given their independent associations with both empathy and CU traits. The current study examined how CU traits relate to cognitive and affective empathy and whether APT and facial emotion recognition mediate these relations. Participants were 103 adolescents (70 males) aged 16-18 attending a residential programme. CU traits were negatively associated with cognitive and affective empathy to a similar degree. The association between CU traits and affective empathy was partially mediated by APT. Results suggest that assessing mechanisms that may underlie empathic deficits, such as perspective-taking, may be important for youth with CU traits and may inform targets of intervention.

Eye tracking reveals a crucial role for facial motion in recognition of faces by infants.

PubMed

Xiao, Naiqi G; Quinn, Paul C; Liu, Shaoying; Ge, Liezhong; Pascalis, Olivier; Lee, Kang

2015-06-01

Current knowledge about face processing in infancy comes largely from studies using static face stimuli, but faces that infants see in the real world are mostly moving ones. To bridge this gap, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Asian infants (N = 118) were familiarized with either moving or static Asian female faces, and then their face recognition was tested with static face images. Eye-tracking methodology was used to record eye movements during the familiarization and test phases. The results showed a developmental change in eye movement patterns, but only for the moving faces. In addition, the more infants shifted their fixations across facial regions, the better their face recognition was, but only for the moving faces. The results suggest that facial movement influences the way faces are encoded from early in development. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Segmentation of human face using gradient-based approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baskan, Selin; Bulut, M. Mete; Atalay, Volkan

2001-04-01

This paper describes a method for automatic segmentation of facial features such as eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth and ears in color images. This work is an initial step for wide range of applications based on feature-based approaches, such as face recognition, lip-reading, gender estimation, facial expression analysis, etc. Human face can be characterized by its skin color and nearly elliptical shape. For this purpose, face detection is performed using color and shape information. Uniform illumination is assumed. No restrictions on glasses, make-up, beard, etc. are imposed. Facial features are extracted using the vertically and horizontally oriented gradient projections. The gradient of a minimum with respect to its neighbor maxima gives the boundaries of a facial feature. Each facial feature has a different horizontal characteristic. These characteristics are derived by extensive experimentation with many face images. Using fuzzy set theory, the similarity between the candidate and the feature characteristic under consideration is calculated. Gradient-based method is accompanied by the anthropometrical information, for robustness. Ear detection is performed using contour-based shape descriptors. This method detects the facial features and circumscribes each facial feature with the smallest rectangle possible. AR database is used for testing. The developed method is also suitable for real-time systems.

Comparison of fingerprint and facial biometric verification technologies for user access and patient identification in a clinical environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guo, Bing; Zhang, Yu; Documet, Jorge; Liu, Brent; Lee, Jasper; Shrestha, Rasu; Wang, Kevin; Huang, H. K.

2007-03-01

As clinical imaging and informatics systems continue to integrate the healthcare enterprise, the need to prevent patient mis-identification and unauthorized access to clinical data becomes more apparent especially under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandate. Last year, we presented a system to track and verify patients and staff within a clinical environment. This year, we further address the biometric verification component in order to determine which Biometric system is the optimal solution for given applications in the complex clinical environment. We install two biometric identification systems including fingerprint and facial recognition systems at an outpatient imaging facility, Healthcare Consultation Center II (HCCII). We evaluated each solution and documented the advantages and pitfalls of each biometric technology in this clinical environment.

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.

Evaluation of appearance transfer and persistence in central face transplantation: a computer simulation analysis.

PubMed

Pomahac, Bohdan; Aflaki, Pejman; Nelson, Charles; Balas, Benjamin

2010-05-01

Partial facial allotransplantation is an emerging option in reconstruction of central facial defects, providing function and aesthetic appearance. Ethical debate partly stems from uncertainty surrounding identity aspects of the procedure. There is no objective evidence regarding the effect of donors' transplanted facial structures on appearance change of the recipients and its influence on facial recognition of donors and recipients. Full-face frontal view color photographs of 100 volunteers were taken at a distance of 150 cm with a digital camera (Nikon/DX80). Photographs were taken in front of a blue background, and with a neutral facial expression. Using image-editing software (Adobe-Photoshop-CS3), central facial transplantation was performed between participants. Twenty observers performed a familiar 'facial recognition task', to identify 40 post-transplant composite faces presented individually on the screen at a viewing distance of 60 cm, with an exposure time of 5s. Each composite face comprised of a familiar and an unfamiliar face to the observers. Trials were done with and without external facial features (head contour, hair and ears). Two variables were defined: 'Appearance Transfer' refers to transfer of donor's appearance to the recipient. 'Appearance Persistence' deals with the extent of recipient's appearance change post-transplantation. A t-test was run to determine if the rates of Appearance Transfer differed from Appearance Persistence. Average Appearance Transfer rate (2.6%) was significantly lower than Appearance Persistence rate (66%) (P<0.001), indicating that donor's appearance transfer to the recipient is negligible, whereas recipients will be identified the majority of the time. External facial features were important in facial recognition of recipients, evidenced by a significant rise in Appearance Persistence from 19% in the absence of external features to 66% when those features were present (P<0.01). This study may be helpful in the informed consent process of prospective recipients. It is beneficial for education of donors families and is expected to positively affect their decision to consent for facial tissue donation. Copyright (c) 2009 British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Impaired holistic coding of facial expression and facial identity in congenital prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Palermo, Romina; Willis, Megan L; Rivolta, Davide; McKone, Elinor; Wilson, C Ellie; Calder, Andrew J

2011-04-01

We test 12 individuals with congenital prosopagnosia (CP), who replicate a common pattern of showing severe difficulty in recognising facial identity in conjunction with normal recognition of facial expressions (both basic and 'social'). Strength of holistic processing was examined using standard expression composite and identity composite tasks. Compared to age- and sex-matched controls, group analyses demonstrated that CPs showed weaker holistic processing, for both expression and identity information. Implications are (a) normal expression recognition in CP can derive from compensatory strategies (e.g., over-reliance on non-holistic cues to expression); (b) the split between processing of expression and identity information may take place after a common stage of holistic processing; and (c) contrary to a recent claim, holistic processing of identity is functionally involved in face identification ability. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facial Affect Recognition Using Regularized Discriminant Analysis-Based Algorithms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Chien-Cheng; Huang, Shin-Sheng; Shih, Cheng-Yuan

2010-12-01

This paper presents a novel and effective method for facial expression recognition including happiness, disgust, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and neutral state. The proposed method utilizes a regularized discriminant analysis-based boosting algorithm (RDAB) with effective Gabor features to recognize the facial expressions. Entropy criterion is applied to select the effective Gabor feature which is a subset of informative and nonredundant Gabor features. The proposed RDAB algorithm uses RDA as a learner in the boosting algorithm. The RDA combines strengths of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). It solves the small sample size and ill-posed problems suffered from QDA and LDA through a regularization technique. Additionally, this study uses the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to estimate optimal parameters in RDA. Experiment results demonstrate that our approach can accurately and robustly recognize facial expressions.

Schematic drawings of facial expressions for emotion recognition and interpretation by preschool-aged children.

PubMed

MacDonald, P M; Kirkpatrick, S W; Sullivan, L A

1996-11-01

Schematic drawings of facial expressions were evaluated as a possible assessment tool for research on emotion recognition and interpretation involving young children. A subset of Ekman and Friesen's (1976) Pictures of Facial Affect was used as the standard for comparison. Preschool children (N = 138) were shown drawing and photographs in two context conditions for six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). The overall correlation between accuracy for the photographs and drawings was .677. A significant difference was found for the stimulus condition (photographs vs. drawings) but not for the administration condition (label-based vs. context-based). Children were significantly more accurate in interpreting drawings than photographs and tended to be more accurate in identifying facial expressions in the label-based administration condition for both photographs and drawings than in the context-based administration condition.

Impaired holistic coding of facial expression and facial identity in congenital prosopagnosia

PubMed Central

Palermo, Romina; Willis, Megan L.; Rivolta, Davide; McKone, Elinor; Wilson, C. Ellie; Calder, Andrew J.

2011-01-01

We test 12 individuals with congenital prosopagnosia (CP), who replicate a common pattern of showing severe difficulty in recognising facial identity in conjunction with normal recognition of facial expressions (both basic and ‘social’). Strength of holistic processing was examined using standard expression composite and identity composite tasks. Compared to age- and sex-matched controls, group analyses demonstrated that CPs showed weaker holistic processing, for both expression and identity information. Implications are (a) normal expression recognition in CP can derive from compensatory strategies (e.g., over-reliance on non-holistic cues to expression); (b) the split between processing of expression and identity information may take place after a common stage of holistic processing; and (c) contrary to a recent claim, holistic processing of identity is functionally involved in face identification ability. PMID:21333662

Anxiety disorders in adolescence are associated with impaired facial expression recognition to negative valence.

PubMed

Jarros, Rafaela Behs; Salum, Giovanni Abrahão; Belem da Silva, Cristiano Tschiedel; Toazza, Rudineia; de Abreu Costa, Marianna; Fumagalli de Salles, Jerusa; Manfro, Gisele Gus

2012-02-01

The aim of the present study was to test the ability of adolescents with a current anxiety diagnosis to recognize facial affective expressions, compared to those without an anxiety disorder. Forty cases and 27 controls were selected from a larger cross sectional community sample of adolescents, aged from 10 to 17 years old. Adolescent's facial recognition of six human emotions (sadness, anger, disgust, happy, surprise and fear) and neutral faces was assessed through a facial labeling test using Ekman's Pictures of Facial Affect (POFA). Adolescents with anxiety disorders had a higher mean number of errors in angry faces as compared to controls: 3.1 (SD=1.13) vs. 2.5 (SD=2.5), OR=1.72 (CI95% 1.02 to 2.89; p=0.040). However, they named neutral faces more accurately than adolescents without anxiety diagnosis: 15% of cases vs. 37.1% of controls presented at least one error in neutral faces, OR=3.46 (CI95% 1.02 to 11.7; p=0.047). No differences were found considering other human emotions or on the distribution of errors in each emotional face between the groups. Our findings support an anxiety-mediated influence on the recognition of facial expressions in adolescence. These difficulty in recognizing angry faces and more accuracy in naming neutral faces may lead to misinterpretation of social clues and can explain some aspects of the impairment in social interactions in adolescents with anxiety disorders. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease: A review and new hypotheses

PubMed Central

Vérin, Marc; Sauleau, Paul; Grandjean, Didier

2018-01-01

Abstract Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder classically characterized by motor symptoms. Among them, hypomimia affects facial expressiveness and social communication and has a highly negative impact on patients' and relatives' quality of life. Patients also frequently experience nonmotor symptoms, including emotional‐processing impairments, leading to difficulty in recognizing emotions from faces. Aside from its theoretical importance, understanding the disruption of facial emotion recognition in PD is crucial for improving quality of life for both patients and caregivers, as this impairment is associated with heightened interpersonal difficulties. However, studies assessing abilities in recognizing facial emotions in PD still report contradictory outcomes. The origins of this inconsistency are unclear, and several questions (regarding the role of dopamine replacement therapy or the possible consequences of hypomimia) remain unanswered. We therefore undertook a fresh review of relevant articles focusing on facial emotion recognition in PD to deepen current understanding of this nonmotor feature, exploring multiple significant potential confounding factors, both clinical and methodological, and discussing probable pathophysiological mechanisms. This led us to examine recent proposals about the role of basal ganglia‐based circuits in emotion and to consider the involvement of facial mimicry in this deficit from the perspective of embodied simulation theory. We believe our findings will inform clinical practice and increase fundamental knowledge, particularly in relation to potential embodied emotion impairment in PD. © 2018 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. PMID:29473661

In the face of emotions: event-related potentials in supraliminal and subliminal facial expression recognition.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Lucchiari, Claudio

2005-02-01

Is facial expression recognition marked by specific event-related potentials (ERPs) effects? Are conscious and unconscious elaborations of emotional facial stimuli qualitatively different processes? In Experiment 1, ERPs elicited by supraliminal stimuli were recorded when 21 participants viewed emotional facial expressions of four emotions and a neutral stimulus. Two ERP components (N2 and P3) were analyzed for their peak amplitude and latency measures. First, emotional face-specificity was observed for the negative deflection N2, whereas P3 was not affected by the content of the stimulus (emotional or neutral). A more posterior distribution of ERPs was found for N2. Moreover, a lateralization effect was revealed for negative (right lateralization) and positive (left lateralization) facial expressions. In Experiment 2 (20 participants), 1-ms subliminal stimulation was carried out. Unaware information processing was revealed to be quite similar to aware information processing for peak amplitude but not for latency. In fact, unconscious stimulation produced a more delayed peak variation than conscious stimulation.

Convolutional neural networks with balanced batches for facial expressions recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Battini Sönmez, Elena; Cangelosi, Angelo

2017-03-01

This paper considers the issue of fully automatic emotion classification on 2D faces. In spite of the great effort done in recent years, traditional machine learning approaches based on hand-crafted feature extraction followed by the classification stage failed to develop a real-time automatic facial expression recognition system. The proposed architecture uses Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), which are built as a collection of interconnected processing elements to simulate the brain of human beings. The basic idea of CNNs is to learn a hierarchical representation of the input data, which results in a better classification performance. In this work we present a block-based CNN algorithm, which uses noise, as data augmentation technique, and builds batches with a balanced number of samples per class. The proposed architecture is a very simple yet powerful CNN, which can yield state-of-the-art accuracy on the very competitive benchmark algorithm of the Extended Cohn Kanade database.

Social skills training for children with autism spectrum disorder using a robotic behavioral intervention system.

PubMed

Yun, Sang-Seok; Choi, JongSuk; Park, Sung-Kee; Bong, Gui-Young; Yoo, HeeJeong

2017-07-01

We designed a robot system that assisted in behavioral intervention programs of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The eight-session intervention program was based on the discrete trial teaching protocol and focused on two basic social skills: eye contact and facial emotion recognition. The robotic interactions occurred in four modules: training element query, recognition of human activity, coping-mode selection, and follow-up action. Children with ASD who were between 4 and 7 years old and who had verbal IQ ≥ 60 were recruited and randomly assigned to the treatment group (TG, n = 8, 5.75 ± 0.89 years) or control group (CG, n = 7; 6.32 ± 1.23 years). The therapeutic robot facilitated the treatment intervention in the TG, and the human assistant facilitated the treatment intervention in the CG. The intervention procedures were identical in both groups. The primary outcome measures included parent-completed questionnaires, the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), and frequency of eye contact, which was measured with the partial interval recording method. After completing treatment, the eye contact percentages were significantly increased in both groups. For facial emotion recognition, the percentages of correct answers were increased in similar patterns in both groups compared to baseline (P > 0.05), with no difference between the TG and CG (P > 0.05). The subjects' ability to play, general behavioral and emotional symptoms were significantly diminished after treatment (p < 0.05). These results showed that the robot-facilitated and human-facilitated behavioral interventions had similar positive effects on eye contact and facial emotion recognition, which suggested that robots are useful mediators of social skills training for children with ASD. Autism Res 2017,. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1306-1323. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.