scholarly journals Mapping Facial Expression to Internal States Based on Intuitive Parenting

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayako Watanabe ◽  
◽  
Masaki Ogino ◽  
Minoru Asada ◽  
◽  
...  

Sympathy is a key issue in interaction and communication between robots and their users. In developmental psychology, intuitive parenting is considered the maternal scaffolding upon which children develop sympathy when caregivers mimic or exaggerate the child’s emotional facial expressions [1]. We model human intuitive parenting using a robot that associates a caregiver’s mimicked or exaggerated facial expressions with the robot’s internal state to learn a sympathetic response. The internal state space and facial expressions are defined using psychological studies and change dynamically in response to external stimuli. After learning, the robot responds to the caregiver’s internal state by observing human facial expressions. The robot then expresses its own internal state facially if synchronization evokes a response to the caregiver’s internal state.

Author(s):  
Yuki Matsui ◽  
◽  
Masayoshi Kanoh ◽  
Shohei Kato ◽  
Tsuyoshi Nakamura ◽  
...  

We propose an interactive facial expression model using the Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) for achieving interactions through facial expressions between robots and human beings. The proposed model counts humans in the root system as receivers of facial expressions to achieve a dynamic system bi-directionally affecting humans and robots. Robots typically generate only static changes in facial expression using motion files, so they seem bored, unnatural, and strange to their users. We use interactions between robots and people to diversity the inputs of robots and use emotional state transitions of robots to reduce uniformities in output facial expressions. This paper discusses a dynamic system that causes the proposed model to learn emotional facial expressions based on those of humans. Next, we regard internal states generated by the proposed model as virtual emotions and show that mixed emotions can be expressed by users’ inputs from the virtual emotional space. Moreover, based on the results of a questionnaire, we see that facial expressions adopted in the virtual emotional space of the proposed model received high rates of approval from the users.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182199299
Author(s):  
Mohamad El Haj ◽  
Emin Altintas ◽  
Ahmed A Moustafa ◽  
Abdel Halim Boudoukha

Future thinking, which is the ability to project oneself forward in time to pre-experience an event, is intimately associated with emotions. We investigated whether emotional future thinking can activate emotional facial expressions. We invited 43 participants to imagine future scenarios, cued by the words “happy,” “sad,” and “city.” Future thinking was video recorded and analysed with a facial analysis software to classify whether facial expressions (i.e., happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and neutral facial expression) of participants were neutral or emotional. Analysis demonstrated higher levels of happy facial expressions during future thinking cued by the word “happy” than “sad” or “city.” In contrast, higher levels of sad facial expressions were observed during future thinking cued by the word “sad” than “happy” or “city.” Higher levels of neutral facial expressions were observed during future thinking cued by the word “city” than “happy” or “sad.” In the three conditions, the neutral facial expressions were high compared with happy and sad facial expressions. Together, emotional future thinking, at least for future scenarios cued by “happy” and “sad,” seems to trigger the corresponding facial expression. Our study provides an original physiological window into the subjective emotional experience during future thinking.


Traditio ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 125-145
Author(s):  
Kirsten Wolf

The human face has the capacity to generate expressions associated with a wide range of affective states. Despite the fact that there are few words to describe human facial behaviors, the facial muscles allow for more than a thousand different facial appearances. Some examples of feelings that can be expressed are anger, concentration, contempt, excitement, nervousness, and surprise. Regardless of culture or language, the same expressions are associated with the same emotions and vary only in intensity. Using modern psychological analyses as a point of departure, this essay examines descriptions of human facial expressions as well as such bodily “symptoms” as flushing, turning pale, and weeping in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. The aim is to analyze the manner in which facial signs are used as a means of non-verbal communication to convey the impression of an individual's internal state to observers. More specifically, this essay seeks to determine when and why characters in these works are described as expressing particular facial emotions and, especially, the range of emotions expressed. The Sagas andþættirof Icelanders are in the forefront of the analysis and yield well over one hundred references to human facial expression and color. The examples show that through gaze, smiling, weeping, brows that are raised or knitted, and coloration, the Sagas andþættirof Icelanders tell of happiness or amusement, pleasant and unpleasant surprise, fear, anger, rage, sadness, interest, concern, and even mixed emotions for which language has no words. The Sagas andþættirof Icelanders may be reticent in talking about emotions and poor in emotional vocabulary, but this poverty is compensated for by making facial expressions signifiers of emotion. This essay makes clear that the works are less emotionally barren than often supposed. It also shows that our understanding of Old Norse-Icelandic “somatic semiotics” may well depend on the universality of facial expressions and that culture-specific “display rules” or “elicitors” are virtually nonexistent.


Author(s):  
Peggy Mason

Tracts descending from motor control centers in the brainstem and cortex target motor interneurons and in select cases motoneurons. The mechanisms and constraints of postural control are elaborated and the effect of body mass on posture discussed. Feed-forward reflexes that maintain posture during standing and other conditions of self-motion are described. The role of descending tracts in postural control and the pathological posturing is described. Pyramidal (corticospinal and corticobulbar) and extrapyramidal control of body and face movements is contrasted. Special emphasis is placed on cortical regions and tracts involved in deliberate control of facial expression; these pathways are contrasted with mechanisms for generating emotional facial expressions. The signs associated with lesions of either motoneurons or motor control centers are clearly detailed. The mechanisms and presentation of cerebral palsy are described. Finally, understanding how pre-motor cortical regions generate actions is used to introduce apraxia, a disorder of action.


Organized in eleven thematic sections, The Science of Facial Expression offers a broad perspective of the “geography” of the science of facial expression. It reviews the scientific history of emotion perception and the evolutionary origins and functions of facial expression. It includes an updated compilation on the great debate around Basic Emotion Theory versus Behavioral Ecology and Psychological constructionism. The developmental psychology and social psychology of facial expressions is explored in the role of facial expressions in child development, social interactions, and culture. The book also covers appraisal theory, concepts, neural and behavioral processes, and lesser-known facial behaviors such as yawing, vocal crying, and vomiting. In addition, the book reflects that research on the “expression of emotion” is moving towards a significance of context in the production and interpretation of facial expression The authors expose various fundamental questions and controversies yet to be resolved, but in doing so, open many sources of inspiration to pursue in the scientific study of facial expression.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Julie Anne Séguin

<p>Activation and attention have opposite effects on time perception. Emotion can both increase physiological activation (which leads to overestimation of time) and attract attention (which leads to underestimation of time). Although the effect of emotion on time perception has received a growing amount of attention, the use of different time estimation tasks and stimuli makes it difficult to compare findings across studies. The effect of emotion on the temporal perception of complex stimuli (e.g. scenes) is particularly under-researched. This thesis presents a systematic assessment of the effect of two key emotional dimensions, arousal and valence, on time perception for visual stimuli. Studies were designed to control for factors that may modulate emotion effects, such as image repetition and carry over from one emotion to another. The stimuli were complex images standardized for arousal (high or low) and valence (positive or negative) as well as neutral images. The first study compared three time estimation tasks to determine which were sensitive to emotion effects. The selected task, temporal bisection, was used to test time perception in three duration ranges: short (400 to 1600ms), middle (1000 to 4000ms), and long (2000 to 6000ms). Results of bisection point analyses revealed that the duration of attention-capturing stimuli (e.g. high arousal or negative images) was underestimated compared to that of other stimuli (e.g. low arousal or neutral images). These findings are at odds with activational effects of emotion (overestimation of emotional stimuli), which are typically found in studies of time perception for facial expression. Better temporal sensitivity in the long range than in short and middle ranges suggests that participants used different timing strategies to perform the bisection task at longer stimulus durations. To test the effect of emotion on time perception using a discrete rather than dimensional classification of emotion, experiments were replicated using emotional facial expressions as stimuli. Time estimates in the short and middle ranges did not show attentional effects, but pointed to activational effects of emotion. Facial expression had no impact on time perception in the long duration range. Taken together, these experiments show that the effect of emotion on time perception varies according to both duration and stimulus type. Emotional facial expressions have short lived activational effects whereby the duration of arousing stimuli is overestimated, whereas complex emotional scenes have protracted attentional effects through which the duration of attention-capturing stimuli is underestimated.</p>


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Gründemann ◽  
Yael Bitterman ◽  
Tingjia Lu ◽  
Sabine Krabbe ◽  
Benjamin F. Grewe ◽  
...  

AbstractInternal states, including affective or homeostatic states, are important behavioral motivators. The amygdala is a key brain region involved in the regulation of motivated behaviors, yet how distinct internal states are represented in amygdala circuits is unknown. Here, by imaging somatic neural calcium dynamics in freely moving mice, we identify changes in the relative activity levels of two major, non-overlapping populations of principal neurons in the basal nucleus of the amygdala (BA) that predict switches between exploratory and non-exploratory (defensive, anxiety-like) behavioral states across different environments. Moreover, the amygdala widely broadcasts internal state information via several output pathways to larger brain networks, and sensory responses in BA occur independently of behavioral state encoding. Thus, the brain processes external stimuli and internal states in an orthogonal manner, which may facilitate rapid and flexible selection of appropriate, state-dependent behavioral responses.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michela Balconi ◽  
Claudio Lucchiari

Abstract. In this study we analyze whether facial expression recognition is marked by specific event-related potential (ERP) correlates and whether conscious and unconscious elaboration of emotional facial stimuli are qualitatively different processes. ERPs elicited by supraliminal and subliminal (10 ms) stimuli were recorded when subjects were viewing emotional facial expressions of four emotions or neutral stimuli. Two ERP effects (N2 and P3) were analyzed in terms of their peak amplitude and latency variations. An emotional specificity was observed for the negative deflection N2, whereas P3 was not affected by the content of the stimulus (emotional or neutral). Unaware information processing proved to be quite similar to aware processing in terms of peak morphology but not of latency. A major result of this research was that unconscious stimulation produced a more delayed peak variation than conscious stimulation did. Also, a more posterior distribution of the ERP was found for N2 as a function of emotional content of the stimulus. On the contrary, cortical lateralization (right/left) was not correlated to conscious/unconscious stimulation. The functional significance of our results is underlined in terms of subliminal effect and emotion recognition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shota Uono ◽  
Wataru Sato ◽  
Reiko Sawada ◽  
Sayaka Kawakami ◽  
Sayaka Yoshimura ◽  
...  

People with schizophrenia or subclinical schizotypal traits exhibit impaired recognition of facial expressions. However, it remains unclear whether the detection of emotional facial expressions is impaired in people with schizophrenia or high levels of schizotypy. The present study examined whether the detection of emotional facial expressions would be associated with schizotypy in a non-clinical population after controlling for the effects of IQ, age, and sex. Participants were asked to respond to whether all faces were the same as quickly and as accurately as possible following the presentation of angry or happy faces or their anti-expressions among crowds of neutral faces. Anti-expressions contain a degree of visual change that is equivalent to that of normal emotional facial expressions relative to neutral facial expressions and are recognized as neutral expressions. Normal expressions of anger and happiness were detected more rapidly and accurately than their anti-expressions. Additionally, the degree of overall schizotypy was negatively correlated with the effectiveness of detecting normal expressions versus anti-expressions. An emotion–recognition task revealed that the degree of positive schizotypy was negatively correlated with the accuracy of facial expression recognition. These results suggest that people with high levels of schizotypy experienced difficulties detecting and recognizing emotional facial expressions.


Author(s):  
Roslinda Mustapha ◽  
Md. Azman Shahadan ◽  
Hazalizah Hamzah

Previous studies indicated that sensitivity to facial expressions of threat is related to anxiety in children, adolescents and adults. A small amount of anxiety often improves students' performance, but a high level of anxiety can interfere the learning process. The feeling of being threatened by particular stimuli would cause them to perceive many daily situations as threatening and this will result in more frequent experiences of fear of what may happen, especially for the high anxiety students. This research will explore the threat perception that the secondary school students might have in relation to negative facial expression and examine the sensitivity towards anger expressions as threatening stimuli. 49 students (25 low anxiety and 24 high anxiety) age between 16 to 18 years old have been recruited to answer a set of anxiety questionnaires and they were also required to identify the facial expression to explore the threat perception by looking at images posing facial expression in 2 and 3 dimensions. These images have been transformed into 5 levels of anger using FaceGen Modeller 3.5. Results demonstrated that the high anxiety students can identify threat stimuli from faces more accurately and faster than the low anxiety students. It is suggested that angry faces may be perceived as particularly threatening amongst students and play a significant role in their emotional well being. It is hoped that this research will increase our understanding of the relationship between anxiety and threat perception and this unique visual stimulus can generate a wealth of other research in Malaysia.


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