scholarly journals Dissociable Effects of Faces on Attention During Constrained and Unconstrained Viewing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia R. Hunt ◽  
Arash Sahraie ◽  
Neil Macrae

It has long been proposed that some stimulus classes are so biologically important that they are automatically prioritized by the attention system, irrespective of context. However, issues of ecological validity undermine laboratory-based experiments that attempt to establish the existence of context-independent attentional biases. Here we measured attention to faces and facial expressions of emotion while participants were sitting in a waiting room before the experiment, and again in the same individuals in a laboratory-based reaction-time (RT) task. A robust bias towards images of faces was observed in the waiting room, but not in the RT task. Conversely, a robust attentional bias towards emotional faces was observed in the RT task, but not in the waiting room. Despite large individual differences in attentional biases towards face and facial emotions, measures of bias in a given individual in one setting did not predict their bias in another. We conclude that attentional capture by faces and facial emotions is highly sensitive to context.

Perception ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 297-297
Author(s):  
Y Osada ◽  
Y Nagasaka ◽  
R Yamazaki

We recorded eye movements by the method of corneal reflection while ten subjects viewed schematic faces drawn by lines. Each subject viewed different emotional faces: happy, angry, sad, disgusted, interested, frightened, and surprised. We measured the subject's judgements in terms of percentage ‘correct’ and reaction time. Schematic faces were composed of the face outline contours and of the brow, eyes, nose, and mouth which could all be modified to produce particular expressions. By masking parts of the face, we examined which features would have the greatest effects on judgements of emotion. Subjects always gave a saccade to the eyes and fixated even when the eyes were not important for the judgement. They also gave a saccade to the centre of the face and fixated it even when only the mouth was presented. The presentation of only the brow decreased the correct rate on the expression of ‘surprise’ but played an important role in the ‘sad’ judgement. The ‘angry’ judgement depended significantly on the brow and mouth. The eyes contributed greatly to the ‘disgusted’ judgement. These results suggest that the judgement of facial expressions of emotion can be strongly affected by each part of the schematic face. The concentration of saccades on the centre of the face suggests that the ‘configuration balance’ of the face is also likely to be important.


i-Perception ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 204166951878652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonor Philip ◽  
Jean-Claude Martin ◽  
Céline Clavel

Facial expressions of emotion provide relevant cues for understanding social interactions and the affective processes involved in emotion perception. Virtual human faces are useful for conducting controlled experiments. However, little is known regarding the possible differences between physiological responses elicited by virtual versus real human facial expressions. The aim of the current study was to determine if virtual and real emotional faces elicit the same rapid facial reactions for the perception of facial expressions of joy, anger, and sadness. Facial electromyography (corrugator supercilii, zygomaticus major, and depressor anguli) was recorded in 30 participants during the presentation of dynamic or static and virtual or real faces. For the perception of dynamic facial expressions of joy and anger, analyses of electromyography data revealed that rapid facial reactions were stronger when participants were presented with real faces compared with virtual faces. These results suggest that the processes underlying the perception of virtual versus real emotional faces might differ.


1966 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 645-646
Author(s):  
W. Bruce Haslam ◽  
Darhl M. Pedersen

65 Ss rated each of 20 facial emotions on 20 semantic differential scales. An obverse factor analysis was completed on the ratings which yielded dimensions of viewpoint associated with the perception of facial expressions of emotion. Six of seven significant dimensions obtained were identified by significant correlations of the individual coefficients on each dimension with other personality variables.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chit Yuen Yi ◽  
Matthew W. E. Murry ◽  
Amy L. Gentzler

Abstract. Past research suggests that transient mood influences the perception of facial expressions of emotion, but relatively little is known about how trait-level emotionality (i.e., temperament) may influence emotion perception or interact with mood in this process. Consequently, we extended earlier work by examining how temperamental dimensions of negative emotionality and extraversion were associated with the perception accuracy and perceived intensity of three basic emotions and how the trait-level temperamental effect interacted with state-level self-reported mood in a sample of 88 adults (27 men, 18–51 years of age). The results indicated that higher levels of negative mood were associated with higher perception accuracy of angry and sad facial expressions, and higher levels of perceived intensity of anger. For perceived intensity of sadness, negative mood was associated with lower levels of perceived intensity, whereas negative emotionality was associated with higher levels of perceived intensity of sadness. Overall, our findings added to the limited literature on adult temperament and emotion perception.


2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Hastings ◽  
June P. Tangney ◽  
Jeffrey Stuewig

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua W Maxwell ◽  
Eric Ruthruff ◽  
michael joseph

Are facial expressions of emotion processed automatically? Some authors have not found this to be the case (Tomasik et al., 2009). Here we revisited the question with a novel experimental logic – the backward correspondence effect (BCE). In three dual-task studies, participants first categorized a sound (Task 1) and then indicated the location of a target face (Task 2). In Experiment 1, Task 2 required participants to search for one facial expression of emotion (angry or happy). We observed positive BCEs, indicating that facial expressions of emotion bypassed the central attentional bottleneck and thus were processed in a capacity-free, automatic manner. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect but found that morphed emotional expressions (which were used by Tomasik) were not processed automatically. In Experiment 3, we observed similar BCEs for another type of face processing previously shown to be capacity-free – identification of familiar faces (Jung et al., 2013). We conclude that facial expressions of emotion are identified automatically when sufficiently unambiguous.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Ferreira-Santos ◽  
Mariana R. Pereira ◽  
Tiago O. Paiva ◽  
Pedro R. Almeida ◽  
Eva C. Martins ◽  
...  

The behavioral and electrophysiological study of the emotional intensity of facial expressions of emotions has relied on image processing techniques termed ‘morphing’ to generate realistic facial stimuli in which emotional intensity can be manipulated. This is achieved by blending neutral and emotional facial displays and treating the percent of morphing between the two stimuli as an objective measure of emotional intensity. Here we argue that the percentage of morphing between stimuli does not provide an objective measure of emotional intensity and present supporting evidence from affective ratings and neural (event-related potential) responses. We show that 50% morphs created from high or moderate arousal stimuli differ in subjective and neural responses in a sensible way: 50% morphs are perceived as having approximately half of the emotional intensity of the original stimuli, but if the original stimuli differed in emotional intensity to begin with, then so will the morphs. We suggest a re-examination of previous studies that used percentage of morphing as a measure of emotional intensity and highlight the value of more careful experimental control of emotional stimuli and inclusion of proper manipulation checks.


Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030100662110270
Author(s):  
Kennon M. Sheldon ◽  
Ryan Goffredi ◽  
Mike Corcoran

Facial expressions of emotion have important communicative functions. It is likely that mask-wearing during pandemics disrupts these functions, especially for expressions defined by activity in the lower half of the face. We tested this by asking participants to rate both Duchenne smiles (DSs; defined by the mouth and eyes) and non-Duchenne or “social” smiles (SSs; defined by the mouth alone), within masked and unmasked target faces. As hypothesized, masked SSs were rated much lower in “a pleasant social smile” and much higher in “a merely neutral expression,” compared with unmasked SSs. Essentially, masked SSs became nonsmiles. Masked DSs were still rated as very happy and pleasant, although significantly less so than unmasked DSs. Masked DSs and SSs were both rated as displaying more disgust than the unmasked versions.


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