Sensitivity to Emotion Intensity and Recognition of Emotion Expression in Neurotypical Children

This study assessed two components of face emotion processing: emotion recognition and sensitivity to intensity of emotion expressions and their relation in children age 4 to 12 (N = 216). Results indicated a slower development in the accurate decoding of low intensity expressions compared to high intensity. Between age 4 and 12, children discriminated high intensity expressions better than low ones. The intensity of expression had a stronger impact on overall face expression recognition. High intensity happiness was better recognized than low intensity up to age 11, while children 4 to 12 had difficulties discriminating between high and low intensity sadness. Our results suggest that sensitivity to low intensity expressions acts as a complementary mediator between age and emotion expression recognition, while this was not the case for the recognition of high intensity expressions. These results could help in the development of specific interventions for populations presenting socio-cognitive and emotion difficulties.

The Rocky Road from Experience to Expression of Emotions—Women’s Anger About Sexism

We investigated women’s anger expression in response to sexism. In three studies (Ns = 103, 317, and 241), we tested the predictions that women express less anger about sexism than they experience—the anger gap—and that the anger expressed by women is associated with instrumental concerns, specifically perceived costs and benefits of confronting sexism. To estimate the specificity of the proposed gap, we compared women’s anger reactions to men’s anger reactions as well as anger reactions to sadness reactions. Across studies, we found support for the anger gap, that is, lower anger expression than experience, and the gap was more pronounced for women than for men (Study 3). Surprisingly, a gap also occurred in sadness reactions. Regarding instrumental concerns, there was converging evidence that expressed anger was negatively associated with individual costs. We also investigated whether anger expression can be encouraged through women’s identification with feminists (Studies 1 and 2) and support by other women (Study 2); yet, we found no evidence. We conclude that, to understand women’s—and men’s—reactions to sexism, it is critical not to mistake their emotion expression for how they really feel, but instead to also consider strategic concerns.

Teens’ Social Media Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Time Series Examination of Posting and Emotion on Reddit

Research has rarely examined how the COVID-19 pandemic may affect teens’ social media engagement and psychological wellbeing, and even less research has compared the difference between teens with and without mental health concerns. We collected and analyzed weekly data from January to December 2020 from teens in four Reddit communities (subreddits), including teens in r/Teenagers and teens who participated in three mental health subreddits (r/Depression, r/Anxiety, and r/SuicideWatch). The results showed that teens’ weekly subreddit participation, posting/commenting frequency, and emotion expression were related to significant pandemic events. Teen Redditors on r/Teenagers had a higher posting/commenting frequency but lower negative emotion than teen Redditors on the three mental health subreddits. When comparing posts/comments on r/Teenagers, teens who ever visited one of the three mental health subreddits posted/commented twice as frequently as teens who did not, but their emotion expression was similar. The results from the Interrupted Time Series Analysis (ITSA) indicated that both teens with and without mental health concerns reversed the trend in posting frequency and negative emotion from declining to increasing right after the pandemic outbreak, and teens with mental health concerns had a more rapidly increasing trend in posting/commenting. The findings suggest that teens’ social media engagement and emotion expression reflect the pandemic evolution. Teens with mental health concerns are more likely to reveal their emotions on specialized mental health subreddits rather than on the general r/Teenagers subreddit. In addition, the findings indicated that teens with mental health concerns had a strong social interaction desire that various barriers in the real world may inhibit. The findings call for more attention to understand the pandemic’s influence on teens by monitoring and analyzing social media data and offering adequate support to teens regarding their mental health wellbeing.

Music Emotion Analysis Based on PSO-BP Neural Network and Big Data Analysis

The current music teaching can effectively improve students’ music emotional expression indirectly. How to use the PSO-BP neural network to realize the quantitative research of music emotional expression is the current development trend. Based on this, this paper studies the influence factors of music emotion expression based on PSO-BP neural network and big data analysis. Firstly, a music emotion expression analysis model based on PSO-BP neural network algorithm is proposed. The autocorrelation function is used to simulate the emotion expression information in music. Through the maximum value of the autocorrelation function curve in the detection process, the vocal music signal is restored, and then the emotion expressed is analyzed. Secondly, the influence factors of PSO-BP neural network algorithm in music emotion expression are analyzed. The improved PSO-BP neural network algorithm and multidimensional data model are used for comprehensive analysis to accurately analyze the emotion in music expression, and the fuzzy evaluation method and analytic hierarchy process are used for quality evaluation. Finally, the validity of the music emotion analysis model is verified by many experiments.

Anger Experience and Anger Expression Through Drawing in Schizophrenia: An fNIRS Study

Differences in emotion experience and emotion expression between patients with schizophrenia and the healthy population have long been the focus of research and clinical attention. However, few empirical studies have addressed this topic using art-making as a tool of emotion expression. This study explores the differences in brain mechanism during the process of expressing anger between patients with schizophrenia and healthy participants using pictographic psychological techniques. We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to fully detect changes in frontal cortex activity among participants in two groups—schizophrenia and healthy—during the process of experiencing and expressing anger. The results showed that there were no differences in the experience of anger between the two groups. In the process of anger expression, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, frontal pole, and other regions showed significant negative activation among patients with schizophrenia, which was significantly different from that of the healthy group. There were significant differences between patients with schizophrenia and the healthy group in the drawing features, drawing contents, and the ability to describe the contents of their drawings. Moreover, the effect size of the latter was greater than those of the former two. In terms of emotion expression, the drawing data and brain activation data were significantly correlated in each group; however, the correlation patterns differed between groups.