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Facial expression recognition in Williams syndrome.

Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) excel in face recognition and show both a remarkable concern for social stimuli and a linguistic capacity for, in particular, emotionally referenced language. The animated full facial expression comprehension test (AFFECT), a new test of emotional expression perception, was used to compare participants with WS with both chronological and mental age-matched controls. It was found that expression recognition in WS was worse than that of chronologically age-matched controls but indistinguishable from that of mental age controls. Different processing strategies are thought to underlie the similar performance of individuals with WS and mental age controls. The expression recognition performance of individuals with WS did not correlate with age, but was instead found to correlate with IQ. This is compared to earlier findings, replicated here, that face recognition performance on the Benton test correlates with age and not IQ. The results of the Benton test have been explained in terms of individuals with WS being good at face recognition; since a piecemeal strategy can be used, this strategy is improved with practice which would explain the correlation with age. We propose that poor expression recognition of the individuals with WS is due to a lack of configural ability since changes in the configuration of the face are an important part of expressions. Furthermore, these reduced configural abilities may be due to abnormal neuronal development and are thus fixed from an early age.

Adolescent↗

Mood induction with facial expressions of emotion in patients with generalized anxiety disorder.

Patients with general anxiety disorder (GAD), anxiety prone subjects, and normal controls (n=30, N=90) were subjected to happy and sad mood induction conditions using facial expressions of emotion of varied intensity. Following mood induction, subjects were required to judge their mood state on two scales: the Positive and Negative Affect Scale and the Emotional Self Rating Scale. In general, the anxiety groups showed more sensitivity to the sad mood induction condition. However, the anxiety groups had a higher subjective rating for positive than negative emotions during the happy mood induction condition. These findings suggest the efficacy of the mood induction procedures in anxiety disorders.

Adult↗

Affective influences on startle in five-month-old infants: reactions to facial expressions of emotions.

Convergent methodologies from studies of fear-potentiated startle in animals and studies of affective modulation of reflex blinks in humans were adapted in order to investigate infants' sensitivity to affective information conveyed by facial expressions of emotion. While 5-month-old infants viewed photographic slides of faces posed in happy, neutral, or angry expressions, a brief acoustic noise burst was presented to elicit the blink component of human startle. Blink size was augmented during the viewing of angry expressions and reduced during happy expressions. Infants did not show marked changes in behavioral reactions to the positive, neutral, and negative slides, although motor activity was slightly reduced during negative slides. Results suggest that, by 5 months, infants react to affective information conveyed by unfamiliar human faces. Potential mechanisms mediating the influence of affective stimuli on reflex excitability are considered.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Age and social competence in preschoolers' decoding of facial expression.

This study examines the relationship between social competence and decoding of emotions in children aged between three and five years. Children were shown videotaped scenarios depicting emotional situations and were asked to choose which of three facial expressions, representing happiness, sadness and fear, would be most appropriate for the character in the situation. Children's level of social competence was assessed by a standardized questionnaire completed by their parents. Results showed that subjects with relatively higher social skills were better decoders than subjects with relatively lower social skills, and that decoding performance improved with age. The results are discussed in terms of the role of non-verbal behavioural skills in general social competence.

Child Development↗

Abnormal recognition of facial expression of emotions in depressed patients with major depression disorder and schizotypal personality disorder.

The aim of this paper is to study the recognition of facial expression of emotions in depressed patients with major depressive disorder (MD) and schizotypal personality disorder (STP). The pictures of sad, emotionally neutral, and happy faces followed by a masking stimulus were displayed for 80 msec on a computer screen randomly in the left or right hemifield of vision (LHF and RHF). The subjects had to respond by pressing a three position key. Multiple analysis of variance revealed that all depressed patients, relative to control subjects, made more errors in a task of recognition of facial affect. The characteristics of impairment of performance were found to be related to the nosology of depression. MD patients revealed significantly impaired recognition of negative (in LHF and in RHF) and positive (in LHF) facial emotions, as well as poorer recognition in the right hemisphere, and reduced hemispheric asymmetry. In remission, they showed statistically significant recovery of recognition function. STP patients were less impaired and showed slightly poorer recognition of sad (in RHF) and happy (in LHF) expressions. This group demonstrated significantly poor recognition of happy expressions, and more marked dysfunction of the left hemisphere. In remission, STP patients failed to improve in recognition of emotion. This suggests, that the features of emotion recognition in MD and STP groups reflect some differences in the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the affect-related dysfunction in these groups of depressed patients.

Adult↗

Geometry-driven photorealistic facial expression synthesis.

Expression mapping (also called performance driven animation) has been a popular method for generating facial animations. A shortcoming of this method is that it does not generate expression details such as the wrinkles due to skin deformations. In this paper, we provide a solution to this problem. We have developed a geometry-driven facial expression synthesis system. Given feature point positions (the geometry) of a facial expression, our system automatically synthesizes a corresponding expression image that includes photorealistic and natural looking expression details. Due to the difficulty of point tracking, the number of feature points required by the synthesis system is, in general, more than what is directly available from a performance sequence. We have developed a technique to infer the missing feature point motions from the tracked subset by using an example-based approach. Another application of our system is expression editing where the user drags feature points while the system interactively generates facial expressions with skin deformation details.

Algorithms↗

Interhemispheric cooperation for face recognition but not for affective facial expressions.

Interhemispheric cooperation can be indicated by enhanced performance when stimuli are presented to both visual fields relative to one visual field alone. This "bilateral gain" is seen for words but not pseudowords in lexical decision tasks, and has been attributed to the operation of interhemispheric cell assemblies that exist only for meaningful words with acquired cortical representations. Recently, a bilateral gain has been reported for famous but not unfamiliar faces in a face recognition task [Neuropsychologia 40 (2002) 1841]. In Experiment 1 of the present paper, participants performed familiarity decisions for faces that were presented to the left (LVF), the right (RVF), or to both visual fields (BVF). An advantage for BVF relative to both LVF and RVF stimuli was seen in reaction times (RTs) to famous faces, but this bilateral advantage was absent for unfamiliar faces. In Experiment 2, participants classified the expression (happy or neutral) of unfamiliar faces. No bilateral advantage was seen for expressions, although a right hemisphere superiority was seen in terms of higher accuracy for LVF and BVF trials relative to the RVF. Recognition of famous faces (but not of facial expressions) require access to acquired memory representations that may be instantiated via cortical cell assemblies, and it is suggested that interhemispheric cooperation depends on these acquired cortical representations.

Adolescent↗

Strong evidence for universals in facial expressions: a reply to Russell's mistaken critique.

J. A. Russell (1994) misrepresents what universality means, misinterprets the evidence from past studies, and fails to consider or report findings that disagree with his position. New data are introduced that decisively answer the central question that Russell raises about the use of a forced-choice format in many of the past studies. This article also shows that his many other qualms about other aspects of the design of the studies of literate cultures have no merit. Russell's critique of the preliterate cultures is inaccurate; he does not fully disclose what those who studied preliterate subjects did or what they concluded that they had found. Taking account of all of Russell's qualms, my analysis shows that the evidence from both literate and preliterate cultures is overwhelming in support of universals in facial expressions.

Cross-Cultural Comparison↗

Signal characteristics of spontaneous facial expressions: automatic movement in solitary and social smiles.

The assumption that the smile is an evolved facial display suggests that there may be universal features of smiling in addition to the basic facial configuration. We show that smiles include not only a stable configuration of features, but also temporally consistent movement patterns. In spontaneous smiles from two social contexts, duration of lip corner movement during the onset phase was independent of social context and the presence of other facial movements, including dampening. These additional movements produced variation in both peak and offset duration. Both onsets and offsets had dynamic properties similar to automatically controlled movements, with a consistent relation between maximum velocity and amplitude of lip corner movement in smiles from two distinct contexts. Despite the effects of individual and social factors on facial expression timing overall, consistency in onset and offset phases suggests that portions of the smile display are relatively stereotyped and may be automatically produced.

Adult↗

Voluntary facial expression and hemispheric asymmetry over the frontal cortex.

Brain activity was monitored while 36 participants produced facial configurations denoting anger, disgust, fear, joy, and sadness. EEG alpha power was analyzed during each facial pose, with facial conditions grouped according to the approach/withdrawal motivational model of emotion. This model suggests that "approach" emotions are associated with relatively greater left frontal brain activity whereas "withdrawal" emotions are associated with relatively greater right frontal brain activity. In the context of a bilateral decrease in activation, facial poses of emotions in the withdrawal condition resulted in relatively less left frontal activation in the lateral-frontal, midfrontal and frontal-temporal-central region, but not in the parietal region, as predicted. Findings in the approach condition were less consistently supportive of predictions of the approach/withdrawal model. Implications for the approach/withdrawal model and for the emotion eliciting potential of voluntary facial movement are discussed.

Adult↗

The facilitative effect of facial expression on the self-generation of emotion.

Twenty-seven female undergraduates completed three tasks: (1) feel four emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, peacefulness); (2) express these emotions, without trying to feel them; and (3) feel and express clearly these four emotions. During each trial subjects pressed a button to indicate when they had reached the required state, and the latency from emotion cue to button press was measured. Heart rate, skin conductance and EMG from four facial sites (brow, cheek, jaw and mouth) were recorded for 15 s before and after the button press and during a baseline period prior to each trial. Self-reports were obtained after each trial. Facial EMG and patterns of autonomic arousal differentiated among the four emotions within each task. Shorter self-generation latency in the Feel-and-Show versus the Feel condition indicated the facilitative effect of facial expression on the self-generation of emotion. Furthermore, the presence of autonomic changes and self-reported affect in the Show condition supports the sufficiency version of the facial feedback hypothesis. The self-generation method employed as an emotion elicitor was shown to reliably induce emotional reactions and is proposed as a useful technique for the elicitation of various emotional states in the laboratory.

Adult↗

[Part II: Recognising facial expressions].

In this second part, we address particularly the question of the neural mechanisms and structures involved in the recognition of facial emotional expressions that are crucial in social cognition. Emotion recognition in others can be critically impaired in some neurodegenerative and neurovascular diseases. That dysfunction sometimes correlated to disabling behavioural disorders and interpersonal communication impairment must be further understood. The results of a series of scalp and intracranial event related potential recordings, as well as recent advances in the literature, are reported. ERPs to facial emotional expressions were thus recorded in multiple subcortical and cortical areas in drug refractory epileptical patients implanted with depth electrodes. The roles of amygdala, insula and prefrontal cortex located at crossroads between perceptive analysis and emotional conceptual knowledge are particularly underlined. Altogether, these studies demonstrate that facial expressions are widely processed in space and time, some structures reacting very early and automatically, others providing a sustained reaction depending on the attention.

Amygdala↗

The influence of alcohol on judgement of facial expression of emotion.

Despite considerable research into the effects of alcohol on behaviour, there appears to be little information available about the influence of alcohol on interpersonal judgement. An experiment was carried out to test the hypothesis that alcohol would affect subjects' ability to judge facial expressions of emotion. Thirty male and 30 female normal social drinkers were allocated at random to high alcohol, low alcohol or placebo conditions and were shown photographs of faces displaying basic emotions. As predicted, subjects in the high alcohol condition made more errors and subjects in the low alcohol condition fewer errors than subjects in the placebo condition. Accuracy of judgement also varied significantly according to the sex of the subject and the category of emotion being judged. In particular, alcohol was associated with greater impairment of judgements of anger than of other emotions. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the association between alcohol and violence, and the use of social skills training with problem drinkers.

Adolescent↗

Covert processing of faces in prosopagnosia is restricted to facial expressions: evidence from cross-modal bias.

We present a single case study of a brain-damaged patient, AD, suffering from visual face and object agnosia, with impaired visual perception and preserved mental imagery. She is severely impaired in all aspects of overt recognition of faces as well as in covert recognition of familiar faces. She shows a complete loss of processing facial expressions in recognition as well as in matching tasks. Nevertheless, when presented with a task where face and voice expressions were presented concurrently, there was a clear impact of face expressions on her ratings of the voice. The cross-modal paradigm used here and validated previously with normal subjects (de Gelder & Vroomen, 1995, 2000), appears as a useful tool in investigating spared covert face processing in a neuropsychological perspective, especially with prosopagnosic patients. These findings are discussed against the background of different models of the covert recognition of face expressions.

Affect↗

Facial expression decoding in early Parkinson's disease.

The ability to derive emotional and non-emotional information from unfamiliar, static faces was evaluated in 21 adults with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and 21 healthy control subjects. Participants' sensitivity to emotional expressions was comprehensively assessed in tasks of discrimination, identification, and rating of five basic emotions: happiness, (pleasant) surprise, anger, disgust, and sadness. Subjects also discriminated and identified faces according to underlying phonemic ("facial speech") cues and completed a neuropsychological test battery. Results uncovered limited evidence that the processing of emotional faces differed between the two groups in our various conditions, adding to recent arguments that these skills are frequently intact in non-demented adults with PD [R. Adolphs, R. Schul, D. Tranel, Intact recognition of facial emotion in Parkinson's disease, Neuropsychology 12 (1998) 253-258]. Patients could also accurately interpret facial speech cues and discriminate the identity of unfamiliar faces in a normal manner. There were some indications that basal ganglia pathology in PD contributed to selective difficulties recognizing facial expressions of disgust, consistent with a growing literature on this topic. Collectively, findings argue that abnormalities for face processing are not a consistent or generalized feature of medicated adults with mild-moderate PD, prompting discussion of issues that may be contributing to heterogeneity within this literature. Our results imply a more limited role for the basal ganglia in the processing of emotion from static faces relative to speech prosody, for which the same PD patients exhibited pronounced deficits in a parallel set of tasks [M.D. Pell, C. Leonard, Processing emotional tone from speech in Parkinson's disease: a role for the basal ganglia, Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci. 3 (2003) 275-288]. These diverging patterns allow for the possibility that basal ganglia mechanisms are more engaged by temporally-encoded social information derived from cue sequences over time.

Aged↗