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PubMed2005

Facial emotion recognition in trait anxiety.

The study investigated the relationship between recognition of emotional facial expressions and trait anxiety. A nonclinical sample of 19 participants with high-trait anxiety was selected, using the trait version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and compared with a sample of 20 participants with low-trait anxiety on a facial expression recognition task. Visual stimuli were 42 faces, representing seven emotional expressions: anger, sadness, happiness, fear, surprise, disgust and neutral. Participants had to identify the emotion portrayed by each face. Results showed that participants with high-trait anxiety recognized fear faces significantly better while the two groups did not differ in recognition of other facial expressions.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Three-dimensional quantification of "still" points during normal facial movement.

This study investigated the 3-dimensional displacement of points on the face that were thought to be still during facial movement. These points are currently used to measure displacement of moving facial regions during assessment of normal facial movement and treatment interventions following facial nerve paralysis. It is, however, unknown if these places are "still" points. The Expert Vision Motion Analysis System was used to collect and analyze data on 42 normal subjects during facial movement. No point on the face was found to be still during facial expression. However, several points were present with very small movements for each individual expression. These were termed "reference" points. These small movements may be the result of system noise, physiological tremor, skin movement, or head-holder movement during facial expressions. Future studies of the displacement of the markers during facial movement in both normal subjects and patients with facial nerve paralysis may take into account the contribution of the "reference" point displacements to the overall facial movement.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Anxiety modulates the degree of attentive resources required to process emotional faces.

The present study contributes to the ongoing debate over the extent to which attentive resources are required for emotion perception. Although fearful facial expressions are strong competitors for attention, we predict that the magnitude of this effect may be modulated by anxiety. To test this hypothesis, healthy volunteers who varied in their self-reported levels of trait and state anxiety underwent an attentional blink task. Both fearful and happy facial expressions were subject to a strong attentional blink effect for low-anxious individuals. For those reporting high anxiety, a blink occurred for both fearful and happy facial expressions, but the magnitude of the attentional blink was significantly reduced for the fearful expressions. This supports the proposals that emotion perception is not fully automatic and that anxiety is related to a reduced ability to inhibit the processing of threat-related stimuli. Thus, individual differences in self-reported anxiety are an important determinant of the attentional control of emotional processing.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

An experimental study of emotional responding in women with posttraumatic stress disorder related to interpersonal violence.

Although posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is defined by the experience of intense negative emotions and emotional numbing (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), empirical study of emotional responding in PTSD has been limited. This study examined emotional responding among women with and without PTSD to positive and negative film stimuli across self-reported experience, facial expression, and written expression. Consistent with previous findings, no evidence for generalized numbing was found. In general, women with PTSD exhibited higher levels of negative activation and expressed more negative emotion words to both positive and negative film stimuli, whereas no group differences emerged in facial expressivity. Results are interpreted within the context of the current literature on emotional deficits associated with PTSD.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Basal testosterone moderates responses to anger faces in humans.

Prior research [van Honk J, Tuiten A, Verbaten R, van den Hout M, Koppeschaar H, Thijssen J, de Haan E. Correlations among salivary testosterone, mood, and selective attention to threat in humans. Horm Behav 1999;36(1):17-24; van Honk J, Tuiten A, Hermans E, Putman P, Koppeschaar H, Thijssen J, Verbaten R, van Doornen L. A single administration of testosterone induces cardiac accelerative responses to angry faces in healthy young women. Behav Neurosci 2001;115(1):238-42.] showed relationships in humans between testosterone (T) and vigilance to facial expressions of anger, which are considered signals of an impending dominance challenge. In Study 1, we used a differential implicit learning task (DILT) (see [Schultheiss OC, Pang JS, Torges CM, Wirth MM, Treynor W. Perceived facial expressions of emotion as motivational incentives: evidence from a differential implicit learning paradigm. Emotion 2005;5(1):41-54.]) to investigate the degree to which subjects find anger faces reinforcing. In the DILT, separate sequences of actions were paired with presentations of anger faces, neutral faces or a blank screen. After training, performance on the three sequences was measured in the absence of face stimuli. Saliva was collected for T measurement. Higher T predicted better learning on sequences paired with sub-threshold (i.e., presented too fast for conscious awareness) anger faces, suggesting that T is related to reinforcing qualities of these faces. In Study 2, we examined whether morning or afternoon T better predicted attention and vigilance to anger faces. Participants were tested at 9:00 and 15:00. At each session, saliva was collected for T measurement, and participants completed a Stroop task and a dot-probe task [Mogg K, Bradley BP, Hallowell N. Attentional bias to threat: roles of trait anxiety, stressful events, and awareness. Q J Exp Psychol A 1994;47(4):841-64.] with facial expression stimuli. Morning (peak) T was a better predictor of responses to anger faces than afternoon T. Morning T predicted greater Stroop-like interference to sub-threshold anger faces, as well as attentional orienting away from sub-threshold anger faces. These effects were not present for joy faces or for supraliminal anger faces. T may generally decrease aversion to threatening stimuli, and/or may specifically facilitate approach towards signals of dominance challenge.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1987

Pain expression in neonates: facial action and cry.

Pain expression in neonates instigated by heel-lance for blood sampling purposes was systematically described using measures of facial expression and cry and compared across sleep/waking states and sex. From gate-control theory it was hypothesized that pain behavior would vary with the ongoing functional state of the infant, rather than solely reflecting tissue insult. Awake-alert but inactive infants responded with the most facial activity, consistent with current views that infants in this state are most receptive to environmental stimulation. Infants in quiet sleep showed the least facial reaction and the longest latency to cry. Fundamental frequency of cry was not related to sleep/waking state. This suggested that findings from the cry literature on qualities of pain cry as a reflection of nervous system 'stress', in unwell newborns, do not generalize directly to healthy infants as a function of state. Sex differences were apparent in speed of response, with boys showing shorter time to cry and to display facial action following heel-lance. The findings of facial action variation across sleep/waking state were interpreted as indicating that the biological and behavioral context of pain events affects behavioral expression, even at the earliest time developmentally, before the opportunity for learned response patterns occurs. Issues raised by the study include the importance of using measurement techniques which are independent of preconceived categories of affective response.

Crying↗

PubMed2003

Effects of diazepam on facial emotion recognition.

OBJECTIVE: There have been few studies of the pharmacologic modulation of facial emotion recognition. The present study aimed to replicate and extend the finding that recognition of facial anger was selectively impaired by diazepam. The hypothesis was that, in comparison with placebo, diazepam would impair the recognition of facial anger in healthy volunteers, but not the recognition of 5 other basic emotions: happiness, surprise, fear, sadness and disgust. DESIGN: A randomized, counterbalanced, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects comparison of diazepam with placebo. SETTING: A university psychopharmacology research unit. PARTICIPANTS: Healthy male (n = 6) and female (n = 22) volunteers, aged 18-45 years. PROCEDURES: Subjects were tested on 2 tasks following the administration of diazepam, 15 mg, and placebo on separate occasions. In the first "multimorph" task, images of facial expressions were morphed to produce continua between the neutral and full expressions of 6 basic emotions. Accuracy and identification thresholds were assessed for stimuli in which the intensity of expression gradually increased. In the second "emotional hexagon" task, facial expressions were morphed between pairs of emotions. Single images were presented, and accuracy and speed of response were assessed. RESULTS: Diazepam produced broad impairments in response accuracy, recognition thresholds and response speed on the facial emotion tasks that were not limited to angry expressions. CONCLUSIONS: The present study found that diazepam, 15 mg, impaired facial emotion recognition, but not selectively. In the emotional hexagon task, a reaction-time analysis suggested that the identification of facial anger might be differentially sensitive to variations in stimulus duration, complicating the interpretation of this paradigm.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Effect of task conditions on brain responses to threatening faces in social phobics: an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to identify brain activation to socially threatening stimuli in social phobic subjects during different experimental conditions. METHODS: With event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, brain activation to photographs and schematic pictures depicting angry or neutral facial expressions was measured in social phobic subjects and healthy control subjects, while subjects assessed either emotional expression (angry vs. neutral; explicit task) or picture type (photographic vs. schematic; implicit task). RESULTS: Compared with control subjects, phobics showed greater responses to angry than to neutral photographic faces in the insula regardless of task, whereas amygdala, parahippocampal gyrus, and extrastriate visual cortex were more strongly activated only during the implicit task. Phobics, in contrast to control subjects, showed similar activation patterns during both tasks. For schematic angry versus neutral faces, activation of insula and extrastriate visual cortex was found in phobics, but not in control subjects, during both tasks. CONCLUSIONS: Differences between social phobics and control subjects in brain responses to socially threatening faces are most pronounced when facial expression is task-irrelevant. Phobics intensively process angry (photographic as well as schematic) facial expressions, regardless of whether this is required. The insula plays a unique role in the processing of threat signals by social phobics.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Recognition of facial emotion in nine individuals with bilateral amygdala damage.

Findings from several case studies have shown that bilateral amygdala damage impairs recognition of emotions in facial expressions, especially fear. However, one study did not find such an impairment, and, in general, comparison across studies has been made difficult because of the different stimuli and tasks employed. In a collaborative study to facilitate such comparisons, we report here the recognition of emotional facial expressions in nine subjects with bilateral amygdala damage, using a sensitive and quantitative assessment. Compared to controls, the subjects as a group were significantly impaired in recognizing fear, although individual performances ranged from severely impaired to essentially normal. Most subjects were impaired on several negative emotions in addition to fear, but no subject was impaired in recognizing happy expressions. An analysis of response consistency showed that impaired recognition of fear could not be attributed simply to mistaking fear for another emotion. While it remains unclear why some subjects with amygdala damage included here are not impaired on our task, the results overall are consistent with the idea that the amygdala plays an important role in triggering knowledge related to threat and danger signaled by facial expressions.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Motion and emotion: a novel approach to the study of face processing by young autistic children.

The specificity of facial processing impairment in autistic children, particularly in the domain of emotion, is still debated. The aim of our study was to assess the influence of motion on facial expression recognition in young autistic children. Thirteen autistic children (M age: 69.38 months) were matched for gender and developmental level with a control group of 13 normal children (M age: 40.53 months). They were compared on their ability to match videotaped "still," "dynamic," and "strobe" emotional and nonemotional facial expressions with photographs. Results indicate that children with autism do not perform significantly worse than their controls in any of our experimental conditions. Compared to previous studies showing lower performance in autistic than in control children when presented with static faces, our data suggest that slow dynamic presentations facilitate facial expression recognition by autistic children. This result could be of interest to parents and specialists involved in education and reeducation of these children.

Attention↗

PubMed1979

The definition of the face.

There is no generally agreed definition of the human and subhuman face. For primatologists the definition forwarded by PERKNOPF (1957) is most agreeable: all structures of the head which can be seen from en face belong to the human face. The face is a combination of structures heterogeneous in both anatomy and function (forehead, eyes, mouth, pelage, etc.). They are different in qualities (e.g., color of the skin or the hair) and quantities as well (length of the jaw or the hairs of the mane). Despite the heterogeneity in form and function, the face as a whole appears as a unit, because in facial expressions there is always more than one structure involved. Blage, etc.). They are different in qualities (e.g., color of the skin or the hair) and quantities as well (length of the jaw or the hairs of the mane). Despite the heterogeneity in form and function, the face as a whole appears as a unit, because in facial expressions there is always more than one structure involved. Blage, etc.). They are different in qualities (e.g., color of the skin or the hair) and quantities as well (length of the jaw or the hairs of the mane). Despite the heterogeneity in form and function, the face as a whole appears as a unit, because in facial expressions there is always more than one structure involved. Because of the frontally oriented eyes and the stereoscopic vision, the facial structures are situated on the head so that they can be seen from in front. This is the reason why primate display mainly face to face. The concepts of the internal and external face are justified only in terms of topographical anatomy.

Adipose Tissue↗

PubMed2003

Perception of dyadic relationship and emotional states in patients with affective disorder.

BACKGROUND: Previous research has shown that interpersonal processes play a significant role in the development and maintenance of affective disorders. In this study, this claim was further investigated by comparing the perception of the dyadic relationship and judgment of other's emotions in affective disorder patients. METHOD: The sample included 39 couples (n=39 couples) with one of the partners suffering from an affective disorder and currently either in an acute or remitted depressive state. All participants completed four instruments, measuring the perceived quality of the dyadic relationship and the perception of other's emotions as reflected by judgments of facial expressions line drawings. RESULTS: While the level of marital satisfaction was found to be lower in the acute than in the remitted group both for ill partners and their spouses, spouses in both the acute and remitted group tended to be more critical of their ill partners. Patients who were depressed judged facial expressions significantly less positively than did remitted patients. Judgments of negative emotions were highly correlated between partners in the acute group, but uncorrelated in the remitted group. Acutely depressed patients were less sensitive to invitation than remitted patients, while their spouses displayed the opposite pattern. CONCLUSION: The present results shed further light on the interpersonal dynamics between depressed patients and their spouses by underscoring differences between couples with a remitted vs. acutely depressed partner in their perception of the dyadic unit and their judgments of facial emotions. LIMITATIONS: Longitudinal research is needed, in which the same patients are tested during periods of remission and acute episodes, as well as research investigating the role of patient gender in the perception of facial expressions of emotions.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Empathy for positive and negative emotions in the gustatory cortex.

Anterior insula and adjacent frontal operculum (hereafter referred to as IFO) are active during exposure to tastants/odorants (particularly disgusting ones), and during the viewing of disgusted facial expressions. Together with lesion data, the IFO has thus been proposed to be crucial in processing disgust-related stimuli. Here, we examined IFO involvement in the processing of other people's gustatory emotions more generally by exposing participants to food-related disgusted, pleased and neutral facial expressions during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We then exposed participants to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral tastants for the purpose of mapping their gustatory IFO. Finally, we associated participants' self reported empathy (measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, IRI) with their IFO activation during the witnessing of others' gustatory emotions. We show that participants' empathy scores were predictive of their gustatory IFO activation while witnessing both the pleased and disgusted facial expression of others. While the IFO has been implicated in the processing of negative emotions of others and empathy for negative experiences like pain, our finding extends this concept to empathy for intense positive feelings, and provides empirical support for the view that the IFO contributes to empathy by mapping the bodily feelings of others onto the internal bodily states of the observer, in agreement with the putative interoceptive function of the IFO.

Emotions↗

PubMed2003

Recognition of emotion from inverted schematic drawings of faces.

The present study investigated whether facial expressions of emotion are recognized holistically, i.e., all at once as an entire unit, as faces are or featurally as other nonface stimuli. Evidence for holistic processing of faces comes from a reliable decrement in recognition performance when faces are presented inverted rather than upright. If emotion is recognized holistically, then recognition of facial expressions of emotion should be impaired by inversion. To test this, participants were shown schematic drawings of faces showing one of six emotions (surprise, sadness, anger, happiness, disgust, and fear) in either an upright or inverted orientation and were asked to indicate the emotion depicted. Participants were more accurate in the upright than in the inverted orientation, providing evidence in support of holistic recognition of facial emotion. Because recognition of facial expressions of emotion is important in social relationships, this research may have implications for treatment of some social disorders.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Processing emotional expression and facial identity in schizophrenia.

Previous studies showed that schizophrenic patients have a deficit in facial information processing. The purpose of the present study was to test the abilities of patients with schizophrenia and normal controls in emotion and identity matching when these two dimensions were varied orthogonally. Subjects (20 schizophrenic patients and 20 controls) had to report if two faces had the same emotion or belonged to the same person. When the task concerned one type of information (i.e. emotion or identity), the other one was either constant (same person or same emotion) or changed (different person or different emotion). Schizophrenic patients performed worse than controls for both kinds of facial information. Their deficit was more important when the secondary factor was changed. In particular, they performed at chance level when they had to match one emotion expressed by two distinct persons. Finally, correlation analysis indicated that performance/deficit in identity and emotion matching co-varied and that in such tasks performance is negatively correlated with the severity of negative symptoms in patients. Schizophrenic patients present a generalised deficit for accessing facial information. A facial emotion and an identity-processing deficit are related to negative symptoms. Implications for face-recognition models are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Emotion processing in the visual and auditory domains by patients with Alzheimer's disease.

The ability to process emotional information was assessed in 42 individuals: 23 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 19 healthy elderly controls. Four tasks assessed the ability to recognize emotion in audiotaped voices, in drawings of emotional situations, and in videotaped vignettes displaying emotions in facial expression, gestures, and body movements. Hemispheric dominance for processing facial expressions of emotions was also examined. There were no consistent group differences in the ability to process emotion presented via the auditory domain (i.e., nonverbal sounds, such as crying or shrieking, and speech prosody). Controls were, however, significantly better than the AD patients in identifying emotions depicted in drawings of emotional situations and in videotaped scenes displaying faces, gestures, and body movements. These differences were maintained after statistically adjusting for the visuospatial abilities of the participants. After a statistical adjustment for abstraction ability, some of the tasks continued to differentiate the groups (e.g., the emotional drawings task, the videotaped displays of faces), but others did not. These results confirm and extend previous results indicating that AD patients do not have a primary deficit in the processing of emotion. They suggest that the difficulties of the AD patients in perceiving emotion are secondary to the cognitive impairments associated with AD.

Aged↗

PubMed2006

Antidepressant drug treatment modifies the neural processing of nonconscious threat cues.

BACKGROUND: The amygdala is believed to play a key role in processing emotionally salient, threat-relevant, events that require further online processing by cortical regions. Emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety have been associated with hyperactivity of the amygdala, but it is unknown whether antidepressant treatment directly affects amygdala responses to emotionally significant information. METHODS: The current study assessed the effects of 7 days administration of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), citalopram, on amygdala responses to masked presentations of fearful and happy facial expressions in never-depressed volunteers using blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging. A double-blind, between-groups design was used with volunteers randomized to 20 mg/day citalopram versus placebo. RESULTS: Volunteers receiving citalopram showed decreased amygdala responses to masked presentations of threat compared with those receiving placebo. Citalopram also reduced responses within the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) specifically during the fear-relevant stimuli. These neural differences were accompanied by decreased recognition of fearful facial expressions assessed after the scan. By contrast, there was no effect of citalopram on the neural or behavioral response to the happy facial expressions. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest a direct effect of serotonin potentiation on amygdala response to threat-relevant stimuli in humans. Such effects may be important in the therapeutic actions of antidepressants in depression and anxiety.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

Pain response in Chinese and non-Chinese Canadian infants: is there a difference?

This study was designed to compare the behavioural pain responses of 2-month-old Canadian-born Chinese babies receiving a routine immunization to those of non-Chinese infants in similar situations. Two groups of 26 infants were obtained from a pediatric clinic held by a Chinese pediatrician and a suburban pediatric practice of a large Canadian city. Facial expression using the Neonatal Facial Coding System (Grunau, R.V.E., Craig, K.D., 1987. Pain expression in neonates: facial action and cry. Pain, 28, 395-410.) and cry using the Fast Fourier Transform were measured during 30 s following the insertion of the needle. Acculturation in Chinese mothers, circadian rhythm, gender, height and weight in infants were assessed. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed significant differences in pain response between these two groups with the Chinese babies showing greater response. No significant effect of circadian rhythm and gender was identified. These results suggest the presence of differences in acute pain response in relation to culture by at least 2 months of age.

Adult↗