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PubMed2001

Spontaneous facial expressivity in children with acquired brain injury.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate spontaneous facial behavior during social interaction in children with acquired brain injury (ABI), and to explore possible links between ABI, facial expressivity, and caregiver-reported social competence. DESIGN: Between-group comparisons using t tests, within-group comparisons using correlational analyses, correlational analyses of independent variables and outcome measures. PARTICIPANTS: Sixteen school-aged children with ABI and 32 normally developing children of comparable age and gender. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Aspects of facial expressivity derived from coding scheme designed for this study. RESULTS: Children with ABI were less expressive overall and tended to shift expressions less often than normally developing children. Several measures of expressivity were correlated with measures of social competence. CONCLUSIONS: Brain injury inhibits production of some aspects of spontaneous facial expression. Results are suggestive of links between facial behavior and social skills.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2001

Categorical perception of facial expressions by 7-month-old infants.

Recent research indicates that adults show categorical perception of facial expressions of emotion. It is not known whether this is a basic characteristic of perception that is present from the earliest weeks of life, or whether it is one that emerges more gradually with experience in perceiving and interpreting expressions. We report two experiments designed to investigate whether young infants, like adults, show categorical perception of facial expressions. 7-month-old infants were shown photographic quality continua of interpolated (morphed) facial expressions derived from two prototypes of fear and happiness. In the first experiment, we used a visual-preference technique to identify the infants' category boundary between happiness and fear. In the second experiment, we used a combined familiarisation-visual-preference technique to compare infants' discrimination of pairs of expressions that were equally physically different but that did or did not cross the emotion-category boundary. The results suggest that 7-month-old infants (i) show evidence of categorical perception of facial expressions of emotion, and (ii) show persistent interest in looking at fearful expressions.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1999

Misinterpretation of facial expression: a cross-cultural study.

Accurately recognizing facial emotional expressions is important in psychiatrist-versus-patient interactions. This might be difficult when the physician and patients are from different cultures. More than two decades of research on facial expressions have documented the universality of the emotions of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. In contrast, some research data supported the concept that there are significant cultural differences in the judgment of emotion. In this pilot study, the recognition of emotional facial expressions in 123 Japanese subjects was evaluated using the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expression of Emotion (JACFEE) photos. The results indicated that Japanese subjects experienced difficulties in recognizing some emotional facial expressions and misunderstood others as depicted by the posers, when compared to previous studies using American subjects. Interestingly, the sex and cultural background of the poser did not appear to influence the accuracy of recognition. The data suggest that in this young Japanese sample, judgment of certain emotional facial expressions was significantly different from the Americans. Further exploration in this area is warranted due to its importance in cross-cultural clinician-patient interactions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Organization of the central control of muscles of facial expression in man.

Surface EMGs were recorded simultaneously from ipsilateral pairs of facial muscles while subjects made three different common facial expressions: the smile, a sad expression and an expression of horror, and three contrived facial expressions. Central peaks were found in the cross-correlograms of EMG activity recorded from the orbicularis oculi and zygomaticus major during smiling, the corrugator and depressor anguli oris during the sad look and the frontalis and mentalis during the horror look. The size of the central peak was significantly greater between the orbicularis oculi and zygomaticus major during smiling. It is concluded that co-contraction of facial muscles during some facial expressions are accompanied by the presence of common synaptic drive to the motoneurones supplying the muscles involved. Central peaks were found in the cross-correlograms of EMG activity recorded from the frontalis and depressor anguli oris during a contrived expression. However, no central peaks were found in the cross-correlograms of EMG activity recorded from the frontalis and orbicularis oculi or from the frontalis and zygomaticus major during the other two contrived expressions. It is concluded that a common synaptic drive is not present between all possible facial muscle pairs and suggests a functional role for the synergy. The origin of the common drive is discussed. It is concluded that activity in branches of common stem last-order presynaptic input fibres to motoneurones innervating the different facial muscles and presynaptic synchronization of input activity to the different motoneurone pools is involved. The former probably contributes more to the drive to the orbicularis oculi and zygomaticus major during smiling, while the latter is probably more prevalent in the corrugator and depressor anguli oris during the sad look, the frontalis and mentalis during the horror look and the frontalis and depressor anguli oris during one of the contrived expressions. The strength of common synaptic drive is inversely related to the degree of separate control that can be exhibited by the facial muscles involved.

Electrodes↗
PubMed1997

Accurate encoding and decoding of emotional facial expressions in schizophrenia.

This is a study of the encoding and decoding of emotional facial expressions by people diagnosed as schizophrenic. The results of most previous investigations have shown that schizophrenics are worse than other psychiatric and normal comparison groups at adopting and recognizing facial expressions of emotion. This study is the first in which both abilities were tested within the same group of outpatient subjects. In contrast to earlier findings, the results of this study indicate that this group of schizophrenics was equally proficient, as compared with unipolar depressive and normal medical control subjects, in the encoding and decoding of facial expressions of anger, sadness, fear, happiness, disgust, and surprise. Encoding and decoding responses in all three groups were largely unrelated. Some of the potential explanatory factors for these unusual findings include the older age of this sample and the use of a rating procedure in the decoding task that is more similar to the nature of decoding decisions made in social situations than those typically used by other investigators. The general conclusion that schizophrenics are deficient relative to comparison groups in the encoding and decoding of emotional facial expressions is not supported by these results.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2004

The amygdala processes the emotional significance of facial expressions: an fMRI investigation using the interaction between expression and face direction.

Neuroimaging studies have shown activity in the amygdala in response to facial expressions of emotion, but the specific role of the amygdala remains unknown. We hypothesized that the amygdala is involved in emotional but not basic sensory processing for facial expressions. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated the face directions of emotional expressions in the unilateral visual fields; this manipulation made it possible to alter the emotional significance of the facial expression for the observer without affecting the physical features of the expression. We presented angry/neutral expressions looking toward/away from the subject and depicted brain activity using fMRI. After the image acquisitions, the subject's experience of negative emotion when perceiving each stimulus was also investigated. The left amygdala showed the interaction between emotional expression and face direction, indicating higher activity for angry expressions looking toward the subjects than angry expressions looking away from them. The experienced emotion showed the corresponding interaction. Regression analysis showed a positive relation between the left amygdala activity and experienced emotion. These results suggest that the amygdala is involved in emotional but not visuoperceptual processing for emotional facial expressions, which specifically includes the decoding of emotional significance and elicitation of one's own emotions corresponding to that significance.

Affect↗
PubMed2004

Perception of facial expressions of emotion in bipolar disorder.

OBJECTIVES: Some studies have reported deficits in the perception of facial expressions among depressed individuals compared with healthy controls, while others have reported negative biases in expression perception. We examined whether altered perception of emotion reflects an underlying trait-like effect in affective disorder by examining facial expression perception in euthymic bipolar patients. METHODS: Sensitivity to six different facial expressions, as well as accuracy of emotion recognition, was examined among 17 euthymic bipolar patients and 17 healthy controls using an interactive computer program. RESULTS: No differences were found between euthymic bipolar patients and controls in terms of sensitivity to any particular emotion. Although initial analysis of the data suggested impairment in the recognition of fear among the patients, identification of this emotion was not relatively impaired compared with that of the other emotions. CONCLUSIONS: The study did not find any conclusive evidence for trait-like deficits in the perception of facially conveyed emotions in bipolar disorder. Altered perception of facial expressions that has been found to accompany depressed mood may instead reflect mood-congruent biases.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Labeling and discrimination of facial expressions by aggressive and nonaggressive men with mental retardation.

Researchers have demonstrated that people with mental retardation have deficits in processing facial expressions of emotion. The ability of 18 aggressive and 21 nonaggressive men with borderline to moderate mental retardation to label and discriminate facial expressions was investigated. Although results did not support the hypothesis that aggressive participants would have greater difficulty with emotion labeling and discrimination compared to their nonaggressive peers, they do suggest that aggressive individuals may have a negative emotional bias for facial expressions that are ambiguous to them. Results further suggest that adults with mental retardation are not able to label the six basic facial expressions with equivalent accuracy and provide evidence for the salience of the mouth when labeling and discriminating facial expressions.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Emotional facial expressions at the onset of temporal lobe seizures: observations on scalp and intracranial EEG recordings.

The initial facial expressions of 195 complex partial seizures of 98 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy were reviewed in relation to the laterality and focality of electroencephalographic (EEG) seizure origin. A neutral expression was observed most often (71) followed in frequency by expressions of disgust (13), happiness (7) and sadness (7). There was no expression of anger, surprise and fear. No correlation was found between the type of facial expression and the side of seizure origin. However, among 27 patients examined by means of intracranial EEG recordings, it was evident that a disgust expression occurred with oro-alimentary automatisms at the beginning of mesial temporal lobe seizures, whereas a happy one occurred without oro-alimentary automatisms at the beginning of lateral temporal lobe seizures. Although the facial expressions were not always related to the concurrent ictal emotion, it appeared that the majority of the patients with the disgust expression had autonomic features, while those of the happy/sad expression had psychic/sensory ones. It was concluded that (1) a disgust expression occurs as an indirect consequence of "crude sensation," while a happy/sad expression occurs as a direct consequence of "elaborate mental state" (Jackson) and (2) facial expressions must be reviewed in relation to focality rather than laterality in temporal lobe seizures.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Subject independent facial expression recognition with robust face detection using a convolutional neural network.

Reliable detection of ordinary facial expressions (e.g. smile) despite the variability among individuals as well as face appearance is an important step toward the realization of perceptual user interface with autonomous perception of persons. We describe a rule-based algorithm for robust facial expression recognition combined with robust face detection using a convolutional neural network. In this study, we address the problem of subject independence as well as translation, rotation, and scale invariance in the recognition of facial expression. The result shows reliable detection of smiles with recognition rate of 97.6% for 5600 still images of more than 10 subjects. The proposed algorithm demonstrated the ability to discriminate smiling from talking based on the saliency score obtained from voting visual cues. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first facial expression recognition model with the property of subject independence combined with robustness to variability in facial appearance.

Discrimination, Psychological↗
PubMed1980

Influence of facial expressions on the classical conditioning of fear.

Previous research has demonstrated that particular facial expressions more readily acquire excitatory strength when paired with a congruent unconditioned stimulus than when paired with an incongruent outcome. The present study extends these findings on the excitatory and inhibitory role of facial expressions by demonstrating that particular facial expressions (fear and happy), when paired with a neutral cue (tone), can influence conditioning to the neutral conditioned stimulus (CS). It was found that subjects who had a fear expression paired with the neutral CS responded more to the fear expression than to the neutral CS, whereas subjects who had a happy expression paired with the neutral CS responded more to the neutral cue than to the happy expression. These findings strongly support predictions from "overshadowing" or "blocking" models of classical conditioning.

Arousal↗
PubMed2004

Maternal personality and infants' neural and visual responsivity to facial expressions of emotion.

BACKGROUND: Recent investigations suggest that experience plays an important role in the development of face processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential role of experience in the development of the ability to process facial expressions of emotion. METHOD: We examined the potential role of experience indirectly by investigating the relationship between the emotional environment provided by mothers (as indexed by affective measures of their personality) and 7-month-olds' processing of emotional expressions (as indexed by visual attention and event-related potentials [ERPs]). RESULTS: For positive emotion, infants with highly positive mothers looked longer at fearful than happy expressions, and a subset of these infants who themselves also scored highly on positive temperament showed a larger negative central (Nc) component in the ERP to fearful than happy faces. For negative emotion, there were no detectable influences of maternal personality, although very fearful infants showed a larger Nc to fearful than happy expressions over the right hemisphere. CONCLUSION: To the extent that these variations in maternal disposition reflect variations in their expression of positive facial expressions, these results suggest that the emotional environment experienced by infants contributes to the development of their responses to facial expressions.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Facial expressive cues in person perception.

The effect of facial expressions on estimates of the likelihood that a person will again commit an offense for which he has been arrested was studied. Such information did not affect estimates of 34 male and 36 female undergraduates as much as did the objective information provided about the offense. The results suggest directions for research on the role of facial expressions in interpersonal judgments.

Criminal Psychology↗
PubMed1997

Enhancing sensitivity to facial expression of pain.

Clinicians have long appreciated the information communicated by a patient's facial expression. Advances in the measurement of facial movements, using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) have allowed for identification of a universal expression of pain, which is primarily encoded in four facial movements. While the FACS provides a rigorous assessment of facial expression, the time required to learn the system and to analyze the facial expression by use of slow motion video recording, makes its use impractical in the clinical setting. The purpose of this research was to examine whether exposure to a brief training procedure, based on orienting subjects to the four facial movements, would increase sensitivity to pain communicated by facial expression. Seventy-five occupational and physical therapy student volunteers were randomly assigned to training or control groups. The trained group was exposed to a 30-min training session. Both groups were then asked to rate a videotape of patients undergoing assessment of a painful shoulder and rate the amount of discomfort the patients appeared to be experiencing. Analyses indicated that the trained group was significantly more sensitive to subtle facial movements associated with low levels of pain. Relative to the patients' ratings, there was a tendency for raters to underestimate pain particularly when these were at a high level. The findings lend hope to the feasibility of developing a tool which would be clinically useful though this may be more difficult for observers judging more complex facial expressions associated with high levels of pain.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

What is a nice smile like that doing in a place like this? Automatic affective responses to environments influence the recognition of facial expressions.

An affective priming paradigm with pictures of environmental scenes and facial expressions as primes and targets, respectively, was employed in order to investigate the role of natural (e.g., vegetation) and built elements (e.g., buildings) in eliciting rapid affective responses. In Experiment 1, images of environmental scenes were digitally manipulated to make continua of priming pictures with a gradual increase of natural elements (and a decrease of built elements). The primes were followed by presentations of facial expressions of happiness and disgust as to-be-recognized target stimuli. The recognition times of happy faces decreased and the recognition times of disgusted faces increased as the quantity of natural/built material present in the primes increased/decreased. The physical changes also influenced the evaluated restorativeness and affective valence of the primes. In Experiment 2, the primes used in Experiment 1 were manipulated in such a way that they were void of any recognizable natural or built elements but contained either similar colours or similar shapes as primes in Experiment 1. This time the results showed no effect of priming. These results were interpreted to give support for a view that the priming effect by environmental pictures is due to the primes representing environmental scenes and not due to the presence of certain low-level colour or shape information in the primes. In all, the present results provide evidence that perception of environmental scenes elicits automatic affective responses and influences recognition of facial expressions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Facial expression megamix: tests of dimensional and category accounts of emotion recognition.

We report four experiments investigating the perception of photographic quality continua of interpolated ('morphed') facial expressions derived from prototypes of the 6 emotions in the Ekman and Friesen (1976) series (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust and anger). In Experiment 1, morphed images made from all possible pairwise combinations of expressions were presented in random order; subjects identified these as belonging to distinct expression categories corresponding to the prototypes at each end of the relevant continuum. This result was replicated in Experiment 2, which also included morphs made from a prototype with a neutral expression, and allowed 'neutral' as a response category. These findings are inconsistent with the view that facial expressions are recognised by locating them along two underlying dimensions, since such a view predicts that at least some transitions between categories should involve neutral regions or identification as a different emotion. Instead, they suggest that facial expressions of basic emotions are recognised by their fit to discrete categories. Experiment 3 used continua involving 6 emotions to demonstrate best discrimination of pairs of stimuli falling across category boundaries; this provides further evidence of categorical perception of facial expressions of emotion. However, in both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, reaction time data showed that increasing distance from the prototype had a definite cost on ability to identify emotion in the resulting morphed face. Moreover, Experiment 4 showed that subjects had some insight into which emotions were blended to create specific morphed images. Hence, categorical perception effects were found even though subjects were sensitive to physical properties of these morphed facial expressions. We suggest that rapid classification of prototypes and better across boundary discriminability reflect the underlying organisation of human categorisation abilities.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Alexithymia and the recognition of facial expressions of emotion.

Slides of photographs depicting posed facial expressions of nine different emotions were presented to 131 females and 85 males who were asked to identify the emotion(s) being experienced by the person in each photograph. Subjects were then administered the 20-item version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale; the 33rd and 66th percentiles were used to categorize subjects into high, moderate, and low alexithymia groups. Results showed that the high alexithymia group was significantly less able to recognize facial expressions of emotions than the low alexithymia group. There was no significant effect for gender on the ability to recognize facial emotions. The results suggest the presence of deficits in the perception of nonverbal emotion in alexithymia.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Decoding of emotion through facial expression, prosody and verbal content in children and adolescents with Asperger's syndrome.

This study examined differences in the ability to decode emotion through facial expression, prosody, and verbal content between 14 children with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) and 16 typically developing peers. The ability to decode emotion was measured by the Perception of Emotion Test (POET), which portrayed the emotions of happy, angry, sad, and neutral among the modalities of static and dynamic facial expression, prosody, verbal content, and all modalities combined. Results revealed that children with AS had more difficulty identifying emotions through static facial expression, dynamic facial expression, and prosody than typically developing children. Results are discussed in relationship to an over-reliance on verbal content as a compensatory strategy in social interactions. Treatment implications for individuals with AS are also discussed.

Adolescent↗