The forced-choice paradigm and the perception of facial expressions of emotion.

The view that certain facial expressions of emotion are universally agreed on has been challenged by studies showing that the forced-choice paradigm may have artificially forced agreement. This article addressed this methodological criticism by offering participants the opportunity to select a none of these terms are correct option from a list of emotion labels in a modified forced-choice paradigm. The results show that agreement on the emotion label for particular facial expressions is still greater than chance, that artifactual agreement on incorrect emotion labels is obviated, that participants select the none option when asked to judge a novel expression, and that adding 4 more emotion labels does not change the pattern of agreement reported in universality studies. Although the original forced-choice format may have been prone to artifactual agreement, the modified forced-choice format appears to remedy that problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Configural information in facial expression perception.

Composite facial expressions were prepared by aligning the top half of one expression (e.g., anger) with the bottom half of another (e.g., happiness). Experiment 1 shows that participants are slower to identify the expression in either half of these composite images relative to a "noncomposite" control condition in which the 2 halves are misaligned. This parallels the composite effect for facial identity (A. W. Young, D. Hellawell, & D. C. Hay, 1987), and like its identity counterpart, the effect is disrupted by inverting the stimuli (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 shows that no composite effect is found when the top and bottom sections contain different models' faces posing the same expression; this serves to exclude many nonconfigural interpretations of the composite effect (e.g., that composites are more "attention-grabbing" than noncomposites). Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrates that the composite effects for identity and expression operate independently of one another. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult attachment and the perception of facial expression of emotion.

Adult attachment orientation has been associated with specific patterns of emotion regulation. The present research examined the effects of attachment orientation on the perceptual processing of emotional stimuli. Experimental participants played computerized movies of faces that expressed happiness, sadness, and anger. Over the course of the movies, the facial expressions became neutral. Participants reported the frame at which the initial expression no longer appeared on the face. Under conditions of no distress (Study 1), fearfully attached individuals saw the offset of both happiness and anger earlier, and preoccupied and dismissive individuals later, than the securely attached individuals. Under conditions of distress (Study 2), insecurely attached individuals perceived the offset of negative facial expressions as occurring later than did the secure individuals, and fearfully attached individuals saw the offset later than either of the other insecure groups. The mechanisms underlying the effects are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hemispheric perception of emotional valence from facial expressions.

The authors previously reported that normal subjects are better at discriminating happy from neutral faces when the happy face is located to the viewer's right of the neutral face; conversely, discrimination of sad from neutral faces is better when the sad face is shown to the left, supporting a role for the left hemisphere in processing positive valence and for the right hemisphere in processing negative valence. Here, the authors extend this same task to subjects with unilateral cerebral damage (31 right, 28 left). Subjects with right damage performed worse when discriminating sad faces shown on the left, consistent with the prior findings. However, subjects with either left or right damage actually performed superior to normal controls when discriminating happy faces shown on the left. The authors suggest that perception of negative valence relies preferentially on the right hemisphere, whereas perception of positive valence relies on both left and right hemispheres. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture and the perception of social dominance from facial expression.

Eyebrow and mouth gestures were tested in a series of cross-cultural experiments involving 1,797 Ss. Pairs of human portrait photographs were shown to Ss in 11 national/cultural settings, and Ss were asked to make judgments of dominance or happiness. Results strongly support a universal association between smiles and happiness and weakly support a universal nonsmiling/dominance association, but restrict a lowered-brow/dominance association to relatively more Westernized samples. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Three gradients and the perception of flat and curved surfaces.

Investigated 3 gradients—perspective, compression, and density—and the phenomenal impression of flat and curved surfaces. In Exp I, 10 Ss (including the authors) assessed the 3-dimensional character of projections of flat and curved surfaces receding in the distance. Ss made pairwise judgments of preference and of dissimilarity among 8 stimuli in each of 4 sets. The presence of each gradient was manipulated orthogonally. The differential results for the flat and curved surfaces suggest independent channels of information that are available in the optic array to observers for their use at different times and in different situations. It is suggested that (1) perspective information is most important for flatness judgments because that information is a component of an invariant available to viewers about flat surfaces, and (2) compression is important for curvature judgments because it reveals potential nonmonotonicities in change of slant, the angle between line of sight and a line orthogonal to the local surface plane. In Exp II, conducted with 4 Ss, results show that when the height of a curved surface is diminished enough to create a nearly monotonic compression function, viewers cannot distinguish it from a flat one. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aesthetic facial reconstruction: blending human perception and the facial subunit theory

Facial reconstructive surgical results play a key role in how an individual accepts themselves and how society accepts the individual. Surgeons must strive to create the most aesthetic results, which includes reestablishing the expected contours, highlights, and landmarks. By understanding the subunits theory, plastic surgical nurses can provide patients with knowledgeable preoperative teaching, and can better anticipate the scope and necessary equipment for each reconstruction.     

Composite production effects on subsequent facial recognition.

Examined the effects of constructing an Identi-kit composite of a target face on subsequent recognition of that face. 128 college students saw the target face (White male) for 4 or 15 sec, produced a composite, and then attempted to recognize the target in a series of 130 facial photographs. The target face appeared once, as the 125th slide in the series of 130. In some conditions, a delay of 2 days was introduced either between exposure and composite production or between production and recognition. Compared with controls, recognition for all conditions was better after composite production (hit rates of 60% and 90%, respectively). The longer exposure resulted in slightly better recognition. The 2-day delay had no effect. Another condition in which Ss verbally described the face led to recognition levels between those of the control and the composite-production conditions. Results point to retrieval mechanisms as the source of improved recognition. It is concluded that law enforcement procedures might benefit from construction techniques for improving recognition by eyewitnesses. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sustained effects of adaptation on the perception of familiar faces.

Figural aftereffects are commonly believed to be transient and to fade away in the course of milliseconds. We tested face aftereffects using familiar faces and found sustained effects lasting up to 1 week. In 3 experiments, participants were first exposed to distorted pictures of famous persons and then had to select the veridical face in a 2-alternative forced choice task. Veridicality aftereffects were found in a direction opposite to the adapting distortion; these effects generalized to other pictures of the same individual and also to pictures of celebrities that had not been shown during adaptation. The findings support hierarchical theories of norm-based face coding and suggest that face adaptation effects have a representational basis. They also point toward multiple timescales in the operation of adaptation mechanisms, thereby providing a link between high-level adaptation and more general aspects of neuro-cognitive plasticity, that is, learning and memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative emotionality influences the effects of emotion on time perception.

In this study I used a temporal bisection task to test if greater overestimation of time due to negative emotion is moderated by individual differences in negative emotionality. The effects of fearful facial expressions on time perception were also examined. After a training phase, participants estimated the duration of facial expressions (anger, happiness, fearfulness) and a neutral-baseline facial expression. In accordance to the operation of an arousal-based process, the duration of angry expressions was consistently overestimated relative to other expressions and the baseline condition. In support of a role for individual differences in negative emotionality on time perception, temporal bias due to angry and fearful expressions was positively correlated to individual differences in self-reported negative emotionality. The results are discussed in relation both to the literature on attentional bias to facial expressions in anxiety and fearfulness and also, to the hypothesis that angry expressions evoke a fear-specific response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context effects in social perception.

"Concerned with the problem of field determinants of social perception, this study investigated contextual effects on judgments of photographs of persons. Photographs, designated as targets, were presented in contexts of two other photographs which were expected, on the basis of previous research, to vary in their probability of eliciting a particular judgment along a specified bipolar trait dimension. Data obtained clearly supported the hypothesized inverse relationships between the probability of the context eliciting a particular judgment and that of the target eliciting a similar judgment." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ordinal structure in the visual perception and cognition of smoothly curved surfaces.

In theoretical analyses of visual form perception, it is often assumed that the 3-dimensional structures of smoothly curved surfaces are perceptually represented as point-by-point mappings of metric depth and/or orientation relative to the observer. This article describes an alternative theory in which it is argued that our visual knowledge of smoothly curved surfaces can also be defined in terms of local, nonmetric order relations. A fundamental prediction of this analysis is that relative depth judgments between any two surface regions should be dramatically influenced by the monotonicity of depth change (or lack of it) along the intervening portions of the surface through which they are separated. This prediction is confirmed in a series of experiments using surfaces depicted with either shading or texture. Additional experiments are reported, moreover, that demonstrate that smooth occlusion contours are a primary source of information about the ordinal structure of a surface and that the depth extrema in between contours can be optically specified by differences in luminance at the points of occlusion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired perception of facial emotions following bilateral damage to the anterior temporal lobe.

Two patients (E.P. and G.T.) were previously described with damage to amygdala and anterior temporal cortex (S.B. Hamann et al., 1996). Both rated emotions in facial expressions normally (the rating task) when the data analysis followed a method that had revealed an impairment in the well-studied patient S.M. The present study reports findings for a 3rd patient (G.P.) with the rating task and reexamines the data for E.P. and G.T. All 3 patients were also given a labeling task in which they selected, from a list of 6 words, which word they thought best described the emotion expressed by a face. All 3 patients were unmistakably impaired on both tasks. However, the impairment exhibited by these patients is different from S.M.'s impairment. The difference may depend on the etiology (congenital vs. adult-onset lesion) or the site of the damage (relatively selective amygdala damage vs. damage to amygdala as well as anterior temporal cortex). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Placing the face in context: Cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion.

Two studies tested the hypothesis that in judging people's emotions from their facial expressions, Japanese, more than Westerners, incorporate information from the social context. In Study 1, participants viewed cartoons depicting a happy, sad, angry, or neutral person surrounded by other people expressing the same emotion as the central person or a different one. The surrounding people's emotions influenced Japanese but not Westerners' perceptions of the central person. These differences reflect differences in attention, as indicated by eye-tracking data (Study 2): Japanese looked at the surrounding people more than did Westerners. Previous findings on East-West differences in contextual sensitivity generalize to social contexts, suggesting that Westerners see emotions as individual feelings, whereas Japanese see them as inseparable from the feelings of the group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improved specimen lighting in ultramicrotomy by painting reflective surfaces on specimen blocks

The dependence of the contraction amplitude of the isolated papillary muscle of the guinea pig on the stimulation pattern is probably caused by a well working sarcoplasmic reticulum. This view is supported by the finding that the alkaloid ryanodine flattens the curve of the force-frequency relationship and abolishes the pure frequency potentiation. Ryanodine is said to destroy exclusively the connection between T-tubulus and sarcoplasmic reticulum.     

An investigation of the effects of music and art on pain perception.

The authors examined the effects of preferred music, visual distraction, and silence on pain perception. Visual distraction was provided by participants' choice of painting from a selection of 15 popular artworks. Eighty participants (43 females) underwent 3 trials of cold pressor pain induction with measurement of tolerance, pain intensity, perceived control, and anxiety, and a music listening patterns questionnaire. Preferred music was found to significantly increase tolerance and perceived control over the painful stimulus and to decrease anxiety compared with both the visual distraction and silence conditions. Pain intensity rating was decreased by music listening when compared with silence. During the music condition, frequent listening to the chosen piece in everyday life was found to negatively correlate with anxiety level, and extent of knowledge of the lyrics further positively correlated with tolerance of the stimulus and perceived control. That general importance of music in everyday life also correlated with perceived control reiterates the importance of relationship and familiarity with favorite music as key to its therapeutic effect. There was no relationship between structural features of the selected music and any of the significant effects. It is suggested that preference may render music with different structural aspects functionally equivalent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some contrast effects in social perception.

The classical psychophysical experiment requiring S to make judgments comparing 2 stimuli re some dimension stands as the model for this research, only the traditional inanimate stimulus has been replaced by people. "The major hypothesis of this paper is that an anchorage or standard is formed on the basis of the experience with the first person and that subsequently contrast occurs in the perception of the second stranger when there is a great perceived difference between the two." Ss listened to recordings of a psychologist and a student who was asked to talk about himself, and then rated the students and the psychologist on 2 questionnaires. The results confirmed those derived from traditional psychophysical experimentse indicating the relevance of laboratory findings to everyday life. From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3GE50H. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orientation-dependent priming effects in the perception of biological motion.

In a serial 2-choice reaction time (RT) task, Ss discriminated between a biological motion walker and a similar distractor. The point-light walker appeared in 1 of 2 possible in-depth orientations: The figure was walking either to the right or to the left in the sagittal plane. Reliable priming effects were established in consecutive trials but only when priming and primed walkers had the same in-depth orientation. This orientation-dependent priming effect was not tempered when priming and primed figures had different directions of articulatory motion (Exps 1–6), different starting positions in the step cycle (Exp 2), different point-light localizations (Exp 3), or when the figures were translating (Exps 4–6). The data converge with neurophysiological findings that suggest that object recognition is accomplished by accessing high-level, orientation-dependent representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion-specific effects of facial expressions and postures on emotional experience.

A total of 74 Ss were induced to adopt expressions of fear, anger, disgust, and sadness in Experiment 1. Each expression significantly increased feelings of its particular emotion compared with at least two of the others, a result that cannot be explained by a single dimension. Postures should play the same role in emotional experience as facial expressions. However, the demonstrated effects of postures (Riskind, 1984) could also represent a single dimension of variation. In Experiment 2, subjects were induced to adopt postures characteristic of fear, anger, and sadness. Again, the effects were specific to the postures. These two studies indicate that emotional behavior produces changes in feelings that specifically match the behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)