Age-related changes in the integration of gaze direction and facial expressions of emotion.

Gaze direction influences younger adults' perception of emotional expressions, with direct gaze enhancing the perception of anger and joy, while averted gaze enhances the perception of fear. Age-related declines in emotion recognition and eye-gaze processing have been reported, indicating that there may be age-related changes in the ability to integrate these facial cues. As there is evidence of a positivity bias with age, age-related difficulties integrating these cues may be greatest for negative emotions. The present research investigated age differences in the extent to which gaze direction influenced explicit perception (e.g., anger, fear and joy; Study 1) and social judgments (e.g., of approachability; Study 2) of emotion faces. Gaze direction did not influence the perception of fear in either age group. In both studies, age differences were found in the extent to which gaze direction influenced judgments of angry and joyful faces, with older adults showing less integration of gaze and emotion cues than younger adults. Age differences were greatest when interpreting angry expressions. Implications of these findings for older adults' social functioning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional expression modulates perceived gaze direction.

Gaze perception is an important social skill, as it portrays information about what another person is attending to. Gaze direction has been shown to affect interpretation of emotional expression. Here the authors investigate whether the emotional facial expression has a reciprocal influence on interpretation of gaze direction. In a forced-choice yes-no task, participants were asked to judge whether three faces expressing different emotions (anger, fear, happiness, and neutral) in different viewing angles were looking at them or not. Happy faces were more likely to be judged as looking at the observer than were angry, fearful, or neutral faces. Angry faces were more often judged as looking at the observer than were fearful and neutral expressions. These findings are discussed on the background of approach and avoidance orientation of emotions and of the self-referential positivity bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The expression of determination: Similarities between anger and approach-related positive affect.

In this set of studies, we examine the perceptual similarities between emotions that share either a valence or a motivational direction. Determination is a positive approach-related emotion, whereas anger is a negative approach-related emotion. Thus, determination and anger share a motivational direction but are opposite in valence. An implemental mind-set has previously been shown to produce high-approach-motivated positive affect. Thus, in Study 1, participants were asked to freely report the strongest emotion they experienced during an implemental mind-set. The most common emotion reported was determination. On the basis of this result, we compared the facial expression of determination with that of anger. In Study 2, naive judges were asked to identify photographs of facial expressions intended to express determination, along with photographs intended to express basic emotions (joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, neutral). Correct identifications of intended determination expressions were correlated with misidentifications of the expressions as anger but not with misidentifications as any other emotion. This suggests that determination, a high-approach-motivated positive affect, is perceived as similar to anger. In Study 3, naive judges quantified the intensity of joy, anger, and determination expressed in photographs. The intensity of perceived determination was directly correlated with the intensity of perceived anger (a high-approach-motivated negative affect) and was inversely correlated with the intensity of perceived joy (a low-approach-motivated positive affect). These results demonstrate perceptual similarity between emotions that share a motivational direction but differ in valence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions.

Age differences in emotion recognition from lexical stimuli and facial expressions were examined in a cross-sectional sample of adults aged 18 to 85 (N = 357). Emotion-specific response biases differed by age: Older adults were disproportionately more likely to incorrectly label lexical stimuli as happiness, sadness, and surprise and to incorrectly label facial stimuli as disgust and fear. After these biases were controlled, findings suggested that older adults were less accurate at identifying emotions than were young adults, but the pattern differed across emotions and task types. The lexical task showed stronger age differences than the facial task, and for lexical stimuli, age groups differed in accuracy for all emotional states except fear. For facial stimuli, in contrast, age groups differed only in accuracy for anger, disgust, fear, and happiness. Implications for age-related changes in different types of emotional processing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

More than mere mimicry? The influence of emotion on rapid facial reactions to faces.

Within a second of seeing an emotional facial expression, people typically match that expression. These rapid facial reactions (RFRs), often termed mimicry, are implicated in emotional contagion, social perception, and embodied affect, yet ambiguity remains regarding the mechanism(s) involved. Two studies evaluated whether RFRs to faces are solely nonaffective motor responses or whether emotional processes are involved. Brow (corrugator, related to anger) and forehead (frontalis, related to fear) activity were recorded using facial electromyography (EMG) while undergraduates in two conditions (fear induction vs. neutral) viewed fear, anger, and neutral facial expressions. As predicted, fear induction increased fear expressions to angry faces within 1000 ms of exposure, demonstrating an emotional component of RFRs. This did not merely reflect increased fear from the induction, because responses to neutral faces were unaffected. Considering RFRs to be merely nonaffective automatic reactions is inaccurate. RFRs are not purely motor mimicry; emotion influences early facial responses to faces. The relevance of these data to emotional contagion, autism, and the mirror system-based perspectives on imitation is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety-related bias in the classification of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions.

High- and low-trait socially anxious individuals classified the emotional expressions of photographic quality continua of interpolated ("morphed") facial images that were derived from combining 6 basic prototype emotional expressions to various degrees, with the 2 adjacent emotions arranged in an emotion hexagon. When fear was 1 of the 2 component emotions, the high-trait group displayed enhanced sensitivity for fear. In a 2nd experiment where a mood manipulation was incorporated, again, the high-trait group exhibited enhanced sensitivity for fear. The low-trait group was sensitive for happiness in the control condition. The moodmanipulated group had increased sensitivity for anger expressions, and trait anxiety did not moderate these effects. Interpretations of the results related to the classification of fearful expressions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect bursts: Dynamic patterns of facial expression.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 11(4) of Emotion (see record 2011-18271-001). There were several errors in Table 1, and in Table 4 spaces were omitted from the rows between data for anger, fear, sadness, joy, and relief. All versions of this article have been corrected, and the corrections to Table 1 are provided in the erratum.] Affect bursts consist of spontaneous and short emotional expressions in which facial, vocal, and gestural components are highly synchronized. Although the vocal characteristics have been examined in several recent studies, the facial modality remains largely unexplored. This study investigated the facial correlates of affect bursts that expressed five different emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, and relief. Detailed analysis of 59 facial actions with the Facial Action Coding System revealed a reasonable degree of emotion differentiation for individual action units (AUs). However, less convergence was shown for specific AU combinations for a limited number of prototypes. Moreover, expression of facial actions peaked in a cumulative-sequential fashion with significant differences in their sequential appearance between emotions. When testing for the classification of facial expressions within a dimensional approach, facial actions differed significantly as a function of the valence and arousal level of the five emotions, thereby allowing further distinction between joy and relief. The findings cast doubt on the existence of fixed patterns of facial responses for each emotion, resulting in unique facial prototypes. Rather, the results suggest that each emotion can be portrayed by several different expressions that share multiple facial actions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and sensitivity to gaze direction in emotionally expressive faces.

This study investigated the role of neutral, happy, fearful, and angry facial expressions in enhancing orienting to the direction of eye gaze. Photographs of faces with either direct or averted gaze were presented. A target letter (T or L) appeared unpredictably to the left or the right of the face, either 300 ms or 700 ms after gaze direction changed. Response times were faster in congruent conditions (i.e., when the eyes gazed toward the target) relative to incongruent conditions (when the eyes gazed away from the target letter). Facial expression did influence reaction times, but these effects were qualified by individual differences in self-reported anxiety. High trait-anxious participants showed an enhanced orienting to the eye gaze of faces with fearful expressions relative to all other expressions. In contrast, when the eyes stared straight ahead, trait anxiety was associated with slower responding when the facial expressions depicted anger. Thus, in anxiety-prone people attention is more likely to be held by an expression of anger, whereas attention is guided more potently by fearful facial expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Affect bursts: Dynamic patterns of facial expressions": Correction to Krumhuber and Scherer (2011).

Reports an error in "Affect bursts: Dynamic patterns of facial expression" by Eva G. Krumhuber and Klaus R. Scherer (Emotion, 2011, np). There were several errors in Table 1, and in Table 4 spaces were omitted from the rows between data for anger, fear, sadness, joy, and relief. All versions of this article have been corrected, and the corrections to Table 1 are provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2011-12872-001.) Affect bursts consist of spontaneous and short emotional expressions in which facial, vocal, and gestural components are highly synchronized. Although the vocal characteristics have been examined in several recent studies, the facial modality remains largely unexplored. This study investigated the facial correlates of affect bursts that expressed five different emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, and relief. Detailed analysis of 59 facial actions with the Facial Action Coding System revealed a reasonable degree of emotion differentiation for individual action units (AUs). However, less convergence was shown for specific AU combinations for a limited number of prototypes. Moreover, expression of facial actions peaked in a cumulative-sequential fashion with significant differences in their sequential appearance between emotions. When testing for the classification of facial expressions within a dimensional approach, facial actions differed significantly as a function of the valence and arousal level of the five emotions, thereby allowing further distinction between joy and relief. The findings cast doubt on the existence of fixed patterns of facial responses for each emotion, resulting in unique facial prototypes. Rather, the results suggest that each emotion can be portrayed by several different expressions that share multiple facial actions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention to gaze and emotion in schizophrenia.

Objective: Individuals with schizophrenia have difficulty interpreting social and emotional cues such as facial expression, gaze direction, body position, and voice intonation. Nonverbal cues are powerful social signals but are often processed implicitly, outside the focus of attention. The aim of this research was to assess implicit processing of social cues in individuals with schizophrenia. Method: Patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and matched controls performed a primary task of word classification with social cues in the background. Participants were asked to classify target words (LEFT/RIGHT) by pressing a key that corresponded to the word, in the context of facial expressions with eye gaze averted to the left or right. Results: Although facial expression and gaze direction were irrelevant to the task, these facial cues influenced word classification performance. Participants were slower to classify target words (e.g., LEFT) that were incongruent to gaze direction (e.g., eyes averted to the right) compared to target words (e.g., LEFT) that were congruent to gaze direction (e.g., eyes averted to the left), but this only occurred for expressions of fear. This pattern did not differ for patients and controls. Conclusion: The results showed that threat-related signals capture the attention of individuals with schizophrenia. These data suggest that implicit processing of eye gaze and fearful expressions is intact in schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Le décodage de prototypes émotionnels faciaux.

This study examined the recognition of the facial prototypes comprised in the expressive emotional repertory proposed by Ekman and Friesen (1978a) and by Wiggers (1982). The prototypes were shown to 74 decoders who had to rate the intensity of the emotion or emotions being portrayed. The results indicated that the majority of the prototypes, except those of fear and disgust, clearly signaled the predicted emotion. The various prototypes related to the same emotion were found to differ in their signal value, some of them being better recognized and more specific than others. Some prototypes of fear and disgust were found to signal mixed rather than pure emotions. The results also revealed that the level of recognition of emotional expression varies according to the encoder which suggests that interindividual differences in facial anatomy influence the perception of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition of facial expressions of emotions by 3-year-olds.

Very few large-scale studies have focused on emotional facial expression recognition (FER) in 3-year-olds, an age of rapid social and language development. We studied FER in 808 healthy 3-year-olds using verbal and nonverbal computerized tasks for four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, and fear). Three-year-olds showed differential performance on the verbal and nonverbal FER tasks, especially with respect to fear. That is to say, fear was one of the most accurately recognized facial expressions as matched nonverbally and the least accurately recognized facial expression as labeled verbally. Sex did not influence emotion-matching nor emotion-labeling performance after adjusting for basic matching or labeling ability. Three-year-olds made systematic errors in emotion-labeling. Namely, happy expressions were often confused with fearful expressions, whereas negative expressions were often confused with other negative expressions. Together, these findings suggest that 3-year-olds' FER skills strongly depend on task specifications. Importantly, fear was the most sensitive facial expression in this regard. Finally, in line with previous studies, we found that recognized emotion categories are initially broad, including emotions of the same valence, as reflected in the nonrandom errors of 3-year-olds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult judgments and fine-grained analysis of infant facial expressions: Testing the validity of a priori coding formulas.

Three studies tested whether infant facial expressions selected to fit Max formulas (C. E. Izard, 1983) for discrete emotions are recognizable signals of those emotions. Forced-choice emotion judgments (Study 1) and emotion ratings (Study 2) by naive Ss fit Max predictions for slides of infant joy, interest, surprise, and distress, but Max fear, anger, sadness, and disgust expressions in infants were judged as distress or as emotion blends in both studies. Ratings of adult facial expressions (Study 2 only) fit a priori classifications. In Study 3, the facial muscle components of faces shown in Studies 1 and 2 were coded with the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; P. Ekman and W. V. Friesen, 1978) and Baby FACS (H. Oster and D. Rosenstein, in press). Only 3 of 19 Max-specified expressions of discrete negative emotions in infants fit adult prototypes. Results indicate that negative affect expressions are not fully differentiated in infants and that empirical studies of infant facial expressions are needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Le décodage de l'expression faciale des émotions au cours de l'enfance.

The ability to perceive and interpret facial expressions of emotion improves throughout childhood. Although newborns have rudimentary perceptive abilities allowing them to distinguish several facial expressions, it is only at the end of the first year that infants seem to be able to assign meaning to emotional signals. The meaning infants assign to facial expressions is very broad, as it is limited to the judgment of emotional valence. Meaning becomes more specific between the second and the third year of life, as children begin to categorize facial signals in terms of discrete emotions. While the facial expressions of happiness, anger and sadness are accurately categorized by the third year, the categorization of expressions of fear, surprise and disgust shows a much slower developmental pattern. Moreover, the ability to judge the sincerity of facial expressions shows a slower developmental pattern, probably because of the subtle differences between genuine and non-genuine expressions. The available evidence indicates that school age children can distinguish genuine smiles from masked smiles and false smiles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of working memory in decoding emotions.

Decoding facial expressions of emotion is an important aspect of social communication that is often impaired following psychiatric or neurological illness. However, little is known of the cognitive components involved in perceiving emotional expressions. Three dual task studies explored the role of verbal working memory in decoding emotions. Concurrent working memory load substantially interfered with choosing which emotional label described a facial expression (Experiment 1). A key factor in the magnitude of interference was the number of emotion labels from which to choose (Experiment 2). In contrast the ability to decide that two faces represented the same emotion in a discrimination task was relatively unaffected by concurrent working memory load (Experiment 3). Different methods of assessing emotion perception make substantially different demands on working memory. Implications for clinical disorders which affect both working memory and emotion perception are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Garner interference reveals dependencies between emotional expression and gaze in face perception.

The relationship between facial expression and gaze processing was investigated with the Garner selective attention paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants performed expression judgments without interference from gaze, but expression interfered with gaze judgments. Experiment 2 replicated these results across different emotions. In both experiments, expression judgments occurred faster than gaze judgments, suggesting that expression was processed before gaze could interfere. In Experiments 3 and 4, the difficulty of the emotion discrimination was increased in two different ways. In both cases, gaze interfered with emotion judgments and vice versa. Furthermore, increasing the difficulty of the emotion discrimination resulted in gaze and expression interactions. Results indicate that expression and gaze interactions are modulated by discriminability. Whereas expression generally interferes with gaze judgments, gaze direction modulates expression processing only when facial emotion is difficult to discriminate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Revisiting the relationship between the processing of gaze direction and the processing of facial expression.

There is mixed evidence on the nature of the relationship between the perception of gaze direction and the perception of facial expressions. Major support for shared processing of gaze and expression comes from behavioral studies that showed that observers cannot process expression or gaze and ignore irrelevant variations in the other dimension. However, these studies have not considered the role of head orientation, which is known to play a key role in the processing of gaze direction. In a series of experiments, the relationship between the processing of expression and gaze was tested both with head orientation held constant and with head orientation varied between trials, making it a relevant source of information for computing gaze direction. Results show that when head orientation varied between trials, the processing of facial expression was not interfered with gaze direction, and conversely, the processing of gaze could be made without being interfered from irrelevant variations in expression. These findings suggest that the processing of gaze and the processing of expression are not functionally interconnected as was previously assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of emotion concepts on perceptual memory for emotional expressions.

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that explaining emotional expressions using specific emotion concepts at encoding biases perceptual memory for those expressions. In Experiment 1, participants viewed faces expressing blends of happiness and anger and created explanations of why the target people were expressing one of the two emotions, according to concepts provided by the experimenter. Later, participants attempted to identify the facial expressions in computer movies, in which the previously seen faces changed continuously from anger to happiness. Faces conceptualized in terms of anger were remembered as angrier than the same faces conceptualized in terms of happiness, regardless of whether the explanations were told aloud or imagined. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that explanation is necessary for the conceptual biases to emerge fully and extended the finding to anger-sad expressions, an emotion blend more common in real life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition of facial expressions of mixed emotions in school-age children exposed to terrorism.

This exploratory study aims at investigating the effects of terrorism on children’s ability to recognize emotions. A sample of 101 exposed and 102 nonexposed children (mean age = 11 years), balanced for age and gender, were assessed 20 months after a terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia. Two trials controlled for children’s ability to match a facial emotional stimulus with an emotional label and their ability to match an emotional label with an emotional context. The experimental trial evaluated the relation between exposure to terrorism and children’s free labeling of mixed emotion facial stimuli created by morphing between 2 prototypical emotions. Repeated measures analyses of covariance revealed that exposed children correctly recognized pure emotions. Four log-linear models were performed to explore the association between exposure group and category of answer given in response to different mixed emotion facial stimuli. Model parameters indicated that, compared with nonexposed children, exposed children (a) labeled facial expressions containing anger and sadness significantly more often than expected as anger, and (b) produced fewer correct answers in response to stimuli containing sadness as a target emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression on cueing spatial attention.

Empirical evidence shows an effect of gaze direction on cueing spatial attention, regardless of the emotional expression shown by a face, whereas a combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression has been observed on individuals' evaluative judgments. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether gaze direction and facial expression affect spatial attention depending upon the presence of an evaluative goal. Disgusted, fearful, happy, or neutral faces gazing left or right were followed by positive or negative target words presented either at the spatial location looked at by the face or at the opposite spatial location. Participants responded to target words based on affective valence (i.e., positive/negative) in Experiment 1 and on letter case (lowercase/uppercase) in Experiment 2. Results showed that participants responded much faster to targets presented at the spatial location looked at by disgusted or fearful faces but only in Experiment 1, when an evaluative task was used. The present findings clearly show that negative facial expressions enhance the attentional shifts due to eye-gaze direction, provided that there was an explicit evaluative goal present. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)