Gaze direction modulates the disengagement of attention from facial expression in 10-month-olds.

This study investigated whether the disengagement of attention from facial expression is modulated by gaze direction in infants. To this end, we measured the saccadic reaction time required for the 10-month-olds to disengage their attention from angry and happy expressions combined with either straight or averted gaze. The 10-month-olds' disengagement of their attention from happy faces was modulated by gaze direction. This finding indicates that gaze direction strongly influences infants' allocation of attention to facial expressions. (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)     

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)     

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)     

Early adverse experiences and the neurobiology of facial emotion processing.

To examine the neurobiological consequences of early institutionalization, the authors recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 3 groups of Romanian children--currently institutionalized, previously institutionalized but randomly assigned to foster care, and family-reared children--in response to pictures of happy, angry, fearful, and sad facial expressions of emotion. At 3 assessments (baseline, 30 months, and 42 months), institutionalized children showed markedly smaller amplitudes and longer latencies for the occipital components P1, N170, and P400 compared to family-reared children. By 42 months, ERP amplitudes and latencies of children placed in foster care were intermediate between the institutionalized and family-reared children, suggesting that foster care may be partially effective in ameliorating adverse neural changes caused by institutionalization. The age at which children were placed into foster care was unrelated to their ERP outcomes at 42 months. Facial emotion processing was similar in all 3 groups of children; specifically, fearful faces elicited larger amplitude and longer latency responses than happy faces for the frontocentral components P250 and Nc. These results have important implications for understanding of the role that experience plays in shaping the developing brain. (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)     

Judging the intensity of facial expressions of emotion: Depression-related biases in the processing of positive affect.

A forced-choice intensity judgment task was used to investigate biases in the processing of subtle expressions of emotion in participants with major depressive disorder (MDD). Participants were presented with 2 pictures of the same actor side by side, either depicting a neutral and a subtle emotional expression or depicting a subtle positive and a subtle negative expression. Participants were asked to indicate which of the 2 pictures showed the stronger emotion. Compared with participants with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and with never-disordered controls (CTLs), participants with MDD were less likely to judge subtle happy expressions as more intense than neutral expressions. In addition, compared with the CTL participants, participants who had MDD and participants who had SAD were less likely to judge subtle happy expressions to be more intense than negative expressions. Biases in the judgment of the intensity of subtle expressions of positive affect could play an important role in the interpersonal difficulties that are associated with depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of Direct and Averted Gaze on the Perception of Facially Communicated Emotion.

Research has largely neglected the effects of gaze direction cues on the perception of facial expressions of emotion. It was hypothesized that when gaze direction matches the underlying behavioral intent (approach-avoidance) communicated by an emotional expression, the perception of that emotion would be enhanced (i.e., shared signal hypothesis). Specifically, the authors expected that (a) direct gaze would enhance the perception of approach-oriented emotions (anger and joy) and (b) averted eye gaze would enhance the perception of avoidance-oriented emotions (fear and sadness). Three studies supported this hypothesis. Study 1 examined emotional trait attributions made to neutral faces. Study 2 examined ratings of ambiguous facial blends of anger and fear. Study 3 examined the influence of gaze on the perception of highly prototypical expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When familiarity breeds accuracy: Cultural exposure and facial emotion recognition.

Two studies provide evidence for the role of cultural familiarity in recognizing facial expressions of emotion. For Chinese located in China and the United States, Chinese Americans, and non-Asian Americans, accuracy and speed in judging Chinese and American emotions was greater with greater participant exposure to the group posing the expressions. Likewise, Tibetans residing in China and Africans residing in the United States were faster and more accurate when judging emotions expressed by host versus nonhost society members. These effects extended across generations of Chinese Americans, seemingly independent of ethnic or biological ties. Results suggest that the universal affect system governing emotional expression may be characterized by subtle differences in style across cultures, which become more familiar with greater cultural contact. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Darwin and emotion expression.

In his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin (1872/1965) defended the argument that emotion expressions are evolved and adaptive (at least at some point in the past) and serve an important communicative function. The ideas he developed in his book had an important impact on the field and spawned rich domains of inquiry. This article presents Darwin's three principles in this area and then discusses some of the research topics that developed out of his theoretical vision. In particular, the focus is on five issues--(a) the question of what emotion expressions express, (b) the notion of basic emotions, (c) the universality of emotion expressions, (d) the question of emotion prototypes, and (e) the issue of animal emotions--all of which trace their roots to Darwin's discussion of his first two principles. (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)     

Impact of intended emotion intensity on cue utilization and decoding accuracy in vocal expression of emotion.

Actors vocally portrayed happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust with weak and strong emotion intensity while reading brief verbal phrases aloud. The portrayals were recorded and analyzed according to 20 acoustic cues. 15 listeners (7 men and 8 women, aged 19-44 yrs) decoded each portrayal by using forced-choice or quantitative ratings. The results showed that (a) portrayals with strong emotion intensity yielded higher decoding accuracy than portrayals with weak intensity, (b) listeners were able to decode the intensity of portrayals, (c) portrayals of the same emotion with different intensity yielded different patterns of acoustic cues, and (d) certain acoustic cues (e.g., fundamental frequency, high-frequency energy) were highly predictive of listeners' ratings of emotion intensity. It is argued that lack of control for emotion intensity may account for some of the inconsistencies in cue utilization reported in the literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial expressions of emotion influence memory for facial identity in an automatic way.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 7(4) of Emotion (see record 2007-17748-022). The image printed for Figure 3 was incorrect. The correct image is provided in the erratum.] Previous studies indicate that the encoding of new facial identities in memory is influenced by the type of expression displayed by the faces. In the current study, the authors investigated whether or not this influence requires attention to be explicitly directed toward the affective meaning of facial expressions. In a first experiment, the authors found that facial identity was better recognized when the faces were initially encountered with a happy rather than an angry expression, even when attention was oriented toward facial features other than expression. Using the Remember/Know/Guess paradigm in a second experiment, the authors found that the influence of facial expressions on the conscious recollection of facial identity was even more pronounced when participants' attention was not directed toward expressions. It is suggested that the affective meaning of facial expressions automatically modulates the encoding of facial identity in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for strong dissociation between emotion and facial displays: The case of surprise.

Eight experiments examined facial expressions of surprise in adults. Surprise was induced by disconfirming a previously established schema or expectancy. Self-reports and behavioral measures indicated the presence of surprise in most participants, but surprise expressions were observed only in 4%-25%, and most displays consisted of eyebrow raising only; the full, 3-component display was never seen. Experimental variations of surprise intensity, sociality, and duration/complexity of the surprising event did not change these results. Electromyographic measurement failed to detect notably more brow raisings and, in one study, revealed a decrease of frontalis muscle activity in the majority of the participants. Nonetheless, most participants believed that they had shown a strong surprise expression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Face and emotion recognition deficits in Turner syndrome: A possible role for X-linked genes in amygdala development.

Face recognition is thought to rely on configural visual processing, Where face recognition impairments have been identified, qualitatively delayed or anomalous configural processing has also been found. A group of women with Turner syndrome (TS) with monosomy for a single maternal X chromosome (45, Xm) showed an impairment in face recognition skills compared with normally developing women. However, normal configural face-processing abilities were apparent. The ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion, particularly fear, was also impaired in this TS subgroup. Face recognition and fear recognition accuracy were significantly correlated in the female control group but not in women with TS. The authors therefore suggest that anomalies in amygdala function may be a neurological feature of TS of this karyotype. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

No effect of inversion on attentional and affective processing of facial expressions.

The decrease in recognition performance after face inversion has been taken to suggest that faces are processed holistically. Three experiments, 1 with schematic and 2 with photographic faces, were conducted to assess whether face inversion also affected visual search for and implicit evaluation of facial expressions of emotion. The 3 visual search experiments yielded the same differences in detection speed between different facial expressions of emotion for upright and inverted faces. Threat superiority effects, faster detection of angry than of happy faces among neutral background faces, were evident in 2 experiments. Face inversion did not affect explicit or implicit evaluation of face stimuli as assessed with verbal ratings and affective priming. Happy faces were evaluated as more positive than angry, sad, or fearful/scheming ones regardless of orientation. Taken together these results seem to suggest that the processing of facial expressions of emotion is not impaired if holistic processing is disrupted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False recognition of facial expressions of emotion: Causes and implications.

This article examines the importance of semantic processes in the recognition of emotional expressions, through a series of three studies on false recognition. The first study found a high frequency of false recognition of prototypical expressions of emotion when participants viewed slides and video clips of nonprototypical fearful and happy expressions. The second study tested whether semantic processes caused false recognition. The authors found that participants made significantly higher error rates when asked to detect expressions that corresponded to semantic labels than when asked to detect visual stimuli. Finally, given that previous research reported that false memories are less prevalent in younger children, the third study tested whether false recognition of prototypical expressions increased with age. The authors found that 67% of eight- to nine-year-old children reported nonpresent prototypical expressions of fear in a fearful context, but only 40% of 6- to 7-year-old children did so. Taken together, these three studies demonstrate the importance of semantic processes in the detection and categorization of prototypical emotional expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spontaneous facial expressions of emotion of congenitally and noncongenitally blind individuals.

The study of the spontaneous expressions of blind individuals offers a unique opportunity to understand basic processes concerning the emergence and source of facial expressions of emotion. In this study, the authors compared the expressions of congenitally and noncongenitally blind athletes in the 2004 Paralympic Games with each other and with those produced by sighted athletes in the 2004 Olympic Games. The authors also examined how expressions change from 1 context to another. There were no differences between congenitally blind, noncongenitally blind, and sighted athletes, either on the level of individual facial actions or in facial emotion configurations. Blind athletes did produce more overall facial activity, but these were isolated to head and eye movements. The blind athletes' expressions differentiated whether they had won or lost a medal match at 3 different points in time, and there were no cultural differences in expression. These findings provide compelling evidence that the production of spontaneous facial expressions of emotion is not dependent on observational learning but simultaneously demonstrates a learned component to the social management of expressions, even among blind individuals. (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)