emotion perception
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Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying
emotion Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
s in others, in addition to
biological Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary in ...
and
physiological Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...
processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and
cognitive Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
appraisal; emotion
perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.


Modes of perception

Emotions can be perceived through visual, auditory, olfactory, taste and physiological sensory processes. Nonverbal actions can provide social partners with information about subjective and emotional states. This nonverbal information is believed to hold special importance and sensory systems and certain brain regions are suspected to specialize in decoding emotional information for rapid and efficient processing.


Visual

The
visual system The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (the a ...
is the primary mode of
perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
for the way people receive emotional information. People use emotional cues displayed by social partners to make decisions regarding their affective state. Emotional cues can be in the form of
facial expression A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. According to one set of controversial theories, these movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers. Facial expressions are a ...
s, which are actually a combination of many distinct muscle groups within the face, or bodily postures (alone or in relation to others), or found through the interpretation of a situation or environment known to have particular emotional properties (i.e., a
funeral A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect th ...
, a
wedding A wedding is a ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of marriage vo ...
, a war zone, a scary alley, etc.). While the visual system is the means by which emotional information is gathered, it is the cognitive interpretation and evaluation of this information that assigns it emotional value, garners the appropriate
cognitive Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
resources, and then initiates a physiological response. This process is by no means exclusive to visual perception and in fact may overlap considerably with other modes of perception, suggesting an emotional sensory system comprising multiple perceptual processes all of which are processed through similar channels.


Facial perception

A great deal of research conducted on emotion perception revolves around how people perceive emotion in others' facial expressions. Whether the emotion contained in someone's face is classified categorically or along dimensions of valence and
arousal Arousal is the physiological and psychological state of being awoken or of sense organs stimulated to a point of perception. It involves activation of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) in the brain, which mediates wakefulness, th ...
, the face provides reliable cues to one's subjective emotional state. As efficient as humans are in identifying and recognizing emotion in another's face, accuracy goes down considerably for most emotions, with the exception of happiness, when facial features are inverted (i.e., mouth placed above eyes and nose), suggesting that a primary means of facial perception includes the identification of spatial features that resemble a prototypical face, such that two eyes are placed above a nose which is above a mouth; any other formation of features does not immediately constitute a face and requires extra spatial manipulation to identify such features as resembling a face.


= Discrete versus dimensional views

= Research on the classification of perceived emotions has centered around the debate between two fundamentally distinct viewpoints. One side of the debate posits that emotions are separate and discrete entities whereas the other side suggests that emotions can be classified as values on the dimensions of valence (positive versus negative) and arousal (calm/soothing versus exciting/agitating).
Psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
Paul Ekman Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is an American psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was ranked 59th out of ...
supported the discrete emotion perspective with his groundbreaking work comparing emotion perception and expression between literate and preliterate cultures. Ekman concluded that the ability to produce and perceive emotions is universal and innate and that emotions manifest categorically as basic emotions (
anger Anger, also known as wrath or rage, is an intense emotional state involving a strong uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat. A person experiencing anger will often experience physical effects, su ...
,
disgust Disgust (Middle French: ''desgouster'', from Latin ''gustus'', "taste") is an emotional response of rejection or revulsion to something potentially contagious or something considered offensive, distasteful, or unpleasant. In ''The Expression o ...
,
fear Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
,
happiness Happiness, in the context of Mental health, mental or emotional states, is positive or Pleasure, pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Other forms include life satisfaction, well-being, subjective well-being, flourishin ...
,
sadness Sadness is an emotional pain associated with, or characterized by, feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, grief, helplessness, disappointment and sorrow. An individual experiencing sadness may become quiet or lethargic, and withdraw thems ...
,
contempt Contempt is a pattern of attitudes and behaviour, often towards an individual or a group, but sometimes towards an ideology, which has the characteristics of disgust and anger. The word originated in 1393 in Old French contempt, contemps, ...
, surprise, and possibly
contempt Contempt is a pattern of attitudes and behaviour, often towards an individual or a group, but sometimes towards an ideology, which has the characteristics of disgust and anger. The word originated in 1393 in Old French contempt, contemps, ...
). The alternative dimensional view garnered support from psychologist James Russell, who is best known for his contributions toward the circumplex of emotion. Russell described emotions as
construct Construct, Constructs or constructs may refer to: * Construct (information technology), a collection of logic components forming an interactive agent or environment ** Language construct * ''Construct'' (album), a 2013 album by Dark Tranquillity ...
s which lie on the dimensions of valence and arousal and it is the combination of these values which delineate emotion. Psychologist
Robert Plutchik Robert Plutchik (21 October 1927 – 29 April 2006) was a professor emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct professor at the University of South Florida. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and he was also a ps ...
sought to reconcile these views and proposed that certain emotions be considered "primary emotions" which are grouped either positively or negatively and can then be combined to form more complex emotions, sometimes considered "secondary emotions", such as
remorse Remorse is a distressing emotion experienced by an individual who regrets actions which they have done in the past that they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or wrong. Remorse is closely allied to guilt and self-directed resentment. When a person ...
,
guilt Guilt may refer to: *Guilt (emotion), an emotion that occurs when a person feels that they have violated a moral standard *Culpability, a legal term *Guilt (law), a legal term Music *Guilt (album), ''Guilt'' (album), a 2009 album by Mims *Guilt ( ...
,
submission Deference (also called submission or passivity) is the condition of submitting to the espoused, legitimate influence of one's superior or superiors. Deference implies a yielding or submitting to the judgment of a recognized superior, out of re ...
, and
anticipation Anticipation is an emotion involving pleasure or anxiety in considering or awaiting an expected event. Anticipatory emotions include fear, anxiety, hope and trust. When the anticipated event fails to occur, it results in disappointment (if posi ...
. Plutchik created the "wheel of emotions" to outline his theory.


= Culture

= Culture plays a significant role in emotion perception, most notably in facial perception. Although the features of the face convey important information, the upper (eyes/brow) and lower (mouth/nose) regions of the face have distinct qualities that can provide both consistent and conflicting information. As values,
etiquette Etiquette () is the set of norms of personal behaviour in polite society, usually occurring in the form of an ethical code of the expected and accepted social behaviours that accord with the conventions and norms observed and practised by a ...
, and quality of social interactions vary across cultures, facial perception is believed to be moderated accordingly. In western cultures, where overt emotion is ubiquitous, emotional information is primarily obtained from viewing the features of the mouth, which is the most expressive part of the face. However, in eastern cultures, where overt emotional expression is less common and therefore the mouth plays a lesser role in emotional expression, emotional information is more often obtained from viewing the upper region of the face, primarily the eyes. These cultural differences suggest a strong environmental and learned component in emotion expression and emotion perception.


= Context

= Although facial expressions convey key emotional information, context also plays an important role in both providing additional emotional information and modulating what emotion is actually perceived in a facial expression. Contexts come in three categories: stimulus-based context, in which a face is physically presented with other sensory input that has informational value; perceiver-based context, in which processes within the brain or body of a perceiver can shape emotion perception; and cultural contexts that affect either the encoding or the understanding of facial actions.


Auditory

The auditory system can provide important emotional information about the environment.
Voices Voices or The Voices may refer to: Film and television * ''Voices'' (1920 film), by Chester M. De Vonde, with Diana Allen * ''Voices'' (1973 film), a British horror film * ''Voices'' (1979 film), a film by Robert Markowitz * ''Voices'' (19 ...
, screams, murmurs, and
music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
can convey emotional information. Emotional interpretations of sounds tend to be quite consistent. Traditionally, emotion perception in the voice has been determined through research studies analyzing, via
prosodic In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, str ...
parameters such as pitch and
duration Duration may refer to: * The amount of time elapsed between two events * Duration (music) – an amount of time or a particular time interval, often cited as one of the fundamental aspects of music * Duration (philosophy) – a theory of time and ...
, the way in which a speaker expresses an emotion, known as
encoding In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...
. Alternatively, a listener who attempts to identify a particular emotion as intended by a speaker can
decode Decoding or decode may refer to: is the process of converting code into plain text or any format that is useful for subsequent processes. Science and technology * Decoding, the reverse of encoding * Parsing, in computer science * Digital-to-analog ...
emotion. More sophisticated methods include manipulating or synthesizing important prosodic parameters in speech signal (e.g., pitch, duration, loudness, voice quality) in both natural and simulated affective speech. Pitch and duration tend to contribute more to emotional recognition than loudness. Music has long been known to have emotional qualities and is a popular strategy in emotion regulation. When asked to rate emotions present in classical music, music professionals could identify all six basic emotions with happiness and sadness the most represented, and in decreasing order of importance, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. The emotions of happiness, sadness, fear, and peacefulness can be perceived in a short length of exposure, as little as 9–16 seconds including instrumental-only music selections.


Olfactory

Aromas and scents also influence mood, for example through aromatherapy, and humans can extract emotional information from scents just as they can from facial expressions and emotional music. Odors may be able to exert their effects through learning and conscious perception, such that responses typically associated with particular odors are learned through association with their matched emotional experiences. In-depth research has documented that emotion elicited by odors, both pleasant and unpleasant, affects the same physiological correlates of emotion seen with other sensory mechanisms.


Somatic

Theories on emotion have focused on perception, subjective experience, and appraisal. Predominant theories of emotion and emotion perception include what type of emotion is perceived, how emotion is perceived
somatic Somatic may refer to: * Somatic (biology), referring to the cells of the body in contrast to the germ line cells ** Somatic cell, a non-gametic cell in a multicellular organism * Somatic nervous system, the portion of the vertebrate nervous sys ...
ally, and at what stage of an event emotion is perceived and translated into subjective, physical experience.


James-Lange theory

Following the influence of
René Descartes René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathem ...
and his ideas regarding the split between body and mind, in 1884
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
proposed the theory that it is not that the human body acts in response to our emotional state, as common sense might suggest, but rather, we interpret our emotions on the basis of our already present bodily state. In the words of James, "we feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and neither we cry, strike, nor tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be." James believed it was particular and distinct physical patterns that map onto specific experienced emotions. Contemporaneously, psychologist Carl Lange arrived at the same conclusion about the experience of emotions. Thus, the idea that felt emotion is the result of perceiving specific patterns of bodily responses is called the James-Lange theory of emotion. In support of the James-Lange theory of emotion,
Silvan Tomkins Silvan Solomon Tomkins (June 4, 1911 – June 10, 1991) was a psychologist and personality theorist who developed both affect theory and script theory. Following the publication of the third volume of his book ''Affect Imagery Consciousness'' in ...
proposed the facial feedback hypothesis in 1963; he suggested that facial expressions actually trigger the experience of emotions and not the other way around. This theory was tested in 1974 by James Laird in an experiment where Laird asked participants to hold a pencil either between their teeth (artificially producing a smile) or between their upper lip and their nose (artificially producing a frown) and then rate cartoons. Laird found that these cartoons were rated as being funnier by those participants holding a pencil in between their teeth. In addition,
Paul Ekman Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is an American psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was ranked 59th out of ...
recorded extensive physiological data while participants posed his basic emotional facial expressions and found that heart rate raised for sadness, fear, and anger yet did not change at al for happiness, surprise, or disgust, and skin temperature raised when participants posed anger but not other emotions. While contemporary psychologists still agree with the James-Lange theory of emotion, human subjective emotion is complex and physical reactions or antecedents do not fully explain the subjective emotional experience.


Cannon-Bard theory of emotion

Walter Bradford Cannon Walter Bradford Cannon (October 19, 1871 – October 1, 1945) was an American physiologist, professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. He coined the term "fight or flight response", and developed the theory ...
and his doctoral student Philip Bard agreed that physiological responses played a crucial role in emotions, but did not believe that physiological responses alone could explain subjective emotional experiences. They argued that physiological responses were too slow relative to the relatively rapid and intense subjective awareness of emotion and that often these emotions are similar and imperceptible to people at such a short timescale. Cannon proposed that the mind and body operate independently in the experience of emotions such that differing brain regions (cortex versus subcortex) process information from an emotion-producing stimulus independently and simultaneously resulting in both an emotional and a physical response. This is best illustrated by imagining an encounter with a grizzly bear; you would simultaneously experience fear, begin to sweat, experience an elevated heart rate, and attempt to run. All of these things would happen at the same time.


Two-factor theory

Stanley Schachter Stanley Schachter (April 15, 1922 – June 7, 1997) was an American social psychologist, who is perhaps best known for his development of the two factor theory of emotion in 1962 along with Jerome E. Singer. In his theory he states that emotions ...
and his doctoral student Jerome Singer formulated their theory of emotion based on evidence that without an actual emotion-producing stimulus, people are unable to attribute specific emotions to their bodily states. They believed that there must be a cognitive component to emotion perception beyond that of just physical changes and subjective feelings. Schachter and Singer suggested that when someone encounters such an emotion-producing stimulus, they would immediately recognize their bodily symptoms (sweating and elevated heart rate in the case of the grizzly bear) as the emotion fear. Their theory was devised as a result of a study in which participants were injected with either a stimulant (adrenaline) that causes elevated heart rate, sweaty palms and shaking, or a placebo. Participants were then either told what the effects of the drug were or were told nothing, and were then placed in a room with a person they did not know who, according to the research plan, would either play with a hula hoop and make paper airplanes (euphoric condition) or ask the participant intimate, personal questions (angry condition). What they found was that participants who knew what the effects of the drug were attributed their physical state to the effects of the drug; however, those who had no knowledge of the drug they received attributed their physical state to the situation with the other person in the room. These results led to the conclusion that physiological reactions contributed to emotional experience by facilitating a focused cognitive appraisal of a given physiologically arousing event and that this appraisal was what defined the subjective emotional experience. Emotions were thus a result of a two-stage process: first, physiological arousal in a response to an evoking stimulus, and second, cognitive elaboration of the context in which the stimulus occurred.


Neural bases

Emotion perception is primarily a cognitive process driven by particular brain systems believed to specialize in identifying emotional information and subsequently allocating appropriate cognitive resources to prepare the body to respond. The relationship between various regions is still unclear, but a few key regions have been implicated in particular aspects of emotion perception and processing including areas suspected of being involved in the processing of faces and emotional information.


Fusiform face area

The fusiform face area, part of the
fusiform gyrus The fusiform gyrus, also known as the ''lateral occipitotemporal gyrus'','' ''is part of the temporal lobe and occipital lobe in Brodmann area 37. The fusiform gyrus is located between the lingual gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus above, and the inf ...
is an area some believe to specialize in the identification and processing of human faces, although others suspect it is responsible for distinguishing between well known objects such as cars and animals.
Neuroimaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...
studies have found activation in this area in response to participants viewing images of prototypical faces, but not scrambled or inverted faces, suggesting that this region is specialized for processing human faces but not other material. This area has been an area of increasing debate and while some psychologists may approach the fusiform face area in a simplistic manner, in that it specializes in the processing of human faces, more likely this area is implicated in the visual processing of many objects, particularly those familiar and prevalent in the environment. Impairments in the ability to recognize subtle differences in faces would greatly inhibit emotion perception and processing and have significant implications involving social interactions and appropriate biological responses to emotional information.


HPA axis

The
hypothalamic The hypothalamus () is a part of the brain that contains a number of small nuclei with a variety of functions. One of the most important functions is to link the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland. The hypothalamus i ...
-
pituitary In vertebrate anatomy, the pituitary gland, or hypophysis, is an endocrine gland, about the size of a chickpea and weighing, on average, in humans. It is a protrusion off the bottom of the hypothalamus at the base of the brain. The hypop ...
-
adrenal The adrenal glands (also known as suprarenal glands) are endocrine glands that produce a variety of hormones including adrenaline and the steroids aldosterone and cortisol. They are found above the kidneys. Each gland has an outer cortex which ...
(HPA) axis plays a role in emotion perception through its
mediation Mediation is a structured, interactive process where an impartial third party neutral assists disputing parties in resolving conflict through the use of specialized communication and negotiation techniques. All participants in mediation are ...
of the physiological
stress response The fight-or-flight or the fight-flight-or-freeze response (also called hyperarousal or the acute stress response) is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. It was first des ...
. This occurs through the release of hypothalamic
corticotropin-releasing factor Corticotropin-releasing factor family, CRF family is a family of related neuropeptides in vertebrates. This family includes corticotropin-releasing hormone (also known as CRF), urotensin-I, urocortin, and sauvagine. The family can be grouped int ...
, also known as corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), from nerve terminals in the
median eminence The median eminence, part of the inferior boundary of the hypothalamus in the brain, is attached to the infundibulum. The median eminence is a small swelling on the tuber cinereum, posterior to and atop the pituitary stalk; it lies in the area rou ...
arising in the
paraventricular nucleus The paraventricular nucleus (PVN, PVA, or PVH) is a nucleus in the hypothalamus. Anatomically, it is adjacent to the third ventricle and many of its neurons project to the posterior pituitary. These projecting neurons secrete oxytocin and a smaller ...
, which stimulates adrenocorticotropin release from the
anterior pituitary A major organ of the endocrine system, the anterior pituitary (also called the adenohypophysis or pars anterior) is the glandular, anterior lobe that together with the posterior lobe (posterior pituitary, or the neurohypophysis) makes up the p ...
that in turn induces the release of
cortisol Cortisol is a steroid hormone, in the glucocorticoid class of hormones. When used as a medication, it is known as hydrocortisone. It is produced in many animals, mainly by the ''zona fasciculata'' of the adrenal cortex in the adrenal gland ...
from the adrenal cortex. This progressive process culminating in the release of
glucocorticoid Glucocorticoids (or, less commonly, glucocorticosteroids) are a class of corticosteroids, which are a class of steroid hormones. Glucocorticoids are corticosteroids that bind to the glucocorticoid receptor that is present in almost every vertebr ...
s to environmental stimuli is believed to be initiated by the amygdala, which evaluates the emotional significance of observed phenomena. Released glucocorticoids provide negative feedback on the system and also the
hippocampus The hippocampus (via Latin from Greek , 'seahorse') is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, a ...
, which in turn regulates the shutting off of this biological stress response. It is through this response that information is encoded as emotional and bodily response is initiated, making the HPA axis an important component in emotion perception.


Amygdala

The
amygdala The amygdala (; plural: amygdalae or amygdalas; also '; Latin from Greek, , ', 'almond', 'tonsil') is one of two almond-shaped clusters of nuclei located deep and medially within the temporal lobes of the brain's cerebrum in complex verteb ...
appears to have a specific role in attention to emotional stimuli. The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped region within the anterior part of the temporal lobe. Several studies of non-human primates and of patients with amygdala lesions, in addition to studies employing functional neuroimaging techniques, have demonstrated the importance of the amygdala in face and eye-gaze identification. Other studies have emphasized the importance of the amygdala for the identification of emotional expressions displayed by others, in particular threat-related emotions such as fear, but also sadness and happiness. In addition, the amygdala is involved in the response to non-facial displays of emotion, including unpleasant auditory, olfactory and gustatory stimuli, and in memory for emotional information. The amygdala receives information from both the thalamus and the cortex; information from the thalamus is rough in detail and the amygdala receives this very quickly, while information from the cortex is much more detailed but is received more slowly. In addition, the amygdala's role in attention modulation toward emotion-specific stimuli may occur via projections from the central nucleus of the amygdala to cholinergic neurons, which lower cortical neuronal activation thresholds and potentiate cortical information processing.


Disordered emotion perception

There is great individual difference in emotion perception and certain groups of people display abnormal processes. Some disorders are in part classified by maladaptive and abnormal emotion perception while others, such as
mood disorder A mood disorder, also known as an affective disorder, is any of a group of conditions of mental and behavioral disorder where a disturbance in the person's mood is the main underlying feature. The classification is in the ''Diagnostic and Stat ...
s, exhibit mood-congruent emotional processing. Whether abnormal processing leads to the exacerbation of certain disorders or is the result of these disorders is yet unclear, however, difficulties or deficits in emotion perception are common among various disorders. Research investigating face and emotion perception in
autistic The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
individuals is inconclusive. Past research has found atypical, piecemeal face-processing strategies among autistic individuals and a better memory for lower versus upper regions of the face and increased abilities to identify partly obscured faces. Autistic individuals tend to display deficits in social motivation and experience that may decrease overall experience with faces and this in turn may lead to abnormal cortical specialization for faces and decreased processing efficiency. However, these results have not been adequately replicated and meta-analyses have found little to no differential face processing between typically-developing and autistic individuals although autistic people reliably display worse face memory and eye perception which could mediate face and possibly emotion perception. Individuals with
schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
also have difficulties with all types of facial emotion expression perception, incorporating contextual information in making affective decisions, and indeed, facial perception more generally. Neuropathological and structural neuroimaging studies of these patients have demonstrated abnormal neuronal cell integrity and volume reductions in the amygdala, insula, thalamus and hippocampus and studies employing functional neuro-imaging techniques have demonstrated a failure to activate limbic regions in response to emotive stimuli, all of which may contribute to impaired psychosocial functioning. In patients with
major depressive disorder Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Introdu ...
, studies have demonstrated either generalized or specific impairments in the identification of emotional facial expressions, or a bias towards the identification of expressions as sad. Neuro-pathological and structural neuroimaging studies in patients with major depressive disorder have indicated abnormalities within the subgenual anterior cingulate gyrus and volume reductions within the hippocampus, ventral striatal regions and amygdala. Similarly,
anxiety Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
has been commonly associated with individuals being able to perceive threat when in fact none is present, and orient more quickly to threatening cues than other cues. Anxiety has been associated with an enhanced orienting toward threat, a late-stage attention maintenance toward threat, or possibly vigilance-avoidance, or early-stage enhanced orienting and later-stage avoidance. As a form of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has also been linked with abnormal attention toward threatening information, in particular, threatening stimuli which relates to the personally relevant
trauma Trauma most often refers to: * Major trauma, in physical medicine, severe physical injury caused by an external source * Psychological trauma, a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event *Traumatic i ...
, making such a bias in that context appropriate, but out of context, maladaptive. Such processing of emotion can alter an individuals' ability to accurately assess others' emotions as well. Mothers with violence-related PTSD have been noted to show decreased medial prefrontal cortical activation in response to seeing their own and unfamiliar toddlers in helpless or distressed states of mind that is also associated with maternal PTSD symptom severity, self-reported
parenting stress Parenting stress relates to stressors that are a function of being in and executing the parenting role. It is a construct that relates to both psychological phenomena and to the human body's physiological state as a parent or caretaker of a child ...
, and difficulty in identifying emotions and which, in turn, impacts sensitive caregiving. Moreover,
child maltreatment Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure t ...
and
child abuse Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to a ...
have been associated with emotion processing biases as well, most notably toward the experience-specific emotion of anger. Research has found that abused children exhibit attention biases toward angry faces such that they tend to interpret even ambiguous faces as angry versus other emotions and have a difficulty disengaging from such expressions Pollak, S. D. (2003). Experience-dependent affective learning and risk for psychopathology in children. In J. A. King, C. F. Ferris, & I. I. Lederhendler (Eds.), Roots of mental illness in children (pp. 102-111). New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. while other research has found abused children to demonstrate an attentional avoidance of angry faces. It is believed to be adaptive to attend to angry emotion as this may be a precursor to danger and harm and quick identification of even mild anger cues can facilitate the ability for a child to escape the situation, however, such biases are considered maladaptive when anger is over-identified in inappropriate contexts and this may result in the development of psychopathology.


Research methods

Researchers employ several methods designed to examine biases toward emotional stimuli to determine the salience of particular emotional stimuli, population differences in emotion perception, and also attentional biases toward or away from emotional stimuli. Tasks commonly utilized include the modified Stroop task, the dot probe task, visual search tasks, and spatial cuing tasks. The Stroop task, or modified Stroop task, displays different types of words (e.g., threatening and neutral) in varying colors. The participant is then asked to identify the color of the word while ignoring the actual semantic content. Increased response time to indicate the color of threat words relative to neutral words suggests an attentional bias toward such threat. The Stroop task, however, has some interpretational difficulties in addition to the lack of allowance for the measurement of spatial attention allocation. To address some of the limitations of the Stroop task, the dot probe task displays two words or pictures on a computer screen (either one at the top or left and the other on the bottom or right, respectively) and after a brief stimuli presentation, often less than 1000ms, a probe appears in the location of one of the two stimuli and participants are asked to press a button indicating the location of the probe. Different response times between target (e.g., threat) and neutral stimuli infer attentional biases to the target information with shorter response times for when the probe is in the place of the target stimuli indicating an attention bias for that type of information. In another task that examines spatial attentional allocation, the visual search task asks participants to detect a target stimulus embedded in a matrix of distractors (e.g., an angry face among several neutral or other emotional faces or vice versa). Faster detection times to find emotional stimuli among neutral stimuli or slower detection times to find neutral stimuli among emotional distractors infer an attentional bias for such stimuli. The spatial cuing task asks participants to focus on a point located between two rectangles at which point a cue is presented, either in the form of one of the rectangles lighting up or some emotional stimuli appearing within one of the rectangles and this cue either directs attention toward or away from the actual location of the target stimuli. Participants then press a button indicating the location of the target stimuli with faster response times indicating an attention bias toward such stimuli. In the morph task participants gradually scroll a facial photograph from the neutral expression to an emotion or from one emotion to another and should indicate at what frame each emotion appears on the face. A recently introduced method consists of presenting dynamic faces (videoclips) and measuring verbal reaction time (into a microphone); it is more precise than previous solutions: verbal responses to six basic emotions differ in hit rates and reaction times.


See also

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Affect measures Affect measures (measures of affect or measures of emotion) are used in the study of human affect (including emotions and mood), and refer to measures obtained from self-report studies asking participants to quantify their current feelings or aver ...
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Affective computing Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. While some ...
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Affective forecasting Affective forecasting (also known as hedonic forecasting, or the hedonic forecasting mechanism) is the prediction of one's affect (emotional state) in the future. As a process that influences preferences, decisions, and behavior, affective fore ...
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Affective neuroscience Affective neuroscience is the study of how the brain processes emotions. This field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood. The basis of emotions and what emotions are remains an issue of debate withi ...
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Affective science Affective science is the scientific study of emotion or affect. This includes the study of emotion elicitation, emotional experience and the recognition of emotions in others. Of particular relevance are the nature of feeling, mood, emotionally ...
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Emotion recognition Emotion recognition is the process of identifying human emotion. People vary widely in their accuracy at recognizing the emotions of others. Use of technology to help people with emotion recognition is a relatively nascent research area. Genera ...
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Emotion and memory Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than ...
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Emotion classification Emotion classification, the means by which one may distinguish or contrast one emotion from another, is a contested issue in emotion research and in affective science. Researchers have approached the classification of emotions from one of two fun ...
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Emotion in animals Emotion is defined as any mental experience with high intensity and high hedonic content. The existence and nature of emotions in non-human animals are believed to be correlated with those of humans and to have evolved from the same mechanisms. ...
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Emotional expression An emotional expression is a behavior that communicates an emotional state or attitude. It can be verbal or nonverbal, and can occur with or without self-awareness. Emotional expressions include facial movements like smiling or scowling, simple b ...
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Emotions and culture According to some theories, emotions are universal phenomena, albeit affected by culture. Emotions are "internal phenomena that can, but do not always, make themselves observable through expression and behavior". While some emotions are universal ...
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Emotions in virtual communication Emotions in virtual communication differ in a variety of ways from those in face-to-face interactions due to the characteristics of computer-mediated communication (CMC). CMC may lack many of the auditory and visual cues normally associated with th ...
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Facial expressions A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. According to one set of controversial theories, these movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers. Facial expressions are a ...
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Feeling Feelings are subjective self-contained phenomenal experiences. According to the ''APA Dictionary of Psychology'', a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations ...
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Sex and emotion Sex differences in psychology are differences in the mental functions and behaviors of the sexes and are due to a complex interplay of biological, developmental, and cultural factors. Differences have been found in a variety of fields such as men ...
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Social emotion Social emotions are emotions that depend upon the thoughts, feelings or actions of other people, "as experienced, recalled, anticipated or imagined at first hand". Examples are embarrassment, guilt, shame, jealousy, envy, elevation, empathy, and pri ...
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Sociology of emotions The sociology of emotion applies sociological theorems and techniques to the study of human emotions. As sociology emerged primarily as a reaction to the negative effects of modernity, many normative theories deal in some sense with emotion wit ...


References


External links


Online Demo: Emotion recognition from speech, University of Patras, Wire Communication Lab

Facial Emotion Expression Lab


{{Psychology Perception