scholarly journals Recognition of Facial Expressions of Different Emotional Intensities in Patients with Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy P. C. Kessels ◽  
Lotte Gerritsen ◽  
Barbara Montagne ◽  
Nibal Ackl ◽  
Janine Diehl ◽  
...  

Behavioural problems are a key feature of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Also, FTLD patients show impairments in emotion processing. Specifically, the perception of negative emotional facial expressions is affected. Generally, however, negative emotional expressions are regarded as more difficult to recognize than positive ones, which thus may have been a confounding factor in previous studies. Also, ceiling effects are often present on emotion recognition tasks using full-blown emotional facial expressions. In the present study with FTLD patients, we examined the perception of sadness, anger, fear, happiness, surprise and disgust at different emotional intensities on morphed facial expressions to take task difficulty into account. Results showed that our FTLD patients were specifically impaired at the recognition of the emotion anger. Also, the patients performed worse than the controls on recognition of surprise, but performed at control levels on disgust, happiness, sadness and fear. These findings corroborate and extend previous results showing deficits in emotion perception in FTLD.

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 1749-1761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Bick ◽  
Rhiannon Luyster ◽  
Nathan A. Fox ◽  
Charles H. Zeanah ◽  
Charles A. Nelson

AbstractWe examined facial emotion recognition in 12-year-olds in a longitudinally followed sample of children with and without exposure to early life psychosocial deprivation (institutional care). Half of the institutionally reared children were randomized into foster care homes during the first years of life. Facial emotion recognition was examined in a behavioral task using morphed images. This same task had been administered when children were 8 years old. Neutral facial expressions were morphed with happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotional facial expressions, and children were asked to identify the emotion of each face, which varied in intensity. Consistent with our previous report, we show that some areas of emotion processing, involving the recognition of happy and fearful faces, are affected by early deprivation, whereas other areas, involving the recognition of sad and angry faces, appear to be unaffected. We also show that early intervention can have a lasting positive impact, normalizing developmental trajectories of processing negative emotions (fear) into the late childhood/preadolescent period.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Drimalla ◽  
Irina Baskow ◽  
Behnoush Behnia ◽  
Stefan Roepke ◽  
Isabel Dziobek

Abstract Background Imitation of facial expressions plays an important role in social functioning. However, little is known about the quality of facial imitation in individuals with autism and its relationship with defining difficulties in emotion recognition. Methods We investigated imitation and recognition of facial expressions in 37 individuals with autism spectrum conditions and 43 neurotypical controls. Using a novel computer-based face analysis, we measured instructed imitation of facial emotional expressions and related it to emotion recognition abilities. Results Individuals with autism imitated facial expressions if instructed to do so, but their imitation was both slower and less precise than that of neurotypical individuals. In both groups, a more precise imitation scaled positively with participants’ accuracy of emotion recognition. Limitations Given the study’s focus on adults with autism without intellectual impairment, it is unclear whether the results generalize to children with autism or individuals with intellectual disability. Further, the new automated facial analysis, despite being less intrusive than electromyography, might be less sensitive. Conclusions Group differences in emotion recognition, imitation and their interrelationships highlight potential for treatment of social interaction problems in individuals with autism.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evrim Gulbetekin

Abstract This investigation used three experiments to test the effect of mask use and other-race effect (ORE) on face perception in three contexts: (a) face recognition, (b) recognition of facial expressions, and (c) social distance. The first, which involved a matching-to-sample paradigm, tested Caucasian subjects with either masked or unmasked faces using Caucasian and Asian samples. The participants exhibited the best performance in recognizing an unmasked face condition and the poorest when asked to recognize a masked face that they had seen earlier without a mask. Accuracy was also poorer for Asian faces than Caucasian faces. The second experiment presented Asian or Caucasian faces having different emotional expressions, with and without masks. The results for this task, which involved identifying which emotional expression the participants had seen on the presented face, indicated that emotion recognition performance decreased for faces portrayed with masks. The emotional expressions ranged from the most accurately to least accurately recognized as follows: happy, neutral, disgusted, and fearful. Emotion recognition performance was poorer for Asian stimuli compared to Caucasian. Experiment 3 used the same participants and stimuli and asked participants to indicate the social distance they would prefer to observe with each pictured person. The participants preferred a wider social distance with unmasked faces compared to masked faces. Social distance also varied by the portrayed emotion: ranging from farther to closer as follows: disgusted, fearful, neutral, and happy. Race was also a factor; participants preferred wider social distance for Asian compared to Caucasian faces. Altogether, our findings indicated that during the COVID-19 pandemic face perception and social distance were affected by mask use, ORE.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Klepzig ◽  
Julia Wendt ◽  
Bettina Sarnowski ◽  
Alfons O. Hamm ◽  
Martin Lotze

Abstract Single case studies about patients with unilateral insular lesions reported deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions. However, there is no consensus about both the actual extent of impairments and the role of lesion lateralization. To investigate associations of brain lesions and impairments in a facial emotion recognition task, we used voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) in a group of 29 stroke patients in the chronic stage, 16 with left and 13 with right hemispheric lesion. Recognition accuracy was impaired for fearful and angry expressions in patients with left hemispheric lesions compared to 14 matched healthy controls. VLSM analyses revealed that lesions centered around the left insula were associated with impaired recognition of emotional facial expressions. We here demonstrate a critical role for the left insula in decoding unpleasant emotions from facial expressions and therefore present further evidence for a broader role for the insular cortex not restricted to disgust processing.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Israelashvlili

Previous research has found that individuals vary greatly in emotion differentiation, that is, the extent to which they distinguish between different emotions when reporting on their own feelings. Building on previous work that has shown that emotion differentiation is associated with individual differences in intrapersonal functions, the current study asks whether emotion differentiation is also related to interpersonal skills. Specifically, we examined whether individuals who are high in emotion differentiation would be more accurate in recognizing others’ emotional expressions. We report two studies in which we used an established paradigm tapping negative emotion differentiation and several emotion recognition tasks. In Study 1 (N = 363), we found that individuals high in emotion differentiation were more accurate in recognizing others’ emotional facial expressions. Study 2 (N = 217), replicated this finding using emotion recognition tasks with varying amounts of emotional information. These findings suggest that the knowledge we use to understand our own emotional experience also helps us understand the emotions of others.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110184
Author(s):  
Paola Surcinelli ◽  
Federica Andrei ◽  
Ornella Montebarocci ◽  
Silvana Grandi

Aim of the research The literature on emotion recognition from facial expressions shows significant differences in recognition ability depending on the proposed stimulus. Indeed, affective information is not distributed uniformly in the face and recent studies showed the importance of the mouth and the eye regions for a correct recognition. However, previous studies used mainly facial expressions presented frontally and studies which used facial expressions in profile view used a between-subjects design or children faces as stimuli. The present research aims to investigate differences in emotion recognition between faces presented in frontal and in profile views by using a within subjects experimental design. Method The sample comprised 132 Italian university students (88 female, Mage = 24.27 years, SD = 5.89). Face stimuli displayed both frontally and in profile were selected from the KDEF set. Two emotion-specific recognition accuracy scores, viz., frontal and in profile, were computed from the average of correct responses for each emotional expression. In addition, viewing times and response times (RT) were registered. Results Frontally presented facial expressions of fear, anger, and sadness were significantly better recognized than facial expressions of the same emotions in profile while no differences were found in the recognition of the other emotions. Longer viewing times were also found when faces expressing fear and anger were presented in profile. In the present study, an impairment in recognition accuracy was observed only for those emotions which rely mostly on the eye regions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Tell ◽  
Denise Davidson ◽  
Linda A. Camras

Eye gaze direction and expression intensity effects on emotion recognition in children with autism disorder and typically developing children were investigated. Children with autism disorder and typically developing children identified happy and angry expressions equally well. Children with autism disorder, however, were less accurate in identifying fear expressions across intensities and eye gaze directions. Children with autism disorder rated expressions with direct eyes, and 50% expressions, as more intense than typically developing children. A trend was also found for sad expressions, as children with autism disorder were less accurate in recognizing sadness at 100% intensity with direct eyes than typically developing children. Although the present research showed that children with autism disorder are sensitive to eye gaze direction, impairments in the recognition of fear, and possibly sadness, exist. Furthermore, children with autism disorder and typically developing children perceive the intensity of emotional expressions differently.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxiao Li

In the natural environment, facial and bodily expressions influence each other. Previous research has shown that bodily expressions significantly influence the perception of facial expressions. However, little is known about the cognitive processing of facial and bodily emotional expressions and its temporal characteristics. Therefore, this study presented facial and bodily expressions, both separately and together, to examine the electrophysiological mechanism of emotional recognition using event-related potential (ERP). Participants assessed the emotions of facial and bodily expressions that varied by valence (positive/negative) and consistency (matching/non-matching emotions). The results showed that bodily expressions induced a more positive P1 component and a shortened latency, whereas facial expressions triggered a more negative N170 and prolonged latency. Among N2 and P3, N2 was more sensitive to inconsistent emotional information and P3 was more sensitive to consistent emotional information. The cognitive processing of facial and bodily expressions had distinctive integrating features, with the interaction occurring in the early stage (N170). The results of the study highlight the importance of facial and bodily expressions in the cognitive processing of emotion recognition.


Author(s):  
Izabela Krejtz ◽  
Krzysztof Krejtz ◽  
Katarzyna Wisiecka ◽  
Marta Abramczyk ◽  
Michał Olszanowski ◽  
...  

Abstract The enhancement hypothesis suggests that deaf individuals are more vigilant to visual emotional cues than hearing individuals. The present eye-tracking study examined ambient–focal visual attention when encoding affect from dynamically changing emotional facial expressions. Deaf (n = 17) and hearing (n = 17) individuals watched emotional facial expressions that in 10-s animations morphed from a neutral expression to one of happiness, sadness, or anger. The task was to recognize emotion as quickly as possible. Deaf participants tended to be faster than hearing participants in affect recognition, but the groups did not differ in accuracy. In general, happy faces were more accurately and more quickly recognized than faces expressing anger or sadness. Both groups demonstrated longer average fixation duration when recognizing happiness in comparison to anger and sadness. Deaf individuals directed their first fixations less often to the mouth region than the hearing group. During the last stages of emotion recognition, deaf participants exhibited more focal viewing of happy faces than negative faces. This pattern was not observed among hearing individuals. The analysis of visual gaze dynamics, switching between ambient and focal attention, was useful in studying the depth of cognitive processing of emotional information among deaf and hearing individuals.


2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (10) ◽  
pp. 1475-1483 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. S. Kendler ◽  
L. J. Halberstadt ◽  
F. Butera ◽  
J. Myers ◽  
T. Bouchard ◽  
...  

BackgroundWhile the role of genetic factors in self-report measures of emotion has been frequently studied, we know little about the degree to which genetic factors influence emotional facial expressions.MethodTwenty-eight pairs of monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart were shown three emotion-inducing films and their facial responses recorded. These recordings were blindly scored by trained raters. Ranked correlations between twins were calculated controlling for age and sex.ResultsTwin pairs were significantly correlated for facial expressions of general positive emotions, happiness, surprise and anger, but not for general negative emotions, sadness, or disgust or average emotional intensity. MZ pairs (n=18) were more correlated than DZ pairs (n=10) for most but not all emotional expressions.ConclusionsSince these twin pairs had minimal contact with each other prior to testing, these results support significant genetic effects on the facial display of at least some human emotions in response to standardized stimuli. The small sample size resulted in estimated twin correlations with very wide confidence intervals.


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