Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T14:09:01.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Facial-Expression Affective Attributes and their Configural Correlates: Components and Categories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2014

David L. Bimler  and
Galina V. Paramei
David L. Bimler*
Affiliation:
Massey University (New Zealand)
Galina V. Paramei
Affiliation:
Darmstadt University of Technology
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David L. Bimler, Department of Health and Human Development, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North, New Zealand. E-mail: d.bimler@massey.ac.nz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present study investigates the perception of facial expressions of emotion, and explores the relation between the configural properties of expressions and their subjective attribution. Stimuli were a male and a female series of morphed facial expressions, interpolated between prototypes of seven emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust, and neutral) from Ekman and Friesen (1976). Topographical properties of the stimuli were quantified using the Facial Expression Measurement (FACEM) scheme. Perceived dissimilarities between the emotional expressions were elicited using a sorting procedure and processed with multidimensional scaling. Four dimensions were retained in the reconstructed facial-expression space, with positive and negative expressions opposed along D1, while the other three dimensions were interpreted as affective attributes distinguishing clusters of expressions categorized as “Surprise-Fear,” “Anger,” and “Disgust.” Significant relationships were found between these affective attributes and objective facial measures of the stimuli. The findings support a componential explanatory scheme for expression processing, wherein each component of a facial stimulus conveys an affective value separable from its context, rather than a categorical-gestalt scheme. The findings further suggest that configural information is closely involved in the decoding of affective attributes of facial expressions. Configural measures are also suggested as a common ground for dimensional as well as categorical perception of emotional faces.

Este estudio investiga la percepción de las expresiones faciales de la emoción y explora la relación entre las propiedades configurales de las expresiones y su atribución subjetiva. Los estímulos eran una serie de expresiones faciales transformadas por ordenador, interpuestas entre los prototipos de siete emociones (felicidad, tristeza, miedo, ira, sorpresa, asco y neutral) tomados de Ekman y Friesen (1976). Las propiedades topográficas de los estímulos se cuantificaron mediante el esquema Facial Expression Measurement (FACEM). Las disimilaridades percibidas entre las expresiones emocionales se elicitaron mediante un procedimiento de clasificación y se procesaron con escalonamiento multidimensional. Se retuvieron cuatro dimensiones en el espacio facial-expresión reconstruido, con expresiones positivas y negativas contrapuestas a lo largo de D1, y las restantes tres dimensiones se interpretaron como atributos afectivos, distinguiendo clusters de expresiones clasificadas como “Sorpresa/Miedo”, “Ira”, y “Asco”. Se hallaron relaciones significativas entre estos atributos afectivos y las medidas faciales objetivas de los estímulos. Los resultados apoyan un esquema explicativo componencial para el procesamiento de las expresiones, en el que cada componente de un estímulo facial conlleva un valor afectivo separable de su contexto, más que un esquema categórico de tipo Gestalt. Además sugieren que la información configural juega un papel importante en la decodificación de los atributos afectivos de las expresiones faciales Además, sugieren que las medidas configurales constituyen en terreno común de la percepción dimensional y categórica de las caras emocionales.

Keywords

facial expressionemotionfacial configurationaffective dimensionsexpresión facialemociónconfiguración facialdimensiones afectivas
Type
Articles
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , May 2006 , pp. 19 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abelson, R.P., & Sermat, V. (1962). Multidimensional scaling of facial expressions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 546–554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Alvarado, N. (1996). Congruence of meaning between facial expressions of emotion and selected emotion terms. Motivation and Emotion, 20, 33–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarado, N., & Jameson, K. (1996). New findings on the contempt expression. Cognition and Emotion, 10, 379–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartlett, M.S., Viola, P.A., Sejnowski, T.J., Golomb, B.A., Larsen, J., Hager, J.C., & Ekman, P. (1996). Classifying facial action. In Touretzky, D., Mozer, M., & Hasselmo, M. (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems, Vol. 8 (pp. 823–829). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Beale, J.M., & Keil, F.C. (1995). Categorical effects in the perception of faces. Cognition, 57, 217–239.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benson, P.J. (1999). A means of measuring facial expressions and a method for predicting emotion categories in clinical disorders of affect. Journal of Affective Disorders, 55, 179–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, P.J., & Katsikitis, M. (1995). Production, reproduction, measurement and objective analyses of facial expressions. Paper presented to 3rd Meeting of European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Oxford, UK.Google Scholar
Bimler, D., & Kirkland, J. (1997). Multidimensional scaling of hierarchical sorting data applied to facial expressions. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 38, 349–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bimler, D., & Kirkland, J. (2001). Categorical perception of facial expressions of emotion: Evidence from multidimensional scaling. Cognition and Emotion, 15, 633–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calder, A.J., Burton, A.M., Miller, P., Young, A.W., & Akamatsu, S. (2001). A principal components analysis of facial expressions. Vision Research, 41, 1179–1208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Calder, A.J., Rowland, D., Young, A.W., Nimmo-Smith, I., Keane, J., & Perrett, D.I. (2000a). Caricaturing facial expressions. Cognition, 76, 105–146.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Calder, A.J., Young, A.W., Keane, J., & Dean, M. (2000b). Configural information in facial expression perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 26, 527–551.Google ScholarPubMed
Calder, A.J., Young, A.W., Perrett, D.I., Etcoff, N.L., & Rowland, D. (1996). Categorical perception of morphed facial expressions. Visual Cognition, 3, 81–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cliff, N., & Young, F.W. (1968). On the relation between unidimensional judgments and multidimensional scaling. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 3, 269–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Gelder, B., Teunisse, J.-P., & Benson, P.J. (1997). Categorical perception of facial expressions: Categories and their internal structure. Cognition and Emotion, 11, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, P. (1993). Facial expression and emotion. American Psychologist, 48, 384–392.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W.V. (1976). Pictures of facial affect. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W.V. (1978). Facial Action Coding System. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Emde, R.N., Kligman, D.H., Reich, J.H., & Wade, T.D. (1978). Emotional expression in infancy: I. Initial studies of social signaling and an emergent model. In Lewis, M. & Rosenblum, L.A. (Eds.), The development of affect (pp. 125–148). New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Essa, I.A., & Pentland, A. (1995). Facial expression recognition using visually extracted facial action parameters. In Bischel, M. (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Workshop on Automatic Face- and Gesture-Recognition (pp. 35–40). Zurich, Switzerland.Google Scholar
Etcoff, N.L., & Magee, J.J. (1992). Categorical perception of facial expressions. Cognition, 44, 227–240.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frijda, N.H. (1969). Recognition of emotion. In Berkowitz, L. (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 4 (pp. 167–223). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hsu, S.-M., & Young, A.W. (2004). Adaptation effects in facial expression recognition. Visual Cognition, 11, 871–899.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katsikitis, M. (1997). The classification of facial expressions of emotion: A multidimensional-scaling approach. Perception, 26, 613–626.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Katsikitis, M., Pridmore, S., & Marzullo, M. (1999). The Facial Expression Measurement System in the assessment of the efficacy of transcranial magnetic stimulation in the treatment of depression. European Review of Applied Psychology, 49, 123–128.Google Scholar
Keaney, G.D., & McKenzie, S. (1993). Machine interpretation of emotion: Design of a memory-based expert system for interpreting facial expressions in terms of signaled emotions. Cognitive Science, 17, 589–622.Google Scholar
Kirkland, J., Bimler, D., & Paramei, G.V. (2000). Categorical and attributional perception of facial expressions – comparing upright and inverted faces. Perception, 29, 39S.Google Scholar
Kolb, B., Wilson, B., & Taylor, L. (1992). Developmental changes in the recognition and comprehension of facial expressions: Implications for frontal lobe function. Brain and Cognition, 20, 74–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lemay, G., Kirouack, G., & Lacouture, Y. (1995). Expressions faciales émotionnelles spontanées dynamiques et statiques: comparaison d'études de jugement catégoriel et dimensionnel. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 27, 125–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morishima, S. (1996). Modeling of facial expression and emotion for human communication system. Displays, 17, 15–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nummenmaa, T. (1992). Pure and blended emotion in the human face. Psychometric experiments. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.Google Scholar
Nummenmaa, T., & Kauranne, U. (1958). Dimensions of facial expression. Report of the Department of Psychology No. 20. Institute of Pedagogics, Jyväskylä, Finnland.Google Scholar
Ortony, A., & Turner, T.J. (1990). What's basic about basic emotions? Psychological Review, 97, 315–331.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Osgood, C.E. (1966). Dimensionality of the semantic space for communication via facial expressions. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 7, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paramei, G.V. (1996). [Outlined faces: Can they convey ‘emotional states’?] Psikhologicheskii Zhurnal, 17(1), 70–85 (in Russian).Google Scholar
Paramei, G.V., & Benson, P.J. (1998). A facial topology mediates decoding of facial expressions. Perception, 27, 132S.Google Scholar
Paramey, G.V., Schneider, K., Josephs, I., & Slusarek, M. (1994). Identification of emotional meaning in line drawings of faces. Report No. 44. Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, GermanyGoogle Scholar
Pilowsky, I., & Katsikitis, M. (1994). The classification of facial emotions: A computer-based taxonomic approach. Journal of Affective Disorders, 30, 61–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pilowsky, I., Thornton, M., & Stokes, B. (1985). A microcomputer-based approach to the quantification of facial expressions. Australasian Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine, 8, 70–75.Google Scholar
Royal, D.C., & Hays, W.L. (1959). Empirical dimensions of emotional behavior. Acta Psychologica, 15, 419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, J.A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1161–1178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, J.A., & Fehr, B. (1987). Relativity in the perception of emotion in facial expressions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 116, 223–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, J.A., & Fernández-Dols, J.M. (1997). What does a facial expression mean? In Russell, J.A. & Fernández-Dols, J.M. (Eds.), The psychology of facial expression (pp. 3–30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlosberg, H. (1954). Three dimensions of emotion. Psychological Review, 61, 81–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sergent, J., Ohta, S., MacDonald, B., & Zuck, E. (1994). Segregated processing of facial identity and emotion in the human brain: A PET study. Visual Cognition, 1, 349–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, C.A., & Ellsworth, P.C. (1985). Dimensions of cognitive appraisal in emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 813–838.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, C.A., & Scott, H.S. (1997). A componential approach to the meaning of facial expressions. In Russell, J.A. & Fernández-Dols, J.M. (Eds.), The psychology of facial expression (pp. 229–254). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stringer, P. (1967). Cluster analysis of non-verbal judgements of facial expressions. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 20, 71–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Takehara, T., & Suzuki, N. (2001). Robustness of the two-dimensional structure of recognition of facial expression: Evidence under different intensities of emotionality. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 93, 739–753.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wallbott, H.G., & Ricci-Bitti, P. (1993). Decoders' processing of emotional facial expression – a top-down or bottom-up mechanism? European Journal of Social Psychology, 23, 427–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yamada, H. (1993). Visual information for categorizing facial expression of emotions. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 7, 257–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, A.W., Rowland, D., Calder, A.J., Etcoff, N.L., Seth, A., & Perrett, D.I. (1997). Facial expression megamix: Tests of dimensional and category accounts of emotion recognition. Cognition, 63, 271–313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Young, M., & Yamane, S. (1992). Sparse population coding of faces in the inferotemporal cortex. Science, 256, 1327–1331.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed