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Emotional Facial Expressions (emotional + facial_expression)
Selected AbstractsERP and RT Delays in Long-Term Abstinent Alcoholics in Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions During Gender and Emotion Categorization TasksALCOHOLISM, Issue 7 2010George Fein Background:, There is considerable evidence that alcoholics differ from nonalcoholics in the processing of stimuli that have emotional content. The current study examines those differences that are present in multi-year abstinent individuals. Methods:, We compared reaction time (RT), accuracy, and Event Related Potentials (ERP) measures in long-term abstinent alcoholics (LTAA, n = 52) with that in age- and gender-comparable nonalcoholic controls (NAC, n = 47). Subjects were presented with male and female faces exhibiting happy, neutral, or sad facial expressions and were instructed to identify the picture gender in 1 task and the emotion being expressed in a subsequent task. Results:, LTAA had slower RTs than NAC when instructed to identify emotion, while RT was comparable when identifying gender. There were no differences between groups on task accuracy. P160 latency was increased in LTAA for both tasks compared to NAC, though P160 amplitude did not differ between groups. The P160 effect was about 5 × as large as the RT effect and was statistically independent of the RT effect, while the RT effect was no longer present after removing variance because of the P160 effect. Conclusions:, Our data demonstrate slower early processing of emotional facial stimuli in alcoholics that is unresolved by long-term abstinence and is most sensitively indexed by delayed P160 latency in LTAA. [source] Blunted Rostral Anterior Cingulate Response During a Simplified Decoding Task of Negative Emotional Facial Expressions in Alcoholic PatientsALCOHOLISM, Issue 9 2007Jasmin B. Salloum Background:, Alcoholism is characterized by deficits in emotional functioning as well as by deficits in cognitive functioning. However, most brain imaging research on alcoholism has focused on cognition rather than emotion. Method:, We used an event-related functional magnetic imaging approach to examine alcoholics' brain blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response to evaluation of emotional stimuli and to compare their response to that of nonalcoholic controls. The task used was a simplified variant of a facial emotion-decoding task in which subjects determined the intensity level of a target emotion displayed as a facial expression. Facial expressions of happy, sad, anger, disgust, and fear were used as stimuli. Results:, Alcoholics and controls did not differ in accurately identifying the intensity level on the simple emotional decoding task but there were significant differences in their BOLD response during evaluation of facial emotion. In general, alcoholics showed less brain activation than nonalcoholic controls. The greatest differences in activation were during decoding of facial expressions of fear and disgust during which alcoholics had significantly less activation than controls in the affective division of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Alcoholics also had significantly less activation than controls in the affective division of the ACC, while viewing sad faces. Only to facial expressions of anger did the alcoholics show significant activation in the affective ACC and in this case, their BOLD response did not significantly differ from that of the controls. Conclusion:, Alcoholics show a deficit in the function of the affective division of the ACC during evaluation of negative facial emotions that can serve as cues for flight or avoidance. This deficit may underlie some of the behavioral dysfunction in alcoholism. [source] Choreographing emotional facial expressionsCOMPUTER ANIMATION AND VIRTUAL WORLDS (PREV: JNL OF VISUALISATION & COMPUTER ANIMATION), Issue 3-4 2010Robin J.S. Sloan Abstract While much is known about the appearance and human perception of emotional facial expressions, researchers and professionals experience difficulties when attempting to create believable animated characters. Methods for automating or capturing dynamic facial expressions have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, resulting in increasingly realistic characters. However, accurate replication of naturalistic movement does not necessarily ensure authentic character performance. In this paper, the authors present a project which makes use of creative animation practices and artistic reflection as methods of research. The output of animation practice is tested experimentally by measuring observer perception and comparing the results with artistic observations and predictions. Ultimately, the authors aim to demonstrate that animation practice can generate new knowledge about dynamic character performance, and that arts-based methods can and should be considered valuable tools in a field often dominated by technical methods of research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Information processing bias against emotional facial expressions in social anxietyJAPANESE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2010SO-YEON KIM Abstract The present study examined whether information processing bias against emotional facial expressions is present among individuals with social anxiety. College students with high (high social anxiety group; n = 26) and low social anxiety (low social anxiety group; n = 26) performed three different types of working memory tasks: (a) ordering positive and negative facial expressions according to the intensity of emotion; (b) ordering pictures of faces according to age; and (c) ordering geometric shapes according to size. The high social anxiety group performed significantly more poorly than the low social anxiety group on the facial expression task, but not on the other two tasks with the nonemotional stimuli. These results suggest that high social anxiety interferes with processing of emotionally charged facial expressions. [source] Hostility- and gender-related differences in oscillatory responses to emotional facial expressionsAGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR, Issue 6 2009Gennady G. Knyazev Abstract Hostility is associated with biases in the perception of emotional facial expressions, such that ambiguous or neutral expressions tend to be perceived as threatening or angry. In this study, the effects of hostility and gender on the perception of angry, neutral, and happy faces and on the oscillatory dynamics of cortical responses elicited by these presentations were investigated using time,frequency decomposition by means of wavelet transforms. Feelings of hostility predisposed subjects to perceive happy and neutral faces as less friendly. This effect was more pronounced in women. In hostile subjects, presentation of emotional facial expressions also evoked stronger posterior synchronization in the theta and diminished desynchronization in the alpha band. This may signify a prevalence of emotional responding over cognitive processing. These effects were also more pronounced in females. Hostile females, but not hostile males, additionally showed a widespread synchronization in the alpha band. This synchronization is tentatively explained as a manifestation of inhibitory control which is present in aggressive females, but not in aggressive males. Aggr. Behav. 35:502,513, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Bias in attending to emotional facial expressions: Anxiety and visual search efficiencyAPPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2010Eriko Matsumoto There has been much controversy around the relationship between anxiety and attentional processing of threat-related information. The purpose of this study was to examine how threatening facial expressions affect attentional processing, according to the level of trait anxiety. Through visual search tasks, two different components of attentional bias to threat were investigated: engagement and disengagement of attention from an angry face. Two main results were found. First, reaction times (RTs) were slower in detecting the absence of a discrepant face in the all angry-display conditions rather than other expression conditions; however, there was no difference between anxiety groups. Second, the difference in search efficiency for the angry versus happy target was significant within the high-anxiety group but not within the low-anxiety group. The results suggest that the detection process for angry faces is more efficient for highly anxious people. On the other hand, the time to disengage attention from angry faces was not associated with anxiety level. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||