Ekman: Emotion in the Human Face

1990

Our goal is to build a system of 3-D animation of facial expressions of emotion correlated with the intonation of the voice. Up till now, the existing systems did not take into account the link between these two features. Many linguists and psychologists have noted the importance of spoken intonation for conveying different emotions associated with speakers' messages. Moreover, some psychologists have found some universal facial expressions linked to emotions and attitudes. We will look at the rules that control these relations (intonation/emotions and facial expressions/emotions) as well as the coordination of these various modes of expressions. Given an utterance, we consider how the message (what is new/old information in the given context) transmitted through the choice of accents and their placement, are conveyed through the face. The facial model integrates the action of each muscle or group of muscles as well as the propagation of the muscles' movement. It is also adapted to the FACS FACS notation (Facial Action Coding System) created by P. Ekman and W. Friesen to describe facial expressions. Our first step will be to enumerate and to differentiate facial movements linked to emotions from the ones linked to conversation. Then, we will examine what the rules are that drive them and how their different actions interact.

Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 2020

The global COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a rapid shift to online delivery in higher education. This learning and teaching environment is associated with reduced student engagement, a crucial prerequisite of student satisfaction, retention and success. This paper presents a case study that explored student engagement in the synchronous virtual learning environment, during the mandatory move to exclusive online learning in Australian higher education in April to June 2020. Three university instructors used the Teaching and Learning Circles Model to observe a series of their peers' synchronous virtual classrooms, from which they reflected on ways to enhance their own practice. The findings demonstrate how student engagement in these classrooms can be strengthened across the four constructs of Kahu and Nelson’s (2018) engagement conceptual framework: belonging; emotional response; wellbeing and self-efficacy. The case study also reveals limitations of the synchronous virtual environment as a means of supporting student engagement in the online learning and teaching environment, and proposes ways to address them. Against emerging reports of increased mental health issues among isolated university students during the current pandemic, the case study's recommendations to improve student wellbeing and belonging are particularly salient. This article also highlights the usefulness of the Teaching and Learning Circles Model of peer observation as a way to guide its participants' reflections on their own practice, support their collegiality with academic peers and build their confidence and competence in the synchronous virtual learning environment.

Journal of Strategic Security, 2016

Communication Theory, 1991

The biological origins of automated patterns of human interaction are explored. Automated patterns of interaction are distinguished from deliberate patterns. Automated patterns consist of two particular types: stimulation regulation and emotional responsiveness. Evidence for the biological origins of these patterns is obtained by studying the early interactions of infants and neonates, surveying the ethological parallels, exploring the evolutionary adaptiveness of the specific patterns, and ascertaining physiological, psychopharmacological, and brain mechanisms responsible for the patterns. Although circumstantial, the case for a biological basis for stimulation regulation and emotional responsiveness is very suggestive.

Journal of Strategic Security, 2016

For over a decade, Eolene has developed and evaluated cognitive complexity interventions to reduce and prevent destructive conflict through participatory research and end-user partnerships in diverse communities, using the cross-culturally validated measure, integrative complexity (IC)

Perception

People with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have difficulty with socio-emotional functioning; however, research on facial emotion recognition (FER) remains inconclusive. Individuals with ASD might be using atypical compensatory mechanisms that are exhausted in more complex tasks. This study compared response accuracy and speed on a forced-choice FER task using neutral, happy, sad, disgust, anger, fear and surprise expressions under both timed and non-timed conditions in children with and without ASD ( n = 18). The results showed that emotion recognition accuracy was comparable in the two groups in the non-timed condition. However, in the timed condition, children with ASD were less accurate in identifying anger and surprise compared to children without ASD. This suggests that people with ASD have atypical processing of anger and surprise that might become challenged under time pressure. Understanding these atypical processes, and the environmental factors that challenge them, could...

Scientific Reports

Concerning the neural mechanisms underlying social communication, much of our knowledge has come from research in the visual modality. Visual social transmission via facial expressions is known to involve limbic/ paralimbic structures, including the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and ventral medial prefrontal cortex/orbitofrontal cortex (vmPFC/OFC), and the face-perception network (e.g., the fusiform face area/FFA; cf. 32,33). Akin to their relevance to emotion and social communication, these regions are also nodes shared by the emotion network 34 and the social network 35,36. Although neural evidence concerning olfactory signaling of emotion remains relatively scant, converging evidence has implicated similar key structures of the social and emotion networks, including limbic/prelimbic areas and the FFA 26,29,37-40. While these structures represent a core system, supporting amodal, abstract processing of social emotion, the neural system that collectively underpins olfactory communication (chemosignaling) of food choices has not been clearly defined. Analogous to animal paradigms of STFP, we presented social cues immediately before the presentation of food objects in a 2-alternative-forced-choice (2AFC) task of food healthiness judgment (Fig. 1). Besides manipulating emotion (disgust or neutral), we also included a factor of source (human/social signal or non-human/primary elicitor). By contrasting responses to social (human) signals of disgust (faces and sweat) against responses to primary elicitors of disgust (synthetic odors and natural scenes), we would exclude general disgust effects, thereby isolating specific effects of social disgust. Furthermore, by including a modality factor (olfactory vs. visual), we would pit olfactory responses against visual responses to accentuate modality-selectivity (i.e., olfactory primacy) in social signaling of food choices, akin to the phenomenon of STFP in animals that is dependent on olfactory cues. Therefore, in a 2-by-2-by-2 (emotion-by-source-by-modality) factorial experimental design combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we tested the hypothesis that social signals (especially chemosignals) would improve food healthiness judgement by recruiting key social and emotional areas in the brain. Methods Participants. Eighteen healthy female participants took part in the study, who had with normal olfaction and normal or corrected-to-normal vision, no history of neuropsychological problems, and no current use of psychotropic medications. Normal olfactory function was determined based on participants' self-reported sense of smell and objective assessment (e.g., odor intensity and pleasantness ratings) during a lab visit. Individuals showing aberrant olfactory performance or with nasal infections/allergies were excluded from participating in the study.

1991

The face is an interesting object to animate for several reasons: it is an important channel of communication and therefore important to any human body animation, and it is a complex object in that it is composed of many nonrigid interacting nonarticulated regions. In this paper, we examine the face, and present it as as a hierarchically structured regionally defined object. Based on this regional decomposition, and a set of primitive actions, we describe an encoding of a large set of high level facial action descriptors. We also present ...

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

This study examined facial expressions produced during a British Sign Language (BSL) narrative task (Herman et al., International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 49(3):343-353, 2014) by typically developing deaf children and deaf children with autism spectrum disorder. The children produced BSL versions of a video story in which two children are seen to enact a language-free scenario where one tricks the other. This task encourages elicitation of facial acts signalling intention and emotion, since the protagonists showed a range of such expressions during the events portrayed. Results showed that typically developing deaf children produced facial expressions which closely aligned with native adult signers' BSL narrative versions of the task. Children with ASD produced fewer targeted expressions and showed qualitative differences in the facial actions that they produced.

Psychology and Neuroscience, 2014

Down syndrome (DS) is one of the most common chromosomal abnormalities. Delays in cognitive development are found in the first years of life. As years pass, it may turn into intellectual deficiencies that unfold into several aspects, including difficulty recognizing emotional facial expressions. The present study investigated the recognition of six universal facial emotional expressions in a population of children aged 6-11 years who were divided into two groups: DS group and typically developing children (TDC) group. We used the Perception Test of Facial Emotional Expressions (Teste de Percepção de Emoções Faciais; TEPEF) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III) and found that children with DS presented alterations in the recognition of expressions of disgust, surprise, and fear, whereas the recognition of happiness, sadness, and anger was maintained at a level comparable to the TDC group. Participants with DS presented significant positive correlations between sadness and Picture completion, Mazes, Arithmetic, Vocabulary, Digits, Verbal IQ, Verbal Comprehension Index, and Working Memory Index. All other facial expressions showed significant negative correlations with the Intelligence Quotient and WISC-III factorial index subtests. Absence of correlations was found among the TEPEF's six facial expressions and Information, Coding, Symbols, and Working Memory Index. The contribution of this study is related to understanding the characteristics of the recognition of facial emotions in children with DS, an important component of social relationships with their peers, schools, and families.