恐惧与厌恶情绪图片系统的编制：基于两种情绪的区分

基于恐惧与厌恶情绪刺激材料界定模糊的问题,实验一在总结前人研究中实验材料方面混淆恐惧和厌恶的基础上,通过问卷法完成了对恐惧与厌恶图片系统初步的搜集、整理工作;实验二通过进一步测评得到了具有良好信度的恐惧与厌恶情绪图片系统,图片系统中的恐惧与厌恶情绪很好的分离,且图片系统中动物、场景、物体三类图片的恐惧、厌恶程度均存在显著差异,可适用于需要不同种类情绪刺激的具体应用性研究。     

恐惧与厌恶情绪图片系统的编制：基于两种情绪的区分

基于恐惧与厌恶情绪刺激材料界定模糊的问题,实验一在总结前人研究中实验材料方面混淆恐惧和厌恶的基础上,通过问卷法完成了对恐惧与厌恶图片系统初步的搜集、整理工作;实验二通过进一步测评得到了具有良好信度的恐惧与厌恶情绪图片系统,图片系统中的恐惧与厌恶情绪很好的分离,且图片系统中动物、场景、物体三类图片的恐惧、厌恶程度均存在显著差异,可适用于需要不同种类情绪刺激的具体应用性研究。     

Priming the activation of fear and disgust: evidence for semantic processing

Given that semantic processes mediate early processes in the elicitation of emotions, we expect that already activated emotion-specific information can influence the elicitation of an emotion. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to masked International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures that elicited either disgust or fear. Following the presentation of the primes, other IAPS pictures were presented as targets that elicited either disgust or fear. The participants' task was to classify the target picture as either disgust or fear evoking. In Experiment 2, we substituted the IAPS primes with facial expressions of either disgust or fear. In Experiment 3, we substituted the IAPS primes with the words disgust or fear. In all three experiments, we found that prime-target combinations of the same emotion were responded to faster than prime-target combinations of different emotions. Our findings suggest that the influence of primes on the elicitation of emotion is mediated by activated schemata or appraisal processes.     

7～10岁自闭症谱系障碍儿童对情绪面孔的觉察与加工

为了考察自闭症谱系障碍(autism spectrum disorder,ASD)儿童对不同情绪面孔的觉察和加工情况,设计两个眼动实验任务,要求14名7～10岁ASD儿童和20名同年龄正常儿童观看图片。实验一采用将情绪面孔嵌入风景图片中引起语义不一致的刺激;实验二采用含有情绪面孔的无意义背景乱序图片刺激。结果发现:(1)ASD儿童对不同情绪面孔的觉察时间都显著长于正常儿童;(2)与正常儿童一样,ASD儿童表现出对恐惧面孔的注意偏向;(3)实验二中,ASD儿童对不同情绪面孔内部特征区的注意分配与正常儿童不同;正常儿童能注意最能展示该类情绪特征信息的区域,如恐惧的眼睛、愉快的嘴巴,而ASD儿童对三类情绪面孔特征区的注意分配方式相似;(4)两个实验条件下,ASD者对不同情绪面孔的觉察、加工模式与正常儿童相似。     

Here is looking at you: emotional faces predominate in binocular rivalry

Two incompatible pictures compete for perceptual dominance when they are presented to one eye each. This so-called binocular rivalry results in an alternation of dominant and suppressed percepts. In accordance with current theories of emotion processing, the authors' previous research has suggested that emotionally arousing pictures predominate in this perceptual process. Three experiments were run with pictures of emotional facial expressions that are known to induce emotions while being well controlled in terms of physical characteristics. In Experiment 1, photographs of emotional and neutral facial expressions were presented of the same actor to minimize physical differences. In Experiment 2, schematic emotional expressions were presented to further eliminate low-level differences. In Experiment 3, a probe-detection task was conducted to control for possible response-biases. Together, these data clearly demonstrate that emotional facial expressions predominate over neutral expressions; they are more often the first percept and they are perceived for longer durations. This is not caused by physical stimulus properties or by response-biases. This novel approach supports that emotionally significant visual stimuli are preferentially perceived.     

Rapid facial reactions to emotional facial expressions in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder

Typical adults mimic facial expressions within 1000 ms, but adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) do not. These rapid facial reactions (RFRs) are associated with the development of social-emotional abilities. Such interpersonal matching may be caused by motor mirroring or emotional responses. Using facial electromyography (EMG), this study evaluated mechanisms underlying RFRs during childhood and examined possible impairment in children with ASD. Experiment 1 found RFRs to happy and angry faces (not fear faces) in 15 typically developing children from 7 to 12 years of age. RFRs of fear (not anger) in response to angry faces indicated an emotional mechanism. In 11 children (8-13 years of age) with ASD, Experiment 2 found undifferentiated RFRs to fear expressions and no consistent RFRs to happy or angry faces. However, as children with ASD aged, matching RFRs to happy faces increased significantly, suggesting the development of processes underlying matching RFRs during this period in ASD.     

Facial Morphology and Children's Categorization of Facial Expressions of Emotions: A Comparison Between Asian and Caucasian Faces

The effects of Asian and Caucasian facial morphology were examined by having Canadian children categorize pictures of facial expressions of basic emotions. The pictures were selected from the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion set developed by D. Matsumoto and P. Ekman (1989). Sixty children between the ages of 5 and 10 years were presented with short stories and an array of facial expressions, and were asked to point to the expression that best depicted the specific emotion experienced by the characters. The results indicated that expressions of fear and surprise were better categorized from Asian faces, whereas expressions of disgust were better categorized from Caucasian faces. These differences originated in some specific confusions between expressions.     

Facial morphology and children's categorization of facial expressions of emotions: a comparison between Asian and Caucasian faces

The effects of Asian and Caucasian facial morphology were examined by having Canadian children categorize pictures of facial expressions of basic emotions. The pictures were selected from the Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion set developed by D. Matsumoto and P. Ekman (1989). Sixty children between the ages of 5 and 10 years were presented with short stories and an array of facial expressions, and were asked to point to the expression that best depicted the specific emotion experienced by the characters. The results indicated that expressions of fear and surprise were better categorized from Asian faces, whereas expressions of disgust were better categorized from Caucasian faces. These differences originated in some specific confusions between expressions.     

What is a nice smile like that doing in a place like this? Automatic affective responses to environments influence the recognition of facial expressions

An affective priming paradigm with pictures of environmental scenes and facial expressions as primes and targets, respectively, was employed in order to investigate the role of natural (e.g., vegetation) and built elements (e.g., buildings) in eliciting rapid affective responses. In Experiment 1, images of environmental scenes were digitally manipulated to make continua of priming pictures with a gradual increase of natural elements (and a decrease of built elements). The primes were followed by presentations of facial expressions of happiness and disgust as to-be-recognized target stimuli. The recognition times of happy faces decreased and the recognition times of disgusted faces increased as the quantity of natural/built material present in the primes increased/decreased. The physical changes also influenced the evaluated restorativeness and affective valence of the primes. In Experiment 2, the primes used in Experiment 1 were manipulated in such a way that they were void of any recognizable natural or built elements but contained either similar colours or similar shapes as primes in Experiment 1. This time the results showed no effect of priming. These results were interpreted to give support for a view that the priming effect by environmental pictures is due to the primes representing environmental scenes and not due to the presence of certain low-level colour or shape information in the primes. In all, the present results provide evidence that perception of environmental scenes elicits automatic affective responses and influences recognition of facial expressions.     

An investigation of basic facial expression recognition in autism spectrum disorders

This study was designed to test three competing hypotheses (impaired configural processing; impaired Theory of Mind; atypical amygdala functioning) to explain the basic facial expression recognition profile of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In Experiment 1 the Ekman and Friesen (1976) series were presented upright and inverted. Individuals with ASD were significantly less accurate than controls at recognising upright facial expressions of fear, sadness and disgust and their pattern of errors suggested some configural processing difficulties. Impaired recognition of inverted facial expressions suggested some additional difficulties processing the facial features. Unexpectedly, the clinical group misidentified fear as anger. In Experiment 2 feature processing of facial expressions was investigated by presenting stimuli in a piecemeal fashion, starting with either just the eyes or the mouth. Individuals with ASD were impaired at recognising fear from the eyes and disgust from the mouth; they also confused fearful eyes as being angry. The findings are discussed in terms of the three competing hypotheses tested.     

Recognizing emotion in faces: developmental effects of child abuse and neglect

The contributions to the recognition of emotional signals of (a) experience and learning versus (b) internal predispositions are difficult to investigate because children are virtually always exposed to complex emotional experiences from birth. The recognition of emotion among physically abused and physically neglected preschoolers was assessed in order to examine the effects of atypical experience on emotional development. In Experiment 1, children matched a facial expression to an emotional situation. Neglected children had more difficulty discriminating emotional expressions than did control or physically abused children. Physically abused children displayed a response bias for angry facial expressions. In Experiment 2, children rated the similarity of facial expressions. Control children viewed discrete emotions as dissimilar, neglected children saw fewer distinctions between emotions, and physically abused children showed the most variance across emotions. These results suggest that to the extent that children's experience with the world varies, so too will their interpretation and understanding of emotional signals.     

Children acquire emotion categories gradually

Some accounts imply that basic-level emotion categories are acquired early and quickly, whereas others imply that they are acquired later and more gradually. Our study examined this question for fear, happiness, sadness, and anger in the context of children's categorization of emotional facial expressions. Children (N = 168, 2–5 years) first labeled facial expressions of six emotions and were then shown a box and asked to put all and only, e.g., scared people in it. Before using fear in labeling, children had begun to include ‘fear’ faces and to exclude other (especially positive) faces from the fear box/category; after using fear, children continued to include other (especially negative) faces. The same pattern was observed for happiness, sadness, and anger. Emotion categories begin broad, including all emotions/faces of the same valence, and then gradually narrow over the preschool years.     

Affective divergence: automatic responses to others' emotions depend on group membership

Extant research suggests that targets' emotion expressions automatically evoke similar affect in perceivers. The authors hypothesized that the automatic impact of emotion expressions depends on group membership. In Experiments 1 and 2, an affective priming paradigm was used to measure immediate and preconscious affective responses to same-race or other-race emotion expressions. In Experiment 3, spontaneous vocal affect was measured as participants described the emotions of an ingroup or outgroup sports team fan. In these experiments, immediate and spontaneous affective responses depended on whether the emotional target was ingroup or outgroup. Positive responses to fear expressions and negative responses to joy expressions were observed in outgroup perceivers, relative to ingroup perceivers. In Experiments 4 and 5, discrete emotional responses were examined. In a lexical decision task (Experiment 4), facial expressions of joy elicited fear in outgroup perceivers, relative to ingroup perceivers. In contrast, facial expressions of fear elicited less fear in outgroup than in ingroup perceivers. In Experiment 5, felt dominance mediated emotional responses to ingroup and outgroup vocal emotion. These data support a signal-value model in which emotion expressions signal environmental conditions.     

Intentions vs. resemblance: Understanding pictures in typical development and autism

Research has debated whether children reflect on artists’ intentions when comprehending pictures, or instead derive meaning entirely from resemblance. We explore these hypotheses by comparing how typically developing toddlers and low-functioning children with autism (a population impaired in intentional reasoning) interpret abstract pictures. In Experiment 1, both groups mapped familiar object names onto abstract pictures, however, they related the same representations to different 3-D referents. Toddlers linked abstract pictures with intended referents they did not resemble, while children with autism mapped picture-referent relations based on resemblance. Experiment 2 showed that toddlers do not rely upon linguistic cues to determine intended referential relations. Experiment 3 confirmed that the responding of children with autism was not due to perseveration or associative word learning, and also provided independent evidence of their intention-reading difficulties. We argue that typically developing children derive meaning from the social-communicative intentions underlying pictures when resemblance is an inadequate cue to meaning. By contrast, children with autism do not reflect on artists’ intentions and simply relate pictures to whatever they happen to resemble.     

Facial reactions to violent and comedy films: Association with callous–unemotional traits and impulsive aggression

The current study adds to prior research by investigating specific (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, anger and fear) and general (corrugator and zygomatic muscle activity) facial reactions to violent and comedy films among individuals with varying levels of callous–unemotional (CU) traits and impulsive aggression (IA). Participants at differential risk of CU traits and IA were selected from a sample of 1225 young adults. In Experiment 1, participants (N?=?82) facial expressions were recorded while they watched violent and comedy films. Video footage of participants' facial expressions was analysed using FaceReader, a facial coding software that classifies facial reactions. Findings suggested that individuals with elevated CU traits showed reduced facial reactions of sadness and disgust to violent films, indicating low empathic concern in response to victims' distress. In contrast, impulsive aggressors produced specifically more angry facial expressions when viewing violent and comedy films. In Experiment 2 (N?=?86), facial reactions were measured by monitoring facial electromyography activity. FaceReader findings were verified by the reduced facial electromyography at the corrugator, but not the zygomatic, muscle in response to violent films shown by individuals high in CU traits. Additional analysis suggested that sympathy to victims explained the association between CU traits and reduced facial reactions to violent films.     

The interference effect of emotional expressions on facial identity recognition in preschool-aged children

The present study aims to explore the influence of facial emotional expressions on pre-scholars' identity recognition was analyzed using a two-alternative forced-choice matching task. A decrement was observed in children's performance with emotional faces compared with neutral faces, both when a happy emotional expression remained unchanged between the target face and the test faces and when the expression changed from happy to neutral or from neutral to happy between the target and the test faces (Experiment 1). Negative emotional expressions (i.e. fear and anger) also interfered with children's identity recognition (Experiment 2). Obtained evidence suggests that in preschool-age children, facial emotional expressions are processed in interaction with, rather than independently from, the encoding of facial identity information. The results are discussed in relationship with relevant research conducted with adults and children.     

Social fear and expressive reactions to social stimuli

This study explored whether subjects high as compared to low in social fear react with a more negative emotional response, measured as facial electromyographic (EMG) activity, when exposed to social stimuli (pictures of angry and happy facial expressions). It was found that subjects who rated themselves as relatively high in public speaking fear gave larger negative facial EMG responses (Corrugator supercilii muscle activity) to angry faces than did the low fear subjects. Low fear subjects, on the other hand, gave larger positive facial EMG responses (Zygomatic major muscle activity) to happy faces than did the high fear subjects. It was further found that happy stimuli were rated as more hostile and less friendly and happy by the high fear group. Consistent with earlier findings, it was concluded that the facial EMG technique is sensitive to detecting different reactions among subjects relatively high and low in social fear.     

Mother knows best: effects of maternal modelling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance behaviour in toddlers

The present study was conducted to investigate the influence of parental modelling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance towards novel, fear-relevant stimuli in a sample of 30 toddlers. The toddlers were shown a rubber snake and spider, which were alternately paired with either negative or positive facial expressions by their mothers. Both stimuli were presented again after a 1- and a 10-min delay, while mothers maintained a neutral expression. The children showed greater fear expressions and avoidance of the stimuli following negative reactions from their mothers. This was true for both genders although the degree of modelled avoidance was greater in girls than in boys. The strong observational learning results are consistent with views that modelling constitutes a mechanism by which fear may be acquired early in life.     

The acquisition of automatic response biases through categorization

Participants categorized left- and right-pointing line drawings presented together with pictures, whose pointing direction (to the left or right) was ambiguous (spatially ambiguous pictures; Experiments 1 and 2) or that pointed neither to the left nor to the right (spatially neutral pictures; Experiment 3). Subsequently, the spatially ambiguous and neutral pictures were used in a Simon task, wherein participants made left and right keypresses on the basis of the color of the pictures, while ignoring the object that they depicted. In all three experiments, performance was facilitated when the response required by the color matched the pointing direction of the line drawings with which the picture had been previously paired. Performance was impeded when the response required by the color did not match the pointing direction of the line drawings with which the picture had been previously paired. Thus, responses indirectly associated with pictures by category membership were automatically triggered even when the responses were inappropriate.     

成人与幼儿面部表情注意偏好的眼动研究

本研究选取45名3-5岁幼儿和39名大学本科生作为被试。实验材料为恐惧、愤怒、悲伤、惊讶和高兴五种面部表情图片。用Tobbi眼动仪记录被试观察表情图片时的眼动轨迹。结果发现：（1）成人偏好高兴表情,并在高兴表情上的注视时间和次数显著大于幼儿;（2）成人偏好注视眼部,幼儿偏好注视嘴部。结果表明,面部表情注意偏好的发展具有社会依存性,趋向于偏好积极情绪,这种发展变化与面部表情部位的注意偏好相关。