Resting RSA is associated with natural and self-regulated responses to negative emotional stimuli

Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was assessed among 111 adult participants. These individuals were then asked to watch a positive or negative affective film in either a natural manner or while exaggerating their facial response. Facial reactions to the film were video-recorded and subsequently rated in terms of facial affect. Participants also self-reported the valence of their emotional experience. Results from regression analyses revealed that persons with low resting RSA behaviorally evidenced a more negative facial response to the negative film under natural-watch conditions. Low RSA individuals were also less able to modulate (i.e., amplify) their facial response to the negative film. In terms of self-report measures, persons in the exaggerate condition reported more positive affect to the positive film than did those in the natural-watch condition. Results suggest that cardiac vagal control is inversely associated with negative facial expression but positively associated with facial regulation ability to negative stimuli.     

Repeated short presentations of morphed facial expressions change recognition and evaluation of facial expressions

This study investigated whether sensitivity to and evaluation of facial expressions varied with repeated exposure to non-prototypical facial expressions for a short presentation time. A morphed facial expression was presented for 500 ms repeatedly, and participants were required to indicate whether each facial expression was happy or angry. We manipulated the distribution of presentations of the morphed facial expressions for each facial stimulus. Some of the individuals depicted in the facial stimuli expressed anger frequently (i.e., anger-prone individuals), while the others expressed happiness frequently (i.e., happiness-prone individuals). After being exposed to the faces of anger-prone individuals, the participants became less sensitive to those individuals’ angry faces. Further, after being exposed to the faces of happiness-prone individuals, the participants became less sensitive to those individuals’ happy faces. We also found a relative increase in the social desirability of happiness-prone individuals after exposure to the facial stimuli.     

情绪背景对面部表情识别的影响及其作用机制

正确识别面部表情对成功的社会交往有重要意义。面部表情识别受到情绪背景的影响。本文首先介绍了情绪背景对面部表情识别的增强作用,主要表现为视觉通道的情绪一致性效应和跨通道情绪整合效应;然后介绍了情绪背景对面部表情识别的阻碍作用,主要表现为情绪冲突效应和语义阻碍效应;接着介绍了情绪背景对中性和歧义面孔识别的影响,主要表现为背景的情绪诱发效应和阈下情绪启动效应;最后对现有研究进行了总结分析,提出了未来研究的建议。     

Infant physiological regulation and maternal risks as predictors of dyadic interaction trajectories in families with a preterm infant

This longitudinal study examined predictors of rates of growth in dyadic interaction quality in children born preterm who did not experience significant neurological findings during neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) hospitalization. Multiple methods were used to collect data from 120 preterm infants (48% girls, 52% boys) and their mothers. Infant heart rate variability (HRV), gestational age, neonatal health, feeding route, and maternal socioeconomic (SES) risks were assessed at NICU discharge (mean of 36 weeks postconception). Mother-child interactions were observed at 4, 9, 16, and 24 months postterm and analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling. On average, children's quality of play, interest, and attention increased over time while their dysregulation and irritability decreased, whereas average maternal positive affect and involvement declined in quality (ps < .05), although there was individual variation in rates of change. Mothers of infants with higher postfeeding HRV (i.e., vagal regulation) exhibited less decrease in positive affect and involvement between 4 months and 24 months, compared with mothers of infants with lower HRV (p < .05). Although infants with higher postfeeding HRV showed less positive affect and communication at 4 months, they exhibited significantly greater increases in positive affect and social competence and decreases in dysregulation and irritability between 4 months and 24 months, compared with infants with lower HRV (ps < .05). Dyads experiencing more SES risks showed less optimal interactions at 4 months; this difference remained as children grew older (ps < .05). Results have implications for our understanding of social development in preterm infants.     

Unpacking cognitive reappraisal: goals, tactics, and outcomes

Studies of emotion regulation typically contrast two or more strategies (e.g., reappraisal vs. suppression) and ignore variation within each strategy. To address such variation, we focused on cognitive reappraisal and considered the effects of goals (i.e., what people are trying to achieve) and tactics (i.e., what people actually do) on outcomes (i.e., how affective responses change). To examine goals, we randomly assigned participants to either increase positive emotion or decrease negative emotion to a negative stimulus. To examine tactics, we categorized participants' reports of how they reappraised. To examine reappraisal outcomes, we measured experience and electrodermal responding. Findings indicated that (a) the goal of increasing positive emotion led to greater increases in positive affect and smaller decreases in skin conductance than the goal of decreasing negative emotion, and (b) use of the reality challenge tactic was associated with smaller increases in positive affect during reappraisal. These findings suggest that reappraisal can be implemented in the service of different emotion goals, using different tactics. Such differences are associated with different outcomes, and they should be considered in future research and applied attempts to maximize reappraisal success.     

Perceptual biases for multimodal cues in chimpanzee (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>) affect recognition

The ability of organisms to discriminate social signals, such as affective displays, using different sensory modalities is important for social communication. However, a major problem for understanding the evolution and integration of multimodal signals is determining how humans and animals attend to different sensory modalities, and these different modalities contribute to the perception and categorization of social signals. Using a matching-to-sample procedure, chimpanzees discriminated videos of conspecifics' facial expressions that contained only auditory or only visual cues by selecting one of two facial expression photographs that matched the expression category represented by the sample. Other videos were edited to contain incongruent sensory cues, i.e., visual features of one expression but auditory features of another. In these cases, subjects were free to select the expression that matched either the auditory or visual modality, whichever was more salient for that expression type. Results showed that chimpanzees were able to discriminate facial expressions using only auditory or visual cues, and when these modalities were mixed. However, in these latter trials, depending on the expression category, clear preferences for either the visual or auditory modality emerged. Pant-hoots and play faces were discriminated preferentially using the auditory modality, while screams were discriminated preferentially using the visual modality. Therefore, depending on the type of expressive display, the auditory and visual modalities were differentially salient in ways that appear consistent with the ethological importance of that display's social function.     

Does affective information influence domestic dogs’ (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis lupus familiaris</Emphasis>) point-following behavior?

Several studies have examined dogs’ (Canis lupus familiaris) comprehension and use of human communicative cues. Relatively few studies have, however, examined the effects of human affective behavior (i.e., facial and vocal expressions) on dogs’ exploratory and point-following behavior. In two experiments, we examined dogs’ frequency of following an adult’s pointing gesture in locating a hidden reward or treat when it occurred silently, or when it was paired with a positive or negative facial and vocal affective expression. Like prior studies, the current results demonstrate that dogs reliably follow human pointing cues. Unlike prior studies, the current results also demonstrate that the addition of a positive affective facial and vocal expression, when paired with a pointing gesture, did not reliably increase dogs’ frequency of locating a hidden piece of food compared to pointing alone. In addition, and within the negative facial and vocal affect conditions of Experiment 1 and 2, dogs were delayed in their exploration, or approach, toward a baited or sham-baited bowl. However, in Experiment 2, dogs continued to follow an adult’s pointing gesture, even when paired with a negative expression, as long as the attention-directing gesture referenced a baited bowl. Together these results suggest that the addition of affective information does not significantly increase or decrease dogs’ point-following behavior. Rather these results demonstrate that the presence or absence of affective expressions influences a dogs’ exploratory behavior and the presence or absence of reward affects whether they will follow an unfamiliar adult’s attention-directing gesture.     

At face value: Categorization goals modulate vigilance for angry faces

The present research demonstrates that the attention bias to angry faces is modulated by how people categorize these faces. Since facial expressions contain psychologically meaningful information for social categorizations (i.e., gender, personality) but not for non-social categorizations (i.e., eye-color), angry facial expression should especially capture attention during social categorization tasks. Indeed, in three studies, participants were slower to name the gender of angry compared to happy or neutral faces, but not their color (blue or green; Study 1) or eye-color (blue or brown; Study 2). Furthermore, when different eye-colors were linked to a personality trait (introversion, extraversion) versus sensitivity to light frequencies (high, low), angry faces only slowed down categorizations when eye-color was indicative of a social characteristic (Study 3). Thus, vigilance for angry facial expressions is contingent on people's categorization goals, supporting the perspective that even basic attentional processes are moderated by social influences.     

Emotion regulation and emotional information processing: The moderating effect of emotional awareness

The aim of this study was to examine the moderating role of emotional awareness in the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and emotional information processing. A total of 120 female students regulated emotions while watching an unpleasant film. Before and after emotion induction, participants completed a set of tasks that required matching facial expressions. The results demonstrated that participants who were high in emotional awareness showed a significantly smaller increase in error responses (i.e., incorrect matches) than participants who were low in emotional awareness. However, this effect was observed only in suppression (i.e., inhibition of an emotionally expressive behavior), masking (i.e., emotion experienced with a happy expression) and control (i.e., no regulation) conditions. Among reappraisers, who were instructed to adopt a neutral attitude toward the film, regardless of whether they were high or low in emotional awareness, there was not a significant increase in error responses. This study shows that the potentially damaging impact of negative emotions on the processing of emotional information can be prevented by a high emotional awareness or with the implementation of reappraisal as an emotion regulation strategy.     

Digital disruption? Maternal mobile device use is related to infant social‐emotional functioning

Mobile device use has become increasingly prevalent, yet its impact on infant development remains largely unknown. When parents use mobile devices in front of infants, the parent is physically present but most likely distracted and unresponsive. Research using the classic Still Face Paradigm (SFP) suggests that parental withdrawal and unresponsiveness may have negative consequences for children's social‐emotional development. In the present study, 50 infants aged 7.20 to 23.60 months (M = 15.40, SD = 4.74) and their mothers completed a modified SFP. The SFP consisted of three phases: free play (FP; parent and infant play and interact), still face (SF; parent withdraws attention and becomes unresponsive), and reunion (RU; parent resumes normal interaction). The modified SFP incorporated mobile device use in the SF phase. Parents reported on their typical mobile device use and infant temperament. Consistent with the standard SFP, infants showed more negative affect and less positive affect during SF versus FP. Infants also showed more toy engagement and more engagement with mother during FP versus SF and RU. Infants showed the most social bids during SF and more room exploration in SF than RU. More frequent reported mobile device use was associated with less room exploration and positive affect during SF, and less recovery (i.e., engagement with mother, room exploration positive affect) during RU, even when controlling for individual differences in temperament. Findings suggest that the SFP represents a promising theoretical framework for understanding the impact of parent's mobile device use on infant social‐emotional functioning and parent–infant interactions.     

Understanding constricted affect in schizotypy through computerized prosodic analysis

Constricted affect (CA) is a cardinal negative symptom of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. It is unclear whether behaviorally-defined CA occurs in individuals with schizotypy-those with the personality organization reflective of schizophrenia liability. Moreover, it is unclear whether CA contributes to real world dysfunction in this population. The present study employed computerized prosodic analysis of natural speech procured during a laboratory procedure. Subjects were 89 individuals with psychometrically-defined schizotypy and 26 controls. Groups did not differ in any of the prosody measures examined here. Within the schizotypy group, increased prosodic expression was associated with positive schizotypy traits while decreased prosodic expression was associated with negative schizotypy traits. Prosodic deficits were significantly associated with reduced prosocial behaviors (e.g., talking with friends) but were not associated with subjective social satisfaction. Prosodic deficits characterize a subset of individuals with schizotypy who show a schizoid-like reduction in social behaviors without a concomitant reduction in social satisfaction.     

社会性发展迟滞大学生的表情加工及其类别知觉

本研究比较了社会性发展迟滞大学生与正常大学生的表情加工,探讨迟滞个体表情加工的特点及可能原因,还验证面部表情类别知觉效应。采用Morph情绪面孔实验发现：除恐惧情绪外,基本表情的强度越大被试对表情的识别越好;但迟滞个体的表情加工速度比正常个体慢,对愤怒的识别也更差;他们辨别混合表情中悲伤、愤怒的类别界线都发生偏移。迟滞个体的表情加工能力不如正常个体,并且对悲伤具有反应偏向,对愤怒存在加工缺陷。     

Comprehension and expression of affect in language-impaired children

Eight children with developmental language impairment (LI) and eight age-, sex-, socioeconomic-status-, and I.Q.-matched controls were given tests of comprehension and expression of affective intent in spoken language and through facial expression. The LI children performed significantly more poorly than did controls in both comprehension and spontaneous expression of vocal affect. On tasks involving emotional facial expression, the opposite results were observed: The LI children were more dramatic in their expression of facial affect than were the controls. Children with language impairment appear to have a deficit in affective comprehension and expression that is modality-specific, i.e., limited to vocal affect. The heightened range of affective facial expression that they demonstrate may be a compensatory mechanism to offset their difficulties with vocal affect.This work was supported by grant 12-203 from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, and by NINDS grant NS22343 for the Center for the Study of the Neurological Basis of Language.     

Multiple Framing: Verbal,Facial, and Vocal Cues in Risky Choice

Verbal framing effects have been widely studied, but little is known about how people react to multiple framing cues in risk communication, where verbal messages are often accompanied by facial and vocal cues. We examined joint and differential effects of verbal, facial, and vocal framing on risk preference in hypothetical monetary and life–death situations. In the multiple framing condition with the factorial design (2 verbal frames × 2 vocal tones × 4 basic facial expressions × 2 task domains), each scenario was presented auditorily with a written message on a photo of the messenger's face. Compared with verbal framing effects resulting in preference reversal, multiple frames made risky choice more consistent and shifted risk preference without reversal. Moreover, a positive tone of voice increased risk‐seeking preference in women. When the valence of facial and vocal cues was incongruent with verbal frame, verbal framing effects were significant. In contrast, when the affect cues were congruent with verbal frame, framing effects disappeared. These results suggest that verbal framing is given higher priority when other affect cues are incongruent. Further analysis revealed that participants were more risk‐averse when positive affect cues (positive tone or facial expressions) were congruently paired with a positive verbal frame whereas participants were more risk‐seeking when positive affect cues were incongruent with the verbal frame. In contrast, for negative affect cues, congruency promoted risk‐seeking tendency whereas incongruency increased risk‐aversion. Overall, the results show that facial and vocal cues interact with verbal framing and significantly affect risk communication. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Internet for the internationals: effects of internet use motivations on international students' college adjustment

Drawing upon the uses and gratifications approach, the current study examined how international students' Internet use motivations affect their academic, social, and emotional adjustments in the new environment. A total of 166 Chinese students studying in Korea participated in a web-based survey. First, a factor analysis identified four distinct motivations for Internet use: homeland orientation (to stay connected to the home country), local information seeking (to learn about the host society), local social interaction (to form interpersonal relationships locally), and entertainment. After controlling for the effects of sociodemographic variables (i.e., gender, year at school, length of residence, Korean language proficiency) and personality traits (i.e., extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism), Internet use motivations were found to be significant predictors of international students' social and emotional adjustments. Specifically, those seeking to build a local social network through the Internet reported greater satisfaction with their social life, whereas homeland orientation was associated with poorer emotional adaptation. Various Internet activities, such as e-mail, blogging, and instant messaging, were not significantly related to college adjustments, suggesting the multi-functionality of Internet-based communication channels.     

Normal face-based judgements of social characteristics despite severely impaired holistic face processing

Initial evidence indicates that face-based judgements of socially relevant characteristics such as people's trustworthiness or attractiveness are linked to the configural/holistic processing of facial cues. What remains a matter of debate, however, is whether such processing is actually necessary for normal social judgements to occur and whether it resembles the type of integrative processing as required for facial identification. To address these issues, we asked a well-characterized case of acquired prosopagnosia (PS) with a marked deficit in holistic processing for face identity to rate a series of faces on several dimensions of social relevance. PS provided ratings within the normal range for most of the social characteristics probed (i.e., aggression, attractiveness, confidence, intelligence, sociability, trustworthiness). Her evaluations deviated from those of healthy controls only when facial dominance was concerned. Taken together, these data demonstrate that the inability to integrate facial information during face individuation does not necessarily translate into a generalized deficit to evaluate faces on social dimensions.     

Effect of an observer's presence on facial behavior during dyadic communication

In everyday life, people communicate not only with another person but also in front of other people. How do people behave during communication when observed by others? Effects of an observer (presence vs absence) and interpersonal relationship (friends vs strangers vs alone) on facial behavior were examined. Participants viewed film clips that elicited positive affect (film presentation) and discussed their impressions about the clips (conversation). Participants rated their subjective emotions and social motives. Durations of smiles, gazes, and utterances of each participant were coded. The presence of an observer did not affect facial behavior during the film presentation, but did affect gazes during conversation. Whereas the presence of an observer seemed to facilitate affiliation in pairs of strangers, communication between friends was exclusive and not affected by an observer.     

Effect of alcoholic intoxication on the appreciation of different types of humor

Male subjects were placed into one of three intoxication conditions (no ethanol, low dose, high dose) and were exposed to humorous segments from television programs. During manifest intoxication or the corresponding period in the no-intoxication control condition, they were exposed, in a balanced order, to a segment containing blunt (i.e., unsophisticated, raw) humor and to a segment containing subtle (i.e., sophisticated, refined) humor. Subjects' facial reactions to the humorous stimuli were unobtrusively recorded and later analyzed by judges who were naive about the experimental conditions. Subjects also rated the funniness of the segments. The perceived funniness of blunt humor was found to increase with ethanol intoxication. For subtle humor, in contrast, perceived funniness was found to decrease with intoxication. This divergent interaction of reported humor appreciation was less apparent in the analysis of facial expressiveness. Although correlations between ratings and aspects of facial expression were generally positive, clearly corroborative support for the humor appraisals was found only in the frequency of smiles in response to subtle humor.     

Seeing ghosts: Negative body evaluation predicts overestimation of negative social feedback

The current study investigated whether negative body evaluation predicts women's overestimation of negative social feedback related to their own body (i.e., covariation bias). Sixty-five female university students completed a computer task where photos of their own body, of a control woman's body, and of a neutral object, were followed by nonverbal social feedback (i.e., facial crowds with equal numbers of negative, positive, and neutral faces). Afterward, women estimated the percentage of negative, positive, and neutral social feedback that followed their own body, the control woman's body, and the neutral object. The findings provided evidence for a covariation bias: negative body evaluation predicted higher estimates of negative social feedback for women's own body, but not for the other stimuli. Additionally, the covariation bias was not explained by differences in how women interpreted the social feedback (the facial stimuli). Clinical implications of the covariation bias to body image are discussed.