Caricaturing facial expressions

The physical differences between facial expressions (e.g. fear) and a reference norm (e.g. a neutral expression) were altered to produce photographic-quality caricatures. In Experiment 1, participants rated caricatures of fear, happiness and sadness for their intensity of these three emotions; a second group of participants rated how 'face-like' the caricatures appeared. With increasing levels of exaggeration the caricatures were rated as more emotionally intense, but less 'face-like'. Experiment 2 demonstrated a similar relationship between emotional intensity and level of caricature for six different facial expressions. Experiments 3 and 4 compared intensity ratings of facial expression caricatures prepared relative to a selection of reference norms - a neutral expression, an average expression, or a different facial expression (e.g. anger caricatured relative to fear). Each norm produced a linear relationship between caricature and rated intensity of emotion; this finding is inconsistent with two-dimensional models of the perceptual representation of facial expression. An exemplar-based multidimensional model is proposed as an alternative account.     

5~6岁幼儿对不同文化背景卡通面孔再认的眼动研究

采用不同文化背景卡通面孔为刺激材料,探究中国幼儿对中国风、日本风与欧美风女性卡通面孔再认的差异及其眼动机制。结果显示：（1）卡通面孔再认正确率差异显著,日本风面孔具有记忆优势;女童对三种面孔再认正确率均显著高于男童;（2）卡通面孔特质中的夸张性对卡通面孔再认正确率的预测显著;（3）文化背景与性别因素显著影响平均注视时间、注视点个数、眼跳次数和幅度及瞳孔大小等总体眼动指标;（4）兴趣区数据显示：对日本风面孔的总注视时间和注视点个数最高;卡通面孔再认主要依赖于眼部、其次为鼻子;文化背景与兴趣区存在交互作用,在注视时间、注视点个数与首注视点指标上,提示幼儿更关注日本风的眼睛区域与欧美风的鼻子区域。综上,幼儿对不同文化背景卡通面孔的记忆和眼动加工存在差异,日本风卡通面孔的记忆优势可能基于其夸张性高的面孔特质,尤其在眼睛部位;行为学与眼动指标均提示女童对卡通面孔的再认具有优势。     

The Analogical Argument for Animal Pain

Philosophical defenders of animal liberation believe that we have direct duties to animals. Typically a presumption of that belief is that animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering. Notoriously, however, a strand of Western scientific and philosophical thought has held animals to be incapable of experiencing pain, and even today one frequently encounters in discussions of animal liberation expressions of scepticism about whether animals really experience pain.
The Analogical Argument for Animal Pain responds to this scepticism by claiming that it is just as reasonable for me to believe that animals feel pain, given my only evidence for this is shared behaviour and physiology, as it is for me to believe that other humans feel pain on the basis of similar evidence. In this paper I expound and defend this Argument.