Perceptual biases in processing facial identity and emotion

Normal observers demonstrate a bias to process the left sides of faces during perceptual judgments about identity or emotion. This effect suggests a right cerebral hemisphere processing bias. To test the role of the right hemisphere and the involvement of configural processing underlying this effect, young and older control observers and patients with right hemisphere damage completed two chimeric faces tasks (emotion judgment and face identity matching) with both upright and inverted faces. For control observers, the emotion judgment task elicited a strong left-sided perceptual bias that was reduced in young controls and eliminated in older controls by face inversion. Right hemisphere damage reversed the bias, suggesting the right hemisphere was dominant for this task, but that the left hemisphere could be flexibly recruited when right hemisphere mechanisms are not available or dominant. In contrast, face identity judgments were associated most clearly with a vertical bias favouring the uppermost stimuli that was eliminated by face inversion and right hemisphere lesions. The results suggest these tasks involve different neurocognitive mechanisms. The role of the right hemisphere and ventral cortical stream involvement with configural processes in face processing is discussed.     

Spatial-attention and emotional evocation: line bisection performance and visual art emotional evocation

Lesion studies demonstrate that the right temporal-parietal region (RTP) is important for mediating spatial attention. The RTP is also involved in emotional experiences that can be evoked by art. Normal people vary in their ability to allocate spatial attention, thus, people who can better allocate attention might also be more influenced by the emotional messages of the paintings (evocative impact). Seventeen healthy participants bisected an unlabeled 100mm line and their performance on this task was used to create two groups, individuals who were more (mALB) and less accurate (lALB). These participants also judged 10 paintings on five qualities, Evocative Impact, Aesthetics, Novelty, Technique, and Closure by marking a 100mm line from 1 (low degree) to 10 (high degree). An ANOVA indicated differences in accuracy on the line bisection (LB) between the two groups. Additional ANOVAs, using the quality ratings as the dependent measure, revealed that the mALB group scored the Evocative Impact greater than the lALB group. These results suggest that the differences in attentional bias between the two groups, as indicated by their LB performance, might influence their evocative impact or reactions and also be a 'barometer' of other RTP functions, including emotional processing.     

Emotional competence in children with autism: Diagnostic criteria and empirical evidence

The diagnostic criteria of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) include emotional impairments. However, scientific evidence for these impairments is varied and subtle. In this contribution, recent empirical studies that examined the emotional competence in children and adolescents with ASD are reviewed. Four aspects of emotional competence that are important to children’s daily social functioning (expression, perception, responding, and understanding) are discussed, differentiating between mentally retarded and normally intelligent children and adolescents with and without ASD in natural and structured contexts. On various accounts, the emotional impairments of children with ASD that are found in scientific studies provide a more differentiated view on the impairments suggested by the diagnostic literature. Consistent empirical findings and gaps in the field are discussed. Theoretical and clinical recommendations for assessment procedures are suggested.     

Pointing with the eyes: the role of gaze in communicating danger

Facial expression and direction of gaze are two important sources of social information, and what message each conveys may ultimately depend on how the respective information interacts in the eye of the perceiver. Direct gaze signals an interaction with the observer but averted gaze amounts to "pointing with the eyes", and in combination with a fearful facial expression may signal the presence of environmental danger. We used fMRI to examine how gaze direction influences brain processing of facial expression of fear. The combination of fearful faces and averted gazes activated areas related to gaze shifting (STS, IPS) and fear-processing (amygdala, hypothalamus, pallidum). Additional modulation of activation was observed in motion detection areas, in premotor areas and in the somatosensory cortex, bilaterally. Our results indicate that the direction of gaze prompts a process whereby the brain combines the meaning of the facial expression with the information provided by gaze direction, and in the process computes the behavioral implications for the observer.     

Sympathetic arousal to a vestibular stressor in high and low hostile men

The aim of the present experiment was to extend the literature on hostility and a cerebral systems based model of sympathetic arousal to a vestibular-based stress. Several authors have concluded that autonomic stress reactivity in high hostile individuals must be interpersonally based, whereas healthy vestibular system functioning does not depend on interpersonal features. Utilizing a vestibular activation paradigm, skin conductance levels of 15 high hostile and 15 low hostile men were recorded after brief passive rotation about the vertical neuroaxis. It was expected that hostile individuals would exhibit higher skin conductance levels after rotation compared with low hostile individuals. The results confirmed expectations of heightened sympathetic tone among high hostiles subsequent to vestibular stress. Overall, the findings are interpreted to support a cerebral model of frontal region capacity limitation for regulation of vestibular stress that is independent of psychosocial mechanisms.     

Alteration of expected hemispheric asymmetries: valence and arousal effects in neuropsychological models of emotion

The relative advantage of the left (LH) over the right hemisphere (RH) in processing of verbal material for most individuals is well established. Nevertheless, several studies have reported the ability of positively and negatively valenced stimuli to enhance and reverse, respectively, the usual LH>RH asymmetry. These studies, however, have used baseline stimuli that differed from emotional stimuli on two dimensions (i.e., valence and verbal/nonverbal nature), creating interpretive difficulties as to whether differences across these conditions are due to differences in valence or the verbal/nonverbal nature of the primes used in the baseline condition. In addition, these studies, along with many others in the literature, have failed to control for potential confounding effects of arousal. Emotional stimuli vary on dimensions of valence as well as arousal and arousal may be asymmetrically presented in the brain therefore contributing to observed asymmetries. Taken together, these considerations underscore the importance of controlling for both valence as well as arousal in any investigation of the effects of emotional stimuli. The objectives of the present study were twofold: (1) to employ an appropriate baseline condition to render emotional stimuli vs. baseline stimuli comparisons meaningful and (2) to examine the extent to which emotional verbal stimuli, equated for arousal level, alter the expected LH>RH asymmetry in a consonant trigram task. Results demonstrated that when LH lateralized consonant trigram presentations were preceded by a positive prime, an enhancement of the expected LH>RH asymmetry was observed. In contrast, when trigram presentations lateralized to the RH were preceded by a negative prime, a complete reversal of the typical asymmetry was found with RH>LH performance. These results are analogous to the pattern of relative hemispheric activations observed for various mood states. Controlling for arousal in studies investigating asymmetries associated with emotional processing may allow more clear interpretation of data intended to test predictions of neuropsychological models of emotion. Moreover, equating stimuli on the dimension of arousal as well as valence may shed more light on conflicting findings with regard to perception vs. expression of emotion.     

How Did the Sport Make You Feel? Looking at the Three Dimensions of Emotion through a Gendered Lens

Emotional responses to mediated messages are dependent on the viewer and the content of the message. In this experiment, self-reported emotional responses of undergraduate females (N = 43) to gendered sports portrayals featuring male and female athletes were measured on the self-assessment mannikin. Female viewers felt more positive, aroused and dominant while watching sports broadcasts featuring female athletes rather than broadcasts featuring male athletes. These finding suggest that female viewers have these emotional responses due to the fact that these female athletes are surpassing the expectations their participation held in a traditionally masculine area. Also, feelings of positivity and arousal toward male athletes participating in feminine sports shows an acceptance of male athletes exhibiting characteristics traditionally thought exclusive to females.     

Children’s Affect Expression and Frontal EEG Asymmetry: Transactional Associations with Mothers’ Depressive Symptoms

Although parents and children are thought to influence one another's affect and behavior, few studies have examined the direction of effects from children to parents, particularly with respect to parental psychopathology. We tested the hypothesis that children's affective characteristics are associated with the course of mothers' depressive symptoms. Children's affect expression was observed during a series of mother-child interaction tasks, and children's resting frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry was assessed in a psychophysiology laboratory. Mothers' depressive symptoms were assessed at two time points, approximately one year apart, at the mother-child interaction visits. Depressive symptoms increased over time for mothers with a history of childhood-onset depression whose children exhibited right frontal EEG asymmetry. Depressive symptoms were associated with high child negative affect at both time points for mothers whose children exhibited right frontal EEG asymmetry. Cross-lagged models with a subset of participants provided some evidence of both parent-to-child and child-to-parent directions of effects. Findings suggest that akin to other interpersonal stressors, children's affective characteristics may contribute to maternal depressive symptoms.     

Attentional mechanisms associated with repressive distancing

This research explores the role of attentional shift and disengagement in repressive distancing. During a target-detection task in which emotional and neutral facial expressions were used as cues, participants received performance feedback intended to elicit a negative emotional reaction that rendered the task either threatening or not threatening to self-concept. When the task was perceived to threaten self-concept, repressors distanced themselves by rapidly disengaging their attention from the facial expressions rather than by slowly shifting or not shifting their attention to the facial expressions. Attentional disengagement was accompanied by sympathetic nervous system activity suggestive of a defense response. This research provides further insight into the nature and consequences of the interplay of dispositional tendencies, situational contexts, and higher order cognitive influences in attentional behavior.