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Despite efforts towards evaluation standards in facial expression analysis (e.g. FERA 2011), there is a need for up-to-date standardised evaluation procedures, focusing in particular on current challenges in the field. One of the challenges that is actively being addressed is the automatic estimation of expression intensities. To continue to provide a standardisation platform and to help the field progress beyond its current limitations, the FG 2015 Facial Expression Recognition and Analysis challenge (FERA 2015) will challenge participants to estimate FACS Action Unit (AU) intensity as well as AU occurrence on a common benchmark dataset with reliable manual annotations. Evaluation will be done using a clear and well-defined protocol. In this paper we present the second such challenge in automatic recognition of facial expressions, to be held in conjunction with the 11 IEEE conference on Face and Gesture Recognition, May 2015, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Three sub-challenges are defined: the detection of AU occurrence, the estimation of AU intensity for pre-segmented data, and fully automatic AU intensity estimation. In this work we outline the evaluation protocol, the data used, and the results of a baseline method for the three sub-challenges.

The relationship between nonverbal behavior and severity of depression was investigated by following depressed participants over the course of treatment and video recording a series of clinical interviews. Facial expressions and head pose were analyzed from video using manual and automatic systems. Both systems were highly consistent for FACS action units (AUs) and showed similar effects for change over time in depression severity. When symptom severity was high, participants made fewer affiliative facial expressions (AUs 12 and 15) and more non-affiliative facial expressions (AU 14). Participants also exhibited diminished head motion (i.e., amplitude and velocity) when symptom severity was high. These results are consistent with the Social Withdrawal hypothesis: that depressed individuals use nonverbal behavior to maintain or increase interpersonal distance. As individuals recover, they send more signals indicating a willingness to affiliate. The finding that automatic facial expression analysis was both consistent with manual coding and revealed the same pattern of findings suggests that automatic facial expression analysis may be ready to relieve the burden of manual coding in behavioral and clinical science.

Investigated the relationship between change over time in severity of depression symptoms and facial expression. Depressed participants were followed over the course of treatment and video recorded during a series of clinical interviews. Facial expressions were analyzed from the video using both manual and automatic systems. Automatic and manual coding were highly consistent for FACS action units, and showed similar effects for change over time in depression severity. For both systems, when symptom severity was high, participants made more facial expressions associated with contempt, smiled less, and those smiles that occurred were more likely to be accompanied by facial actions associated with contempt. These results are consistent with the “social risk hypothesis” of depression. According to this hypothesis, when symptoms are severe, depressed participants withdraw from other people in order to protect themselves from anticipated rejection, scorn, and social exclusion. As their symptoms fade, participants send more signals indicating a willingness to affiliate. The finding that automatic facial expression analysis was both consistent with manual coding and produced the same pattern of depression effects suggests that automatic facial expression analysis may be ready for use in behavioral and clinical science.