Assessing the way people look to judge their intentions.

Abstract

Faces of unknown persons are processed to infer the intentions of these persons not only when they depict full-blown emotions, but also at rest, or when these faces do not signal any strong feelings. We explored the brain processes involved in these inferences to test whether they are similar to those found when judging full-blown emotions. We recorded the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by faces of unknown persons who, when they were photographed, were not asked to adopt any particular expression. During the ERP recording, participants had to decide whether each face appeared to be that of a positively, negatively, ambiguously, or neutrally intentioned person. The early posterior negativity, the EPN, was found smaller for neutrally categorized faces than for the other faces, suggesting that the automatic processes it indexes are similar to those evoked by full-blown expressions and thus that these processes might be involved in the decoding of intentions. In contrast, in the same 200-400 ms time window, ERPs were not more negative at anterior sites for neutrally intentioned faces. Second, the peaks of the late positive potentials (LPPs) maximal at parietal sites around 700 ms postonset were not significantly smaller for neutrally intentioned faces. Third, the slow positive waves that followed the LPP were larger for faces that took more time to categorize, that is, for ambiguously intentioned faces. These three series of unexpected results may indicate processes similar to those triggered by full-blown emotions studies, but they question the characteristics of these processes.

Ambiguous at the second sight: Mixed facial expressions trigger late electrophysiological responses linked to lower social impressions

“…On our preferred interpretation, the frontal midline LPP reflects the mental effort of resolving ambiguity. This interpretation is in line with findings previously reported with face stimuli (Debruille, Brodeur, & Hess, 2011;Sun et al 2017;Willadsen-Jensen & Ito, 2006) but also with non-face stimuli (Engel, Fries, & Singer, 2001). Presumably, the categorization task activated specific representations of prototypical emotional expressions (happy and angry), which highlight conflict between specific features in the case of mixed displays.…”

The neural dynamics underlying the interpersonal effects of emotional expression on decision making

“…Therefore, the well-known components in the processing of emotional displays, particularly facial expressions5960 were also analyzed. Those components include occipito-temporal N17059616263 and fronto-central vertex positive potential (VPP)59636465 reflecting attentional capture by emotion, occipito-temporal early posterior negativity (EPN)616667 and fronto-central N259686970 indexing affective discrimination, parietal P300 reflecting sustained attention and elaborative categorization processes5960617172, and fronto-central slow positive wave (SPW) linking with response selection and decision5966. Relevant to the current study, the difference between happy and angry expressions was examined.…”

Task instructions: a part of the social context of participants? A N300 and N400 event-related brain potential study

“…ERPs and alone's ERPs were small compared to the main difference obtained between these ERPs and those of the strangers. Moreover, the ERP modulations do not match those known to be generated by manipulations of emotion (Debruille, Brodeur & Hess, 2011;Schindler, Bruchmann, Bublatzky & Straube, 2019).…”

“…LPPs are also larger when more than one meaning is consciously perceived, such as when the equivocality (example: irony/sarcasm) of a word is detected (Del Goleto, Kostova & Blanchet 2016). Similarly, faces that are judged to be ambiguous elicit larger (and later) LPPs than faces that are judged to be either positively or negatively valenced (Debruille, Brodeur & Hess, 2011).…”