Categorical Perception of Facial Expressions: Categories and their Internal Structure

Gelder, B. de; Teunisse, Jan-Pieter; Benson, Philip J.

doi:10.1080/026999397380005

Cited by 126 publications

(108 citation statements)

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“…Etcoff and Magee (1992) observed superior performance when A and B were pairs of faces that straddled the boundary between expression categories. Their technique of morphing face stimuli to investigate expression CP was rapidly taken up by other researchers (Bimler & Kirkland, 2001;Calder, Young, Perrett, Etcoff, & Rowland, 1996;de Gelder, Teunisse, & Benson, 1997;Roberson et al, 1999;Young et al, 1997) and extended to the case of facial identity (Beale & Keil, 1995) and species identity (Campbell, Pascalis, Coleman, Wallace, & Benson, 1997). The present study extends the work on the CP for facial identity with a major emphasis on the role of familiarity.…”

supporting

confidence: 48%

Face Familiarity, Distinctiveness, and Categorical Perception

Angeli

Davidoff

Valentine

2008

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Four experiments with faces support the original interpretation of categorical perception (CP) as only present for familiar categories. Unlike in the results of Levin and Beale (2000), no evidence is found for face identity CP with unfamiliar faces. Novel face identities were shown to be capable of encoding for immediate sorting purposes but the representations utilized do not have the format of perceptual categories. One possibility explored was that a choice of a distinctive face as an end-point in a morphed continuum can spuriously produce effects that resemble CP. Such morphed continua provided unequal psychological responses to equal physical steps though much more so in a better likeness paradigm than for forced-choice recognition. Thus, researchers doing almost the same experiments may produce very different results and come to radically different conclusions.

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supporting

confidence: 48%

Face Familiarity, Distinctiveness, and Categorical Perception

Angeli

Davidoff

Valentine

2008

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…This pair was also selected for individual analyses of the B-Band B-W continua. For the W-W continua, both the 40%-60% and 50%-70% pairs straddled the 66%-33% boundary, so both were selected to represent crossboundary discrimination accuracy (de Gelder, Teunisse, & Benson, 1997).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Categorical perception occurs in newly learned faces, other-race faces, and inverted faces

Levin

Beale

2000

Perception & Psychophysics

113

127

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On the basis of findings that categorical perception (CP) is possible in complex visual stimuli such as faces, the present study tested for CP on continua between unfamiliar face pairs. Results indicate that CP can be observed for unfamiliar faces, in both familiar (same-race) and unfamiliar (other-race) groups. In addition, significant CP effects were observed in inverted faces. Finally, half-continua were tested where midpoint stimuli became endpoints. This was done to ensure that stimulus artifacts did not account for the observed CP effects. Consistent with the perceptual rescaling associated with Cp, half-continua showed a rescaled CP effect. We argue that these CP effects are based on the rapid acquisition of perceptual equivalence classes.Categorical perception (CP) occurs when discriminations between stimuli within one category are more difficult than discriminations between stimuli that span the boundary between categories. The question is, under what conditions does this occur? Initial research suggested that CP would be observed only for naturally occurring continua and was perhaps a sign of innate or highly practiced predispositions to break these continua into equivalence classes (e.g., Liberman, Harris, Kinney, & Lane, 1961). For example, Etcoff and Magee (1992) observed CP on continua between different facial expressions and suggested this supports the hypothesis that the perception of facial expression is innate. However, other findings suggest that such predispositions are not necessary to observe CP. In another study using faces, Beale and Keil (1995) found that participants perceive continua between individual familiar faces categorically. This is the case despite the likelihood that the continua between these faces have never been experienced by participants.IfCP is possible along artificial continua, then hypotheses assuming that CP is a sign of innate or even highly familiar perceptual categories are incorrect. Here, we explore two basic questions about the degree to which CP can be observed in the absence ofprevious learning. First, will it be possible to observe CP on novel continua between endpoints that do not have long-standing represen-The authors thank Robert Goldstone and Bill Merriman for reading drafts of this report and Stevan Hamad and Andy Young for many helpful discussions. Correspondence should be addressed to D. T. Levin, Kent State University, Department of Psychology, Kent Hall, Kent, OH 44121-0001 (e-mail: dlevin@kent.edu). J. M. Beale can be reached at the Department of Psychology, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI 49401 (e-mail: bealej@river.it.gvsu.edu).-Accepted by previous editor, Myron L. Braunstein tations associated with them as do familiar faces? A number of recent findings suggest that this kind of representation is not a necessary precondition for CPO This brings up the possibility that CP might be observed on continua between newly learned faces. Second, ifCP occurs on novel continua between novel endpoints, then under what conditions will such effe...

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“…These results extend our initial findings on faster saccadic and manual localization of emotional facial expressions (Bannerman et al in press) by showing that exactly the same pattern of responses applies to fearful faces and fearful body postures, thereby suggesting that fear expressed in faces and bodies is processed in a similar fashion. To rule out the possibility that low-level image differences between fear and neutral stimuli may have been responsible for the observed effect, we inverted the stimuli, a procedure that interferes with face ( Tanaka & Farah 1993) and body (Reed et al 2003;Stekelenburg & de Gelder 2004) processing and the recognition of facial emotion (Searcy & Bartlett 1996;de Gelder et al 1997), but maintains feature differences. No significant differences between fear and neutral, in terms of reaction time or accuracy, were observed for any of the inverted stimulus conditions, suggesting that emotional valence, rather than features, is the critical factor in influencing the speed of saccadic and manual localization.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using inversion, it is possible to distinguish meaning from features. Inversion disrupts face ( Tanaka & Farah 1993) and body ( Reed et al 2003;Stekelenburg & de Gelder 2004) processing and the recognition of facial emotion (Searcy & Bartlett 1996;de Gelder et al 1997) while maintaining feature differences. If threat-bias effects reduce with inversion, then negative valence is crucial, rather than features.…”

Section: (B) Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orienting to threat: faster localization of fearful facial expressions and body postures revealed by saccadic eye movements

et al. 2009

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Most studies investigating speeded orientation towards threat have used manual responses. By measuring orienting behaviour using eye movements a more direct and ecologically valid measure of attention can be made. Here, we used a forced-choice saccadic and manual localization task to investigate the speed of discrimination for fearful and neutral body and face images. Fearful/neutral body or face pairs were bilaterally presented for either 20 or 500 ms. Results showed faster saccadic orienting to fearful body and face emotions compared with neutral only at the shortest presentation time (20 ms). For manual responses, faster discrimination of fearful bodies and faces was observed only at the longest duration (500 ms). More errors were made when localizing neutral targets, suggesting that fearful bodies and faces may have captured attention automatically. Results were not attributable to low-level image properties as no threat bias, in terms of reaction time or accuracy, was observed for inverted presentation. Taken together, the results suggest faster localization of threat conveyed both by the face and the body within the oculomotor system. In addition, enhanced detection of fearful body postures suggests that we can readily recognize threat-related information conveyed by body postures in the absence of any face cues.

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Categorical Perception of Facial Expressions: Categories and their Internal Structure

Cited by 126 publications

References 1 publication

Face Familiarity, Distinctiveness, and Categorical Perception

Face Familiarity, Distinctiveness, and Categorical Perception

Categorical perception occurs in newly learned faces, other-race faces, and inverted faces

Orienting to threat: faster localization of fearful facial expressions and body postures revealed by saccadic eye movements

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