Face Age and Eye Gaze Influence Older Adults’ Emotion Recognition

Campbell, Anna; Murray, Janice; Atkinson, Lianne; Ruffman, Ted

doi:10.1093/geronb/gbv114

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In the control group, this effect is somehow expected as the effects of age over expression recognition displayed by virtual characters has been related in the literature to the fact that elderly people is less used to technology and virtual environments (Marcos et al, 2010). It has also been related with the fact that visual acuity tends to decline with advancing age or even to the fact that older adults have an attentional bias towards old-age faces (Campbell et al, 2015). In the case of the group of patients, further studies that relate age with other factors due to the evolution of the schizophrenia shall be done in order to properly address this effect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual Avatar for Emotion Recognition in Patients with Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study

Marcos-Pablos

González-Pablos

Martín-Lorenzo

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Persons who suffer from schizophrenia have difficulties in recognizing emotions in others’ facial expressions, which affects their capabilities for social interaction and hinders their social integration. Photographic images have traditionally been used to explore emotion recognition impairments in schizophrenia patients, but they lack of the dynamism that is inherent to facial expressiveness. In order to overcome those inconveniences, over the last years different authors have proposed the use of virtual avatars. In this work, we present the results of a pilot study that explored the possibilities of using a realistic-looking avatar for the assessment of emotion recognition deficits in patients who suffer from schizophrenia. In the study, 20 subjects with schizophrenia of long evolution and 20 control subjects were invited to recognize a set of facial expressions of emotions showed by both the said virtual avatar and static images. Our results show that schizophrenic patients exhibit recognition deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions regardless the type of stimuli (avatar or images), and that those deficits are related with the psychopathology. Finally, some improvements in recognition rates (RRs) for the patient group when using the avatar were observed for sadness or surprise expressions, and they even outperform the control group in the recognition of the happiness expression. This leads to conclude that, apart from the dynamism of the shown expression, the RRs for schizophrenia patients when employing animated avatars may depend on other factors which need to be further explored.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual Avatar for Emotion Recognition in Patients with Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study

Marcos-Pablos

González-Pablos

Martín-Lorenzo

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…One of the shortcomings of traditional stimuli is that they are susceptible to ceiling effects, which can limit sensitivity to age differences. Studies that incorporate photographs depicting very intense or exaggerated expressions frequently report that most young and older adults correctly identify more than 95% of trials for at least one of the emotions displayed, usually happiness (Campbell, Murray, Atkinson, & Ruffman, 2017; Ebner, He, & Johnson, 2011; Halberstadt, Ruffman, Murray, Taumoepeau, & Ryan, 2011). In response, some researchers have digitally altered the static photographs to reduce the intensity of the emotion displayed, thereby producing image sets such as the emotion megamixes in the Facial Expressions of Emotion: Stimuli and Test (FEEST; Young, Perrett, Calder, Sprengelmeyer, & Ekman, 2002).…”

Section: Aims and Hypotheses Of The Current Meta-analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Task characteristics influence facial emotion recognition age-effects: A meta-analytic review.

Hayes¹,

McLennan

Henry³

et al. 2020

Psychology and Aging

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Relative to their young counterparts, older adults are poorer at recognizing facial expressions. A 2008 meta-analysis of 17 facial emotion recognition data sets showed that these age-related difficulties are not uniform. Rather, they are greatest for the emotions of anger, fear, and sadness, comparative with happiness and surprise, with no age-effect found for disgust. Since then, there have been many methodological advances in assessing emotion recognition. The current comprehensive meta-analysis systematically tested the influence of task characteristics (e.g., photographs vs. videos). The meta-analysis included 102 data sets that compared facial emotion recognition in older and young adult samples (N = 10,526). With task type combined, the pattern of age-effects across emotions was mostly consistent with the previous meta-analysis (i.e., largest age-effects for anger, fear, sadness; no effect for disgust). However, the magnitude and direction of age-effects were strongly influenced by elements of task design. Specifically, videos produced relatively moderate age-effects across all emotions, which indicates that older adults may not exhibit a positivity effect for facial emotion recognition. For disgust recognition, older adults demonstrated superior accuracy to young adults for the most common image set (Pictures of Facial Affect). However, they were poorer than young adults at recognizing this emotion for all other stimulus formats and image sets, which suggests that they do not retain disgust recognition. We discuss the implications that such diversity in the age-effects produced by different facial emotion recognition task designs has for understanding real-world deficits and task selection in future emotion recognition studies.

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“…Indeed, the expressions posed by older targets appear to be equally difficult to recognize across age groups [44]. Instead, age differences are pronounced for expressions posed by younger targets [35].…”

Section: Emotion Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, age differences are pronounced for expressions posed by younger targets [35]. Recent examinations of face gaze additionally suggest that direct-gazing faces negatively impact older adults’ emotion perception when faces are young [44], as is often the case in traditional emotion perception tasks. Thus, studies that rely on direct-gazing young adult facial stimuli are likely to exacerbate age differences in emotion perception.…”

Section: Emotion Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging and emotions: experience, regulation, and perception

Isaacowitz

Livingstone

Castro

2017

Current Opinion in Psychology

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Whereas some theories suggest that emotion-related processes become more positive with age, recent empirical findings on affective experience, emotion regulation, and emotion perception depict a more nuanced picture. Though there is some evidence for positive age trajectories in affective experience, results are mixed for emotion regulation and largely negative for emotion perception. Thus, current findings suggest that the effects of age on emotion vary across different affective domains; age patterns are also influenced by different moderators, including contextual factors and individual differences.

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Face Age and Eye Gaze Influence Older Adults’ Emotion Recognition

Abstract: The current study highlights the impact of stimulus face age and gaze direction on emotion recognition in young and older adults. The use of young face stimuli with direct gaze in most research might contribute to age-related emotion recognition differences.

Cited by 10 publications

References 17 publications

Virtual Avatar for Emotion Recognition in Patients with Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study

Virtual Avatar for Emotion Recognition in Patients with Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study

Task characteristics influence facial emotion recognition age-effects: A meta-analytic review.

Aging and emotions: experience, regulation, and perception

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