Perceiving emotion and sex from the body: evidence from the Garner task for independent processes

Gandolfo, Marco; Downing, Paul E.

doi:10.1080/02699931.2019.1634003

Cited by 9 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…In both Zhou and Liu (2013)'s and our data, gender recognition was easier than emotion recognition, thus arguing against the possibility that the asymmetry between emotion and gender conflict could be due to a mismatch in task difficulty. Furthermore, interference from automatic processing is expected to be higher for more easily encoded and, thus, more salient features (Atkinson et al, 2005;Gandolfo and Downing, 2019). In contrast, we found that the more difficult-to-encode dimension (i.e., emotion) interfered with the easier one (i.e., gender), thus making it unlikely, albeit not ruling out, that the asymmetry between emotion and gender conflict was due to differential speed of processing.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 62%

“…The human visual system is highly sensitive to both emotion (Meeren et al, 2005) and gender cues (Bruce et al, 1993;Johnson and Tassinary, 2005), either conveyed by faces or bodies. Furthermore, the perception of these two salient cues seems highly interdependent, as shown by the interference exerted by variations of one dimension (i.e., gender) while recognizing the other (e.g., emotion; the so-called Garner interference effect; Gilboa-Schechtman et al, 2004;Atkinson et al, 2005;Becker, 2017; but see Gandolfo and Downing, 2019). This reveals the difficulties of the attentional control system in filtering out gender or emotional cues when the main task is focused on emotion or gender, respectively.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Influence of Attention Control on Implicit and Explicit Emotion Processing of Face and Body: Evidence From Flanker and Same-or-Different Paradigms

et al. 2020

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Many existing findings indicate that processing of emotional information is pre-attentive, largely immune from attentional control. Nevertheless, inconsistent evidence on the interference of emotional cues on cognitive processing suggests that this influence may be a highly conditional phenomenon. The aim of the present study was twofold:(1) to examine the modulation of attention control on emotion processing using facial expressions (2) explore the very same effect for emotional body expressions. In Experiment 1, participants performed a Flanker task in which they had to indicate either the emotion (happy/fearful) or the gender of the target stimulus while ignoring the distracting stimuli at the side. We found evidence for intrusion of the emotional dimension of a stimulus in both the emotion and gender discrimination performance, thus when either task-relevant or task-irrelevant. To further explore the influence of attention control mechanisms, in Experiment 2 participants performed a same-ordifferent judgment task in which they were asked to pay attention to both the central and lateral stimuli and indicated whether the central stimulus matched the lateral for emotion or gender. Results showed that emotional features exerted an influence at an implicit level (i.e., during gender judgments) for bodies only. Gender features did not affect emotional processing in either experiments. To rule out the possibility that this effect was driven by postural rather than emotional features of fearful vs. happy stimuli, a control experiment was conducted. In Experiment 3, bodies with an opening/up-ward or closing/down-ward posture but with no emotional valence were presented. Results revealed that the body posture did not influence gender discrimination. Findings suggest that the emotional valence of a face or body stimulus can overpass attention filtering mechanisms, independently from the level of attentional modulation (Experiment 1). However, broadening the focus of attention to include the Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 January 2020 | Volume 10 | Article 2971Oldrati et al. Emotion Intrusion on Attentional Controllateral stimuli led emotional information to intrude on the main task, exerting an implicit, bottom-up influence on gender processing, only when conveyed by bodies (Experiment 2). Results point to different mechanisms for the implicit processing of face and body emotional expressions, with the latter likely having role on action preparation processes.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 62%

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confidence: 99%

Influence of Attention Control on Implicit and Explicit Emotion Processing of Face and Body: Evidence From Flanker and Same-or-Different Paradigms

et al. 2020

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“…The adult body's appearance carries strong signals about sex that are attended by observers (Gandolfo & Downing 2019a;Hewig et al, 2008;Johnson & Tassinary, 2005;Johnstone & Downing, 2017;Matsumoto et al, 2017;Nummenmaa et al, 2012). Judgments of sex from the shape and movements of others' bodies are generally highly efficient, even for impoverished stimuli (D'Argenio et al, 2020;Gandolfo & Downing, 2019b;Gaetano et al, 2014;Johnson & Tassinary, 2005;Kozlowski & Cutting, 1977;Mather & Murdoch, 1994;Palumbo et al, 2013;Runeson & Frykholm, 1983) although they are also subject to the influence of expectations (e.g. Johnson et al, 2011) and recent perceptual experience (Alexi et al, 2018).…”

Section: Visual Perception Of Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric visual representation of sex from human body shape

Gandolfo

Downing

2020

Cognition

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We efficiently infer others' states and traits from their appearance, and these inferences powerfully shape our social behaviour. One key trait is sex, which is strongly cued by the appearance of the body. What are the visual representations that link body shape to sex? Previous studies of visual sex judgment tasks find observers have a bias to report "male", particularly for ambiguous stimuli. This finding implies a representational asymmetry -that for the processes that generate a sex percept, the default output is "male", and "female" is determined by the presence of additional perceptual evidence. That is, female body shapes are positively coded by reference to a male default shape. This perspective makes a novel prediction in line with Treisman's studies of visual search asymmetries: female body targets should be more readily detected amongst male distractors than vice versa. Across 10 experiments (N=32 each) we confirmed this prediction and ruled out alternative low-level explanations. The asymmetry was found with profile and frontal body silhouettes, frontal photographs, and schematised icons. Low-level confounds were controlled by balancing silhouette images for size and homogeneity, and by matching physical properties of photographs. The female advantage was nulled for inverted icons, but intact for inverted photographs, suggesting reliance on distinct cues to sex for different body depictions. Together, these findings demonstrate a principle of the perceptual coding that links bodily appearance with a significant social trait: the female body shape is coded as an extension of a male default. We conclude by offering a visual experience account of how these asymmetric representations arise in the first place.

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“…The validity in interpreting asymmetric Garner interference as integral processing is dependent on an assumption that response latencies at baseline between scene shape and texture are not significantly different. If one scene feature (e.g., shape) is processed faster than the other (e.g., texture) at baseline, then the interference observed in texture processing (but not shape processing) could be partially explained by the serial processing of these features (Algom & Fitousi, 2016;Gandolfo & Downing, 2020;Garner, 1976;Johnstone & Downing, 2017;Schweinberger et al, 1999). In a serial-processing hypothesis, the faster the first feature is perceptually represented, the more potential it has to interfere with the processing of the second feature, thereby increasing Garner interference.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If participants can easily ignore changes in the irrelevant feature (i.e., no changes in response latency and classification accuracy between baseline and filtering trials) when classifying the relevant one, then these features are said to be processed independently and are labeled as separable dimensions. Examples of known separable dimensions include the position of lines and their luminance contrast (Shechter & Hochstein, 1992), the color and texture of objects (Cant, Large, McCall, & Goodale, 2008), and the sex and emotion of bodies (Gandolfo & Downing, 2020). If, however, participants have worse performance in the filtering trials (i.e., increased response latency or a greater number of classification errors) compared with the baseline, then these features are not processed independently and are said to be integral feature dimensions, which demonstrate Garner interference.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shared cognitive mechanisms involved in the processing of scene texture and scene shape

et al. 2021

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Recent research has demonstrated that the parahippocampal place area represents both the shape and texture features of scenes, with the importance of each feature varying according to perceived scene category. Namely, shape features are predominately more diagnostic to the processing of artificial human-made scenes, while shape and texture are equally diagnostic in natural scene processing. However, to date little is known regarding the degree of interactivity or independence observed in the processing of these scene features. Furthermore, manipulating the scope of visual attention (i.e., globally vs. locally) when processing ensembles of multiple objects-stimuli that share a functional neuroanatomical link with scenes-has been shown to affect their cognitive visual representation. It remains unknown whether manipulating the scope of attention impacts scene processing in a similar manner. Using the well-established Garner speeded-classification behavioral paradigm, we investigated the influence of both feature diagnosticity and the scope of visual attention on potential interactivity or independence in the shape and texture processing of artificial human-made scenes. The results revealed asymmetric interference between scene shape and texture processing, with the more diagnostic feature (i.e., shape) interfering with the less diagnostic feature (i.e., texture), but not vice versa. Furthermore, this interference was attenuated and enhanced with more local and global visual processing strategies, respectively. These findings suggest that the scene shape and texture processing are mediated by shared cognitive mechanisms and that, although these representations are governed primarily via feature diagnosticity, they can nevertheless be influenced by the scope of visual attention.

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Perceiving emotion and sex from the body: evidence from the Garner task for independent processes

Cited by 9 publications

References 72 publications

Influence of Attention Control on Implicit and Explicit Emotion Processing of Face and Body: Evidence From Flanker and Same-or-Different Paradigms

Influence of Attention Control on Implicit and Explicit Emotion Processing of Face and Body: Evidence From Flanker and Same-or-Different Paradigms

Asymmetric visual representation of sex from human body shape

Shared cognitive mechanisms involved in the processing of scene texture and scene shape

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