Perception of Face and Body Expressions Using Electromyography, Pupillometry and Gaze Measures

Abstract

Traditional emotion theories stress the importance of the face in the expression of emotions but bodily expressions are becoming increasingly important as well. In these experiments we tested the hypothesis that similar physiological responses can be evoked by observing emotional face and body signals and that the reaction to angry signals is amplified in anxious individuals. We designed three experiments in which participants categorized emotional expressions from isolated facial and bodily expressions and emotionally congruent and incongruent face-body compounds. Participants’ fixations were measured and their pupil size recorded with eye-tracking equipment and their facial reactions measured with electromyography. The results support our prediction that the recognition of a facial expression is improved in the context of a matching posture and importantly, vice versa as well. From their facial expressions, it appeared that observers acted with signs of negative emotionality (increased corrugator activity) to angry and fearful facial expressions and with positive emotionality (increased zygomaticus) to happy facial expressions. What we predicted and found, was that angry and fearful cues from the face or the body, attracted more attention than happy cues. We further observed that responses evoked by angry cues were amplified in individuals with high anxiety scores. In sum, we show that people process bodily expressions of emotion in a similar fashion as facial expressions and that the congruency between the emotional signals from the face and body facilitates the recognition of the emotion.

Seeing fearful body language rapidly freezes the observer's motor cortex

“…Indeed, fearful expressions signal the presence of potential threats in the environment, which may require a strong and immediate mobilization of neural resources. More specifically, it is thought that because the source of danger is not clearly signaled, detecting fearful expressions increases sensory vigilance and prompts monitoring for threats in the surrounding environment (Davis & Whalen, 2001;Kret et al, 2013;Lee et al, 2013;Phelps et al, 2006;Whalen et al, 1998). Thus, the suppression of excitatory activity in M1 may reflect a quick reduction in motor readiness that may favor such monitoring processes.…”

“…Perceiving fearful expressions in others requires specific processing in an attempt to garner more information about the source of the threat in the surrounding environment (Whalen et al, 1998). Indeed, behavioral studies have shown enhanced sensory acquisition (Lee, Susskind, & Anderson, 2013), perceptual processing (Phelps, Ling, & Carrasco, 2006) and attention (Davis & Whalen, 2001;Kret, Stekelenburg, Roelofs, & de Gelder, 2013) when exposed to fearful expressions. Notably, electrophysiological studies have also reported a rapid bias in visual attention allocation with greater resources devoted to fearful expressions; they reported increased amplitudes or shorter latencies of early (100e200 msec) occipito-temporal event-related potential (ERP) components when viewing fearful body expressions (Jessen & Kotz, 2011;Van Heijnsbergen, Meeren, Gr ezes, & de Gelder, 2007) and facial expressions (Pourtois, Thut, Grave de Peralta, Michel, & Vuilleumier, 2005;Righart & de Gelder, 2006;Williams, Palmer, Liddell, Song, & Gordon, 2006) relative to emotionally positive and neutral expressions.…”

Mood contagion of robot body language in human robot interaction

“…We describe the interactive game we used in our study and the integration of the behavior model into the game gestures are introduced in Sect. 4. Importantly, we demonstrate the motivation of our investigation of using the bodily mood expression in an interaction scenario.…”

“…Expressing robot affect through the body enables people to use those skills to better understand robots. Moreover, a study showed that bodily expressions in addition to facial expressions improved the recognition of affect [4]. Making the robot body expressive thus may improve people's understanding of robot affect.…”

The role of body and environment in cognition

“…Havas and Matheson (2013) provide a theoretical perspective on the importance of bodily feedback in the representation of emotions and understanding of emotional language, and argue that bodily states can facilitate the simulation of emotional content during language processing. Kret et al (2013) demonstrate that emotion recognition depends not only on others' faces, but also on others' bodies. Participants were sensitive to the congruency of emotions expressed by paired bodies and faces, but emotional responses to these stimuli were also mediated by individual differences in anxiety.…”