Performance on a face perception task is associated with empathy quotient scores, but not systemizing scores or participant sex

Penton-Voak, Ian S.; Allen, Timothy A.; Morrison, Edward R.; Gralewski, Lisa; Campbell, Neill

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2007.07.004

Cited by 19 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The EQ questionnaire also shows moderate associations with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980 ), suggesting concurrent validity ( Lawrence et al, 2004 ). EQ scores have also been shown to correlate with performance on tasks measuring non-verbal mental inference (the “Eyes” task; Lawrence et al, 2004 ), accuracy perceiving face gender ( Penton-Voak et al, 2007 ) and face identify ( Bate et al, 2010 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Music training and empathy positively impact adultsâ€™ sensitivity to infant distress

et al. 2014

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Crying is the most powerful auditory signal of infant need. Adults’ ability to perceive and respond to crying is important for infant survival and in the provision of care. This study investigated a number of listener variables that might impact on adults’ perception of infant cry distress, namely parental status, musical training, and empathy. Sensitivity to infant distress was tested using a previously validated task, which experimentally manipulated distress by varying the pitch of infant cries. This task required that participants discriminate between pitch differences and interpret these as differences in infant distress. Parents with musical training showed a significant advantage on this task when compared with parents without. The extent of the advantage was correlated with the amount of self-reported musical training. For non-parents, individual differences in empathy were associated with task performance, with higher empathy scores corresponding to greater sensitivity to infant distress. We suggest that sensitivity to infant distress can be impacted by a number of listener variables, and may be amenable to training.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Music training and empathy positively impact adultsâ€™ sensitivity to infant distress

et al. 2014

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“…The EQ has been well-used in experimental studies investigating empathic processing in both normal and impaired populations (e.g. Lawrence et al, 2006;Penton-Voak et al, 2007), and several studies have investigated its validity. These studies have reported high test-retest reliability, and moderate to high correlations with other self-report and observable indicators of empathy, i.e.…”

Section: The Empathy Quotientmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, several authors have noted activation of the fusiform gyrus (the critical brain area for face processing: Kanwisher et al, 1997) when participants perform non-facial tasks requiring empathic processing (Castelli et al, 2000;Gallagher et al, 2000). Further, Penton-Voak et al (2007) found that performance on a facial gender-judgment task was predicted by scores on a self-report measure of empathic processing, indicating face perception itself may be influenced by an individual's empathy level. While no study to date has examined the relationship between face recognition and empathy level, evidence for a relationship between these processes comes from individuals on the autistic spectrum.…”

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confidence: 99%

Socio-emotional functioning and face recognition ability in the normal population

Bate

Parris

Haslam

et al. 2010

Personality and Individual Differences

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Recent research indicates face recognition ability varies within the normal population. To date, two factors have been identified that influence this cognitive process: the age and gender of the perceiver. In this paper, we examine the influence of socio-emotional functioning on face recognition ability. We invited participants with high and low levels of empathy (as indicated by the Empathy Quotient) to take part in a face recognition test. Participants were asked to study a set of faces, and at test viewed the studied faces intermixed with novel faces. As predicted, high empaths achieved higher scores in the face recognition test compared to low empaths. This pattern of findings provides further evidence that face recognition ability varies within the normal population, and suggests socio-emotional functioning may be an additional factor that influences face recognition ability.

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“…For example, although there have been reports showing that women outperform men in decoding emotional expression (Hall, 1978;Rotter & Rotter, 1988), this difference has not always been found. Two recent articles in which an interaction between sex of the participant and classification of sex and expression was not found are those of Penton-Voak, Allen, Morrison, Gralewski, and Campbell (2007), with sex classification, and of Arcuri, Castelli, Boca, Lorenzi-Cioldi, and Dafflon (2001), who used a category verification procedure with sex and expression as categories. In the case of sex classification, it is not clear that differences exist in how accurately male and female observers classify the gender of a face depending on its sex.…”

Section: Author Notementioning

confidence: 99%

Symmetrical interaction of sex and expression in face classification tasks

Aguado

Garcı́a-Gutiérrez

Serrano‐Pedraza

2009

Perception & Psychophysics

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Classification of faces as to their sex or their expression-with sex and expression varying orthogonally-was studied in three experiments. In Experiment 1, expression classification was influenced by sex, with angry male faces being classified faster than angry female faces. Complementarily, sex classification was faster for happy than for angry female faces. In Experiment 2, mutual interaction of sex and expression was also found when the participants were asked to classify top and bottom face segments. In Experiment 3, a face inversion effect was found for both sex and expression classification of whole faces. However, a symmetrical interaction between sex and expression was again found. The results are discussed in terms of configural versus feature processing in the perception of face sex and expression and of their relevance to face perception models that postulate independent processing of different facial features.

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Performance on a face perception task is associated with empathy quotient scores, but not systemizing scores or participant sex

Cited by 19 publications

References 30 publications

Music training and empathy positively impact adultsâ€™ sensitivity to infant distress

Music training and empathy positively impact adultsâ€™ sensitivity to infant distress

Socio-emotional functioning and face recognition ability in the normal population

Symmetrical interaction of sex and expression in face classification tasks

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