Hiding true emotions: micro-expressions in eyes retrospectively concealed by mouth movements

Non-invasive detection of mental fatigue in construction equipment operators through geometric measurements of facial features

INTRODUCTION

Prolonged operation of construction equipment could lead to mental fatigue, which can increase the chances of human error-related accidents as well as operators' ill-health. The objective detection of operators' mental fatigue is crucial for reducing accident risk and ensuring operator health. Electroencephalography, photoplethysmography, electrodermal activity, and eye-tracking technology have been used to mitigate this issue. These technologies are invasive and wearable sensors that can cause irritation and discomfort. Geometric measurements of facial features can serve as a noninvasive alternative approach. Its application in detecting mental fatigue of construction equipment operators has not been reported in the literature. Although the application of facial features has been widespread in other domains, such as drivers and other occupation scenarios, their ecological validity for construction excavator operators remains a knowledge gap.

METHOD

This study proposed employing geometric measurements of facial features to detect mental fatigue in construction equipment operators' facial features. In this study, seventeen operators performed excavation operations. Mental fatigue was labeled subjectively and objectively using NASA-TLX scores and EDA values. Based on geometric measurements, facial features (eyebrow, mouth outer, mouth corners, head motion, eye area, and face area) were extracted.

RESULTS

The results showed that there was significant difference in the measured metrics for high fatigue compared to low fatigue. Specifically, the most noteworthy variation was for the eye and face area metrics, with mean differences of 45.88% and 26.9%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings showed that geometrical measurements of facial features are a useful, noninvasive approach for detecting the mental fatigue of construction equipment operators.

Treatment of crow's feet lines and forehead lines with Botox (onabotulinumtoxinA): Development, insights, and impact

Extrinsic and age-related intrinsic factors contribute to the development of facial lines, including lateral canthal lines (called crow's feet lines [CFL]) and horizontal forehead lines (FHL). OnabotulinumtoxinA is a highly effective treatment for facial lines that inhibits acetylcholine release at the neuromuscular junction. This temporary chemical denervation leads to localized muscle relaxation and subsequent wrinkle reduction. Early studies of onabotulinumtoxinA treatment for facial neuronal disorders such as dystonia documented improvements in FHL and CFL. After the neurotoxin was approved for treating frown lines (glabellar lines [GL]), individuals requested treatment for other rhytids, and physicians continued assessing use in new areas. Once onabotulinumtoxinA was in clinical trial development, its efficacy and safety for CFL and FHL were successively evaluated as required by the US Food and Drug Administration and by key global health authorities, including those in the European Union, Japan, and China. Allergan, collaborating with leading physicians, established clinical programs that included novel safety and efficacy measures to meet regulatory requirements. Global, phase 3, randomized, controlled studies of CFL and FHL met rigorous primary endpoints. Some countries mandated clinical trial data beyond US and European regulations, and Allergan conducted 11 studies in total, fulfilling diverse regulatory and study population data requirements. Adverse events associated with local spread, including brow and eyelid ptosis, diplopia, headache, and eyelid sensory disorder, were infrequent and well tolerated. Consequently, onabotulinumtoxinA treatment of upper facial lines is now established globally as a highly effective, minimally invasive treatment for patients to achieve a natural appearance and look younger.

Anatomical contribution of the orbicularis oculi to the zygomaticus major: An improved understanding of the smile with consideration for facial cosmetic procedures

The aim of the present study was to determine the contribution of the orbicularis oculi (OOc) to the zygomaticus major (Zmj) in connecting the orbital region to the corner of the mouth. The OOc and Zmj of 22 embalmed adult Korean cadavers were dissected in 44 hemifaces. The OOc fibers were traced to determine their contribution to the Zmj. Parts of the superficial bundle in the orbital region of the OOc extended directly or indirectly to the Zmj in 22.7% of the specimens. The anatomical contribution of the OOc to the Zmj was divided into three categories depending on whether the connection between them was direct or indirect: (1) superficial orbital OOc fibers extended directly to the Zmj in 6.8% of the specimens, (2) superficial orbital OOc fibers extended to the zygomaticus minor and their small portion joined to the upper fibers of the Zmj in 15.9% of the specimens, and (3) no connection was identified between the OOc and Zmj in 77.3% of the specimens. The results of this study provide further anatomical insight into the relationship between the OOc and zygomaticus muscle complex. This information could be helpful for elucidating the anatomy of smiling and treatment and surgery designs for balanced or ideal smiles.

Self-perceived empathic abilities of people with autism towards living beings mostly differs for humans

Being phylogenetically close involves greater empathic perceptions towards other species. To explore this phenomenon, this study investigates the influence of neurocognitive predispositions to empathy on our perceptions of other organisms. Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized, among others, by weakened empathic skills. Our online survey involved a group of 202 raters with ASD and a control group of 1100 raters, who had to make choices to assess their empathic perceptions toward an extended photographic sampling of organisms. Results highlight that both groups present overall similar trends in their empathic preferences, with empathy scores significantly decreasing with the phylogenetic distance relatively to humans. However, the empathy score attributed to Homo sapiens in the ASD group represents a striking outlier in the yet very sharp overall correlation between empathy scores and divergence time, scoring our species as low as cold-blooded vertebrates. These results are consistent with previous studies, which emphasized that (1) understanding human beings would be more difficult for people with ASD than decoding “animals” and (2) that Theory of Mind impairment would not represent a global deficit in people with ASD but may relate to the mindreading of specifically human agents.

The Eyes Have It: Psychotherapy in the Era of Masks

Nonverbal communication is integral to the success of psychotherapy and facial expression is an important component of nonverbal communication. The SARS CoV-2 pandemic has caused alterations in how psychotherapy services are provided. In this paper, potential issues that may arise from conducting psychotherapy when both the patient and therapist are wearing masks are explored. These include higher likelihood of misidentifying facial expression, especially when expression is incongruent with body language, and when the lower face is more important for correct identification of emotion. These issues may be particularly problematic for patient populations for whom emotion recognition may be a problem at baseline, or for those more prone to biases in emotional recognition. Suggestions are made for therapists to consider when seeing patients in-person when masks are necessary.

Are adaptation aftereffects for facial emotional expressions affected by prior knowledge about the emotion?

Accurate perception of the emotional signals conveyed by others is crucial for successful social interaction. Such perception is influenced not only by sensory input, but also by knowledge we have about the others' emotions. This study addresses the issue of whether knowing that the other's emotional state is congruent or incongruent with their displayed emotional expression ("genuine" and "fake", respectively) affects the neural mechanisms underpinning the perception of their facial emotional expressions. We used a visual adaptation paradigm to investigate this question in three experiments employing increasing adaptation durations. The adapting stimuli consisted of photographs of emotional facial expressions of joy and anger, purported to reflect (in-)congruency between felt and expressed emotion, displayed by professional actors. A Validity checking procedure ensured participants had the correct knowledge about the (in-)congruency. Significantly smaller adaptation aftereffects were obtained when participants knew that the displayed expression was incongruent with the felt emotion, following all tested adaptation periods. This study shows that knowledge relating to the congruency between felt and expressed emotion modulates face expression aftereffects. We argue that this reflects that the neural substrate responsible for the perception of facial expressions of emotion incorporates the presumed felt emotion underpinning the expression.

Deception detection and emotion recognition: Investigating F.A.C.E. software

Objective: Investigation of deception within psychotherapy has recently gained attention. Micro expression training software has been suggested to improve deception detection and enhance emotion recognition. The current study examined the effects of micro expression training software on deception detection and emotion recognition. Method: The current study recruited 23 counseling psychology graduate students and 32 undergraduate students and randomly assigned them to either a training group or a control group. The training and control group received all the same materials and measures pre- and post-test, with the training group differing by receiving the micro expression training. Results: Findings revealed no significant difference in deception detection between the control group and training group. The training did reveal significant improvement for emotion recognition, specifically in contempt, anger, and fear. State and trait anxiety did not predict deception detection nor did it mediate emotion recognition. No significant difference was found between graduate trainees and undergraduate students. Conclusion: The use of the F.A.C.E. software was not effective for increasing deception detection but did serve to increase emotion recognition. Implications for training, practice, and research are discussed.

Observation and Imitation of Social Emotions Are Essential for Improving Cognitive and Affective Theory of Mind in Schizophrenia: A Meta-analysis

People with schizophrenia often demonstrate deficits in theory of mind (ToM), which may be addressed via social cognition training that includes observation and imitation of social emotions. We examined the effect of observation and imitation on ToM and whether computerized cognitive training (CCT) can improve ToM. Among 14 controlled trials, 264 of 494 people with schizophrenia received treatment. Observation and imitation of social emotions improved cognitive (g = 0.53; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.29-0.76) and affective ToM (g = 0.54; 95% CI, 0.34-0.73), versus treatment as usual or cognitive rehabilitation alone. CCT did not significantly enhance affective ToM (p = 0.42); however, cognitive ToM improvements without CCT (g = 1.20; 95% CI, 0.78-1.61) were superior to those with CCT (g = 0.33; 95% CI, 0.02-0.64; p < 0.01). Observation and imitation of social emotions are essential for improving ToM in schizophrenia, but CCT may not improve ToM.

Computational Assessment of Facial Expression Production in ASD Children

In this paper, a computational approach is proposed and put into practice to assess the capability of children having had diagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to produce facial expressions. The proposed approach is based on computer vision components working on sequence of images acquired by an off-the-shelf camera in unconstrained conditions. Action unit intensities are estimated by analyzing local appearance and then both temporal and geometrical relationships, learned by Convolutional Neural Networks, are exploited to regularize gathered estimates. To cope with stereotyped movements and to highlight even subtle voluntary movements of facial muscles, a personalized and contextual statistical modeling of non-emotional face is formulated and used as a reference. Experimental results demonstrate how the proposed pipeline can improve the analysis of facial expressions produced by ASD children. A comparison of system's outputs with the evaluations performed by psychologists, on the same group of ASD children, makes evident how the performed quantitative analysis of children's abilities helps to go beyond the traditional qualitative ASD assessment/diagnosis protocols, whose outcomes are affected by human limitations in observing and understanding multi-cues behaviors such as facial expressions.

A False Trail to Follow: Differential Effects of the Facial Feedback Signals From the Upper and Lower Face on the Recognition of Micro-Expressions

Micro-expressions, as fleeting facial expressions, are very important for judging people’s true emotions, thus can provide an essential behavioral clue for lie and dangerous demeanor detection. From embodied accounts of cognition, we derived a novel hypothesis that facial feedback from upper and lower facial regions has differential effects on micro-expression recognition. This hypothesis was tested and supported across three studies. Specifically, the results of Study 1 showed that people became better judges of intense micro-expressions with a duration of 450 ms when the facial feedback from upper face was enhanced via a restricting gel. Additional results of Study 2 showed that the recognition accuracy of subtle micro-expressions was significantly impaired under all duration conditions (50, 150, 333, and 450 ms) when facial feedback from lower face was enhanced. In addition, the results of Study 3 also revealed that blocking the facial feedback of lower face, significantly boosted the recognition accuracy of subtle and intense micro-expressions under all duration conditions (150 and 450 ms). Together, these results highlight the role of facial feedback in judging the subtle movements of micro-expressions.

Hemiface Differences in Visual Exploration Patterns When Judging the Authenticity of Facial Expressions

Past studies have found asymmetry biases in human emotion recognition. The left side bias refers to preferential looking at the left-hemiface when actively exploring face images. However, these studies have been mainly conducted with static and frontally oriented stimuli, whereas real-life emotion recognition takes place on dynamic faces viewed from different angles. The aim of this study was to assess the judgment of genuine vs. masked expressions in dynamic movie clips of faces rotated to the right or left side. Forty-eight participants judged the expressions on faces displaying genuine or masked happy, sad, and fearful emotions. The head of the actor was either rotated to the left by a 45° angle, thus showing the left side of the face (standard orientation), or inverted, with the same face shown from the right side perspective. The eye movements were registered by the eye tracker and the data were analyzed for the inverse efficiency score (IES), the number of fixations, gaze time on the whole face and in the regions of interest. Results showed shorter IESs and gaze times for happy compared to sad and fearful emotions, but no difference was found for these variables between sad and fearful emotions. The left side preference was evident from comparisons of the number of fixations. Standard stimuli received a higher number of fixations than inverted ones. However, gaze time was long on inverted compared to standard faces. Number of fixations on exposed hemiface interacted with the emotions decreasing from happy to sad and fearful. An opposite pattern was found for the occluded hemiface. These results suggest a change in fixation patterns in the rotated faces that may be beneficial for the judgments of expressions. Furthermore, this study replicated the effects of the judgment of genuine and masked emotions using dynamic faces.