Asymmetries of influence: differential effects of body postures on perceptions of emotional facial expressions

Emotion in motion: perceiving fear in the behaviour of individuals from minimal motion capture displays

The ability to quickly and accurately recognise emotional states is adaptive for numerous social functions. Although body movements are a potentially crucial cue for inferring emotions, few studies have studied the perception of body movements made in naturalistic emotional states. The current research focuses on the use of body movement information in the perception of fear expressed by targets in a virtual heights paradigm. Across three studies, participants made judgments about the emotional states of others based on motion-capture body movement recordings of those individuals actively engaged in walking a virtual plank at ground-level or 80 stories above a city street. Results indicated that participants were reliably able to differentiate between height and non-height conditions (Studies 1 & 2), were more likely to spontaneously describe target behaviour in the height condition as fearful (Study 2) and their fear estimates were highly calibrated with the fear ratings from the targets (Studies 1-3). Findings show that VR height scenarios can induce fearful behaviour and that people can perceive fear in minimal representations of body movement.

The nonverbal expression of guilt in healthy adults

Guilt is a negative emotion elicited by realizing one has caused actual or perceived harm to another person. One of guilt's primary functions is to signal that one is aware of the harm that was caused and regrets it, an indication that the harm will not be repeated. Verbal expressions of guilt are often deemed insufficient by observers when not accompanied by nonverbal signals such as facial expression, gesture, posture, or gaze. Some research has investigated isolated nonverbal expressions in guilt, however none to date has explored multiple nonverbal channels simultaneously. This study explored facial expression, gesture, posture, and gaze during the real-time experience of guilt when response demands are minimal. Healthy adults completed a novel task involving watching videos designed to elicit guilt, as well as comparison emotions. During the video task, participants were continuously recorded to capture nonverbal behaviour, which was then analyzed via automated facial expression software. We found that while feeling guilt, individuals engaged less in several nonverbal behaviours than they did while experiencing the comparison emotions. This may reflect the highly social aspect of guilt, suggesting that an audience is required to prompt a guilt display, or may suggest that guilt does not have clear nonverbal correlates.

Seven-months-old infants show increased arousal to static emotion body expressions: Evidence from pupil dilation

Human body postures provide perceptual cues that can be used to discriminate and recognize emotions. It was previously found that 7-months-olds' fixation patterns discriminated fear from other emotion body expressions but it is not clear whether they also process the emotional content of those expressions. The emotional content of visual stimuli can increase arousal level resulting in pupil dilations. To provide evidence that infants also process the emotional content of expressions, we analyzed variations in pupil in response to emotion stimuli. Forty-eight 7-months-old infants viewed adult body postures expressing anger, fear, happiness and neutral expressions, while their pupil size was measured. There was a significant emotion effect between 1040 and 1640 ms after image onset, when fear elicited larger pupil dilations than neutral expressions. A similar trend was found for anger expressions. Our results suggest that infants have increased arousal to negative-valence body expressions. Thus, in combination with previous fixation results, the pupil data show that infants as young as 7-months can perceptually discriminate static body expressions and process the emotional content of those expressions. The results extend information about infant processing of emotion expressions conveyed through other means (e.g., faces).

Altered processing of conflicting body representations in women with restrictive anorexia nervosa

Cognitive and affective impairments in processing body image have been observed in patients with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and may induce the hypercontrolled and regulative behaviors observed in this disorder. Here, we aimed to probe the link between activation of body representations and cognitive control by investigating the ability to resolve body-related representational conflicts in women with restrictive AN and matched healthy controls (HC). Participants performed a modified version of the Flanker task in which underweight and overweight body images were presented as targets and distractors; a classic version of the task, with letters, was also administered as a control. The findings indicated that performance was better among the HC group in the task with bodies compared to the task with letters; however, no such facilitation was observed in AN patients, whose overall performance was poorer than that of the HC group in both tasks. In the task with body stimuli, performance among patients with AN was the worst on trials presenting underweight targets with overweight bodies as flankers. These results may reflect a dysfunctional association between the processing of body-related representations and cognitive control mechanisms that may aid clinicians in the development of optimal individualized treatments.

Body Language Analysis in Healthcare: An Overview

Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, medical research today focuses on epidemic diseases. Innovative technology is incorporated in most medical applications, emphasizing the automatic recognition of physical and emotional states. Most research is concerned with the automatic identification of symptoms displayed by patients through analyzing their body language. The development of technologies for recognizing and interpreting arm and leg gestures, facial features, and body postures is still in its early stage. More extensive research is needed using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in disease detection. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the research performed on body language processing. Upon defining and explaining the different types of body language, we justify the use of automatic recognition and its application in healthcare. We briefly describe the automatic recognition framework using AI to recognize various body language elements and discuss automatic gesture recognition approaches that help better identify the external symptoms of epidemic and pandemic diseases. From this study, we found that since there are studies that have proven that the body has a language called body language, it has proven that language can be analyzed and understood by machine learning (ML). Since diseases also show clear and different symptoms in the body, the body language here will be affected and have special features related to a particular disease. From this examination, we discovered that it is possible to specialize the features and language changes of each disease in the body. Hence, ML can understand and detect diseases such as pandemic and epidemic diseases and others.

The Unique and Interactive Effects of Faces, Postures, and Scenes on Emotion Categorization

There is ongoing debate as to whether emotion perception is determined by facial expressions or context (i.e., non-facial cues). The present investigation examined the independent and interactive effects of six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, neutral) conveyed by combinations of facial expressions, bodily postures, and background scenes in a fully crossed design. Participants viewed each face-posture-scene (FPS) combination for 5 s and were then asked to categorize the emotion depicted in the image. Four key findings emerged from the analyses: (1) For fully incongruent FPS combinations, participants categorized images using the face in 61% of instances and the posture and scene in 18% and 11% of instances, respectively; (2) postures (with neutral scenes) and scenes (with neutral postures) exerted differential influences on emotion categorizations when combined with incongruent facial expressions; (3) contextual asymmetries were observed for some incongruent face-posture pairings and their inverse (e.g., anger-fear vs. fear-anger), but not for face-scene pairings; (4) finally, scenes exhibited a boosting effect of posture when combined with a congruent posture and attenuated the effect of posture when combined with a congruent face. Overall, these findings highlight independent and interactional roles of posture and scene in emotion face perception. Theoretical implications for the study of emotions in context are discussed.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00061-x.

Symmetry in Emotional and Visual Similarity between Neutral and Negative Faces

Is Mr. Hyde more similar to his alter ego Dr. Jekyll, because of their physical identity, or to Jack the Ripper, because both evoke fear and loathing? The relative weight of emotional and visual dimensions in similarity judgements is still unclear. We expected an asymmetric effect of these dimensions on similarity perception, such that faces that express the same or similar feeling are judged as more similar than different emotional expressions of same person. We selected 10 male faces with different expressions. Each face posed one neutral expression and one emotional expression (five disgust, five fear). We paired these expressions, resulting in 190 pairs, varying either in emotional expressions, physical identity, or both. Twenty healthy participants rated the similarity of paired faces on a 7-point scale. We report a symmetric effect of emotional expression and identity on similarity judgements, suggesting that people may perceive Mr. Hyde to be just as similar to Dr. Jekyll (identity) as to Jack the Ripper (emotion). We also observed that emotional mismatch decreased perceived similarity, suggesting that emotions play a prominent role in similarity judgements. From an evolutionary perspective, poor discrimination between emotional stimuli might endanger the individual.

More than Words? Semantic Emotion Labels Boost Context Effects on Faces

Semantic emotional labels can influence the recognition of isolated facial expressions. However, it is unknown if labels also influence the susceptibility of facial expressions to context. To examine this, participants categorized expressive faces presented with emotionally congruent or incongruent bodies, serving as context. Face-body composites were presented together, aligned in their natural form, or spatially misaligned with the head shifted horizontally beside the body-a condition known to reduce the contextual impact of the body on the face. Critically, participants responded either by choosing emotion labels or by perceptually matching the target expression with expression probes. The results show a label dominance effect: Face-body congruency effects were larger with semantic labels than with perceptual expression matching, indicating that facial expressions are more prone to contextual influence when categorized with emotion labels, an effect only found when faces and bodies were aligned. These findings suggest that the role of conceptual language in face-body context effects may be larger than previously assumed.

Midfrontal-occipital Ɵ-tACS modulates cognitive conflicts related to bodily stimuli

Neurophysiological studies show that during tasks tapping cognitive control (like the flanker task), midfrontal theta (MFθ) oscillations are associated with conflict and error processing and neural top-down modulation of perceptual processing. What remains unknown is whether perceptual encoding of category-specific stimuli (e.g. body vs letters) used in flanker-like tasks is modulated by theta oscillations. To explore this issue, we delivered transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) in the theta frequency band (6 Hz) over the medial frontal cortex (MFC) and the extra-striate body area (EBA), whereas healthy participants performed two variants of the classical flanker task, one with stimuli representing human hands (i.e. hand-flanker) and the other with stimuli representing coloured letters (i.e. letter-flanker). More specifically, we aimed at investigating whether θ-tACS involving a body-related area may modulate the long-range communication between neuronal populations underlying conflict monitoring and visuo-perceptual encoding of hand stimuli without affecting the conflict driven by letter stimuli. Results showed faster correct response times during θ-tACS in the hand-flanker compared with γ-tACS (40 Hz) and sham. Importantly, such an effect did not emerge in the letter-flanker. Our findings show that theta oscillations over midfrontal-occipital areas modulate bodily specific, stimulus content-driven aspects of cognitive control.

Psychological Model of Phonosemantics

Phonosemantics is a school of thought which believes that each sound or phoneme carries a specific psychological impression allotted by nature. And these psychological impressions were used to evolve different languages. Work has been done on this ground, but there is still scope for further research into the subject. The paper presents a new hypothesis, explaining the psychological representations of all the important IPA alphabets. The paper proposes a model of psychological mind, on which all the basic phonemes are placed, enabling us to understand the basic relationship between psychological semantic values and their phonetic values. To prove the correctness of the allocation, the paper applies these semantic features to 245 words of different languages, along with some additional evidences. The paper resolves the confusion regarding the same name for different objects, different names for the same object, the question of arbitrariness, and other queries raised by modern linguists.

Emotional expression in psychiatric conditions: New technology for clinicians

AIM

Emotional expressions are one of the most widely studied topics in neuroscience, from both clinical and non-clinical perspectives. Atypical emotional expressions are seen in various psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, depression, and autism spectrum conditions. Understanding the basics of emotional expressions and recognition can be crucial for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Emotions can be expressed in the face, gesture, posture, voice, and behavior and affect physiological parameters, such as the heart rate or body temperature. With modern technology, clinicians can use a variety of tools ranging from sophisticated laboratory equipment to smartphones and web cameras. The aim of this paper is to review the currently used tools using modern technology and discuss their usefulness as well as possible future directions in emotional expression research and treatment strategies.

METHODS

The authors conducted a literature review in the PubMed, EBSCO, and SCOPUS databases, using the following key words: 'emotions,' 'emotional expression,' 'affective computing,' and 'autism.' The most relevant and up-to-date publications were identified and discussed. Search results were supplemented by the authors' own research in the field of emotional expression.

RESULTS

We present a critical review of the currently available technical diagnostic and therapeutic methods. The most important studies are summarized in a table.

CONCLUSION

Most of the currently available methods have not been adequately validated in clinical settings. They may be a great help in everyday practice; however, they need further testing. Future directions in this field include more virtual-reality-based and interactive interventions, as well as development and improvement of humanoid robots.

Embodied Cognition and the Direct Induction of Affect as a Compliment to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

We make the case for the possible integration of affect experience induced via embodiment techniques with CBT for the treatment of emotional disorders in clinical settings. Theoretically we propose a possible integration of cognitive behavioural theory, neuroscience, embodied cognition and important processes of client change outcomes such as the therapeutic alliance to enhance client outcomes. We draw from evidence of bidirectional effects between embodiment modes of bottom-up (sensory-motor simulations giving rise to important basis of knowledge) and top-down (abstract mental representations of knowledge) processes such as CBT in psychotherapy. The paper first describes the dominance and success of CBT for the treatment of a wide range of clinical disorders. Some limitations of CBT, particularly for depression are also outlined. There is a growing body of evidence for the added value of experiential affect-focused interventions combined with CBT. Evidence for the embodied model of cognition and emotion is reviewed. Advantages of embodiment is highlighted as a complimentary process model to deepen the intensity and valence of affective experience. It is suggested that an integrated embodiment approach with CBT enhances outcomes across a wide range of emotional disorders. A description of our embodiment method integrated with CBT for inducing affective experience, emotional regulation, acceptance of unwanted emotions and emotional mastery is given. Finally, the paper highlights the importance of the therapeutic alliance as a critical component of the change process. The paper ends with a case study highlighting some clinical strategies that may aid the therapist to integrate embodiment techniques in CBT that can further explore in future research on affective experience in CBT for a wider range of clinical disorders.

Sound iconicity of abstract concepts: Place of articulation is implicitly associated with abstract concepts of size and social dominance

The concept of sound iconicity implies that phonemes are intrinsically associated with non-acoustic phenomena, such as emotional expression, object size or shape, or other perceptual features. In this respect, sound iconicity is related to other forms of cross-modal associations in which stimuli from different sensory modalities are associated with each other due to the implicitly perceived correspondence of their primal features. One prominent example is the association between vowels, categorized according to their place of articulation, and size, with back vowels being associated with bigness and front vowels with smallness. However, to date the relative influence of perceptual and conceptual cognitive processing on this association is not clear. To bridge this gap, three experiments were conducted in which associations between nonsense words and pictures of animals or emotional body postures were tested. In these experiments participants had to infer the relation between visual stimuli and the notion of size from the content of the pictures, while directly perceivable features did not support–or even contradicted–the predicted association. Results show that implicit associations between articulatory-acoustic characteristics of phonemes and pictures are mainly influenced by semantic features, i.e., the content of a picture, whereas the influence of perceivable features, i.e., size or shape, is overridden. This suggests that abstract semantic concepts can function as an interface between different sensory modalities, facilitating cross-modal associations.

Body emotion recognition disproportionately depends on vertical orientations during childhood

Children’s ability to recognize emotional expressions from faces and bodies develops during childhood. However, the low-level features that support accurate body emotion recognition during development have not been well characterized. This is in marked contrast to facial emotion recognition, which is known to depend upon specific spatial frequency and orientation sub-bands during adulthood, biases that develop during childhood. Here, we examined whether children’s reliance on vertical vs. horizontal orientation energy for recognizing emotional expressions in static images of bodies changed during middle childhood (5 to 10 years old). We found that while children of all ages had an adult-like bias favoring vertical orientation energy, this effect was larger at younger ages. We conclude that in terms of information use, a key feature of the development of emotion recognition is improved performance with sub-optimal features for recognition – that is, learning to use less diagnostic features of the image is a slower process than learning to use more useful features.

Emotional body-word conflict evokes enhanced n450 and slow potential

Emotional conflict refers to the influence of task irrelevant affective stimuli on current task set. Previously used emotional face-word tasks have produced certain electrophysiological phenomena, such as an enhanced N450 and slow potential; however, it remains unknown whether these effects emerge in other tasks. The present study used an emotional body-word conflict task to investigate the neural dynamics of emotional conflict as reflected by response time, accuracy, and event-related potentials, which were recorded with the aim of replicating the previously observed N450 and slow potential effect. Results indicated increased response time and decreased accuracy in the incongruent condition relative to the congruent condition, indicating a robust interference effect. Furthermore, the incongruent condition evoked pronounced N450 amplitudes and a more positive slow potential, which might be associated with conflict-monitoring and conflict resolution. The present findings extend our understanding of emotional conflict to the body-word domain.

Emotional signals from faces, bodies and scenes influence observers' face expressions, fixations and pupil-size

We receive emotional signals from different sources, including the face, the whole body, and the natural scene. Previous research has shown the importance of context provided by the whole body and the scene on the recognition of facial expressions. This study measured physiological responses to face-body-scene combinations. Participants freely viewed emotionally congruent and incongruent face-body and body-scene pairs whilst eye fixations, pupil-size, and electromyography (EMG) responses were recorded. Participants attended more to angry and fearful vs. happy or neutral cues, independent of the source and relatively independent from whether the face body and body scene combinations were emotionally congruent or not. Moreover, angry faces combined with angry bodies and angry bodies viewed in aggressive social scenes elicited greatest pupil dilation. Participants' face expressions matched the valence of the stimuli but when face-body compounds were shown, the observed facial expression influenced EMG responses more than the posture. Together, our results show that the perception of emotional signals from faces, bodies and scenes depends on the natural context, but when threatening cues are presented, these threats attract attention, induce arousal, and evoke congruent facial reactions.