Psy 121
Fall, 2007
Study Guide for lecture and assigned readings for Sept 4
Appended please find a summary/clarification of the argument for functional modularity
of face recognition processing.
Outline of topics for lecture & readings Tues, Sept 4
Today, we will consider the judgments of current state, such as affective state, direction
of attention/interest that can be “read” from faces. In order to consider the topic of
facial expressions of affect/emotion, we’ll first briefly review current thinking on the topic
of what emotions are.
AFFECTS
Some definitions
Affect
Mood: unattributed core affect
Emotions: intentional states
Dimensions of core affect James Russell, Lisa Feldman Barrett
Arousal: evaluation of need for action (mental or physical)
Valence: evaluation of hedonic value (pos/neg, approach/avoid)
The emotions circumplex (GRG: Fig 12.9)
Appraisal dimensions
e.g., Roseman
The role of emotion categories/labels (Feldman Barrett)
Are there “basic” emotions?
Possible criteria
Shaver et al.’s data (GRG: Fig 12.8)
Components of affective states:
Cognitions
“cold cognitions”: perception
“hot cognitions”: evaluation (core affect) and appraisals
Physiology
Autonomic nervous system
Patterns of brain activation (Richard Davidson, GRG: p. 472)
Behavior, including approach/avoidance, facial expressions
Subjective experience
Temporal issues: cause and effect, dynamics GRG: Figs 12.4 – 12.6
What William James did not say (James-Lange theory, Ellsworth)
Psy 121 Study Guide
Sept 4, 2007
2
Affects as information
Attribution of core affect: Murphy & Zajonc, Schachter & Singer
Positive affects as “safety signals” e.g., Fredrickson. Isen
GRG: p. 472, exs in Grewal & Salovey
heuristic processing, creativity, broaden-and-build
Gut feelings e.g., Damasio, the gambling task
GRG: pp. 96-97, Grewal & Salovey
Self-regulation Gross, Ochsner & Gross
Reappraisal & suppression GRG: pp. 473-474
Developmental GRG p. 416
Individual differences
Temperament
Interoception (e.g., Craig)
Emotion differentiation (Feldman Barrett, described in Grewal & Salovey)
Emotional intelligence? (Grewal & Salovey)
Functions of affects
see GRG pp. 472-473
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
Fundamental question: to what extent are facial expressions “read outs” of affective
state and to what extent are they social signals (involuntary and voluntary)?
Paul Ekman and the neurocultural theory of universal facial expressions
Especially important facial muscles: zygomatic and corrugator
Voluntary and involuntary expressions
Evidence for facial affect programs (i.e., the “neuro” part)
A note about Darwin’s position
Facial expressions in infants and the blind
Messinger, Galati et al., GRG pp. 415, 467
Infant perception of facial expressions: GRG p. 398
Comparative studies Parr et al., GRG p. 467
Cross-cultural identification studies Ekman, Russell, GRG pp. 467-468
Critiques of these studies
Microexpressions & the Diogenes project (New Yorker article)
“reliable muscles,” e.g., Obicularis oculi, pars lateralis
Evidence for the effects of experience and culture
Display rules, decoding rules, “dialect theory”
Ekman, Elfenbein & Ambady, GRG pp. 468-469
Cross-cultural differences
Pollak et al. (described in Grewal & Salovey)
Contextual factors
The presence of an observer GRG p. 468-469
The influence of gaze direction (e.g., Adams & Kleck)
Psy 121 Study Guide
Sept 4, 2007
3
Gender effects GRG p. 469
Signals to others and signals to the self
Emotion contagion, mimicry (e.g., Dimberg et al.)
Mimicry in infants GRG pp. 372-373
Empathy
Facial feedback hypothesis
Mobius syndrome
Study Guide for Grewal & Salovey
The assigned article by Grewal & Salovey provides summaries of a number of current,
important projects in the area of emotions research, for example:
1, Damasio’s research on the gambling task (advantageous decision-making)
2. Pollak’s research on the effects of abusive child-rearing on the perception of
facial expressions
3. Isen’s work on the influence of positive emotions on creativity
4. Studies by Feldman Barrett and by Gross on managing emotions, the former
of which includes an assessment of understanding emotions
The point of these descriptions seems to be to convince us that the skills identified in
the four-branch model exist and (for some of the described cases) are capable of
varying. But, as Grewal & Salovey understand, the critical step is to convince us that
these skills predict something interesting about our lives – and, specifically, something
that is NOT predicted by general personality factors. Are you convinced?
Painful though it may be, we should spend a few minutes trying to understand Figure 9.
What should we be looking for in this Figure? Two clarifications: First, the correlations
in the top half of the Figure are for pairs of the tests taken by a large sample of folks, the
correlations in the bottom half are for tests “taken by” a small number of emotions
experts. Second, the black and dark gray boxes on the left side and on the top of the
correlation table should be “parsed” in the same fashion. The parsing on the left side is
in error.
For more information:
Mayer’s web site: http://www.unh.edu/emotional_intelligence/index.html
Psy 121 Study Guide
Sept 4, 2007
4
Suggested readings
Adams. R.B. & Kleck, R.E. (2005). Effects of direct and averted gaze on the perception
of facially communicated emotion, Emotion, 5, 3-11.
Craig, A.D. (2004). Human feelings: why are some more aware than others? Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 8(6), 239-241.
Davidson, R.J. (2000). Affective style, psychopathology, and resilience: Brain
mechanisms and plasticity, American Psychologist, 11, 1196-1214.
Dimberg, U., Thunberg, M. & Elmehed, K. (2000). Unconscious facial reactions to
emotional facial expressions, Psychological Science, 11, 86-89.
Ellsworth, P.C. (1994). William James and emotion: is a century of fame worth a
century of misunderstanding? Psychological Review, 101(2), 222-229.
Feldman Barrett, L., Lindquist, K.A. & Gendron, M. (2007). Language as a context for
the perception of emotion, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(8), 327-332.
Feldman Barrett, L., Mesquita, B., Ochsner, K. & Gross, J.J. (2007). The experience of
emotion, Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 373-403.
Frederickson, B.L. (2003). The value of positive emotions, American Scientist, 91, 330335.
Ekman, P. (1993). Facial expressions and emotion, American Psychologist, 48, 384392.
Elfenbein, H.A. & Ambady, N. (2003). Universals and cultural differences in recognizing
emotions, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12(5), 159-164.
Galati, D. Scherer, K.R. & Ricci-Bitti, P.E. (1997) Voluntary facial expression of
emotion: comparing congenitally blind with normally sighted encoders, Journal of
Personality & Social Psychology, 73(6), 1363-1379.
Goldman, A.I., Sripada, C.S. (2005). Simulationist models of face-based emotion
recognition, Cognition, 94, 193-213.
Gross, J.J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review,
Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299.
Messinger, D.S. (2002). Positive and negative: Infant facial expressions and emotions,
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(1), 1-6.
Niedenthal, P. M. (2007). Embodying emotion, Science, 316, 1002-1005.
Ochsner, K. & Gross, J.J. (2005). The cognitive control of emotion, Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 9, 242-249.
Parr, L, Waller, B.M.& Vick, S.J. (2007). New development in understanding emotional
facial signals in chimpanzees, Current Directions in Psychological Science,
16(3), 117-122.
Roseman, I.J. (1991). Appraisal determinants of discrete emotions, Cognition &
Emotion, 5(3), 161-200.
Russell, J.A. (2003). Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion,
Psychological Review, 110(1), 145-172.
Russell, J. A., Bachorowski, J.-A. & Fernandez-Dols, J.-M. (2003). Facial and vocal
expressions of emotion, Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 329-349.
de Vignemont, F. & Singer, T. (2006). The empathic brain: how, when and why?
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(10), 435-441.
Psy 121 Study Guide
Sept 4, 2007
5
Functional modularity of face recognition processing
1. Face processing for recognition depends primarily on the processing of the
configuration of features of the face rather than on the processing of individual
features. (Multiple examples of this were provided in Tues/Wed labs and Thurs
lecture.) Indeed, the evidence suggests that this characteristic of face processing
distinguishes it from the processing of other classes of objects that contain
multiple exemplars (e.g., birds, cars, houses).
2. Prosopagnosia is a neuropsychological disorder in which there is a deficit in
explicit face recognition in the absence of a deficit in the recognition of other
objects (object agnosia). Prosopagnosics can recognize individuals based on
their voices, and on distinctive facial features (such as a bushy beard or
particular hairstyle), but seem to be unable consciously to access face identity in
the normal (configuration-based) way. There are also a small number of object
agnosics who retain the ability to recognize faces. This double dissociation
between agnosia for faces and for objects suggests that at least some aspects of
object and face recognition are functionally separate.
3. Some prosopagnosics demonstrate an ability to recognize previously-welllearned faces outside awareness (i.e., implicit recognition), as shown by the
example provided in the video (using skin conductance responses as the
indicator of recognition). However, studies of new face learning demonstrate a
variety of deficits, even with measures of implicit recognition. N.B. This
distinction between explicit (conscious, accessible to awareness) and implicit
(occurring outside of awareness) processing will re-appear throughout the
semester. Other examples of implicit processing were provided in last
Tues/Wed’s labs.)
4. Are faces special because of their reliance on configural processing (a type of
process-modularity that might reflect expertise) or because of the fact that they
are faces per se (i.e., domain-specific modularity)? A set of abstract stimuli
called Greebles has been developed for which investigators agree configural
processing is required for recognition. In a recent study, a congenital
prosopagnosic performed as well as non-prosopagnosic controls in a Greeble
learning and recognition task. This finding strongly suggests that face
processing shows domain-specific modularity.