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This study aims at examining the precise temporal dynamics of the emotional facial decoding as it unfolds in the brain, according to the emotions displayed. To characterize this processing as it occurs in ecological settings, we focused on unconstrained visual explorations of natural emotional faces (i.e., free eye movements). The General Linear Model (GLM; Smith and Kutas, 2015a,b; Kristensen et al., 2017a) enables such a depiction. It allows deconvolving adjacent overlapping responses of the eye fixation-related potentials (EFRPs) elicited by the subsequent fixations and the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited at the stimuli onset. Nineteen participants were displayed with spontaneous static facial expressions of emotions (Neutral, Disgust, Surprise, and Happiness) from the DynEmo database (Tcherkassof et al., 2013). Behavioral results on participants’ eye movements show that the usual diagnostic features in emotional decoding (eyes for negative facial displays and mouth for positive ones) are consistent with the literature. The impact of emotional category on both the ERPs and the EFRPs elicited by the free exploration of the emotional faces is observed upon the temporal dynamics of the emotional facial expression processing. Regarding the ERP at stimulus onset, there is a significant emotion-dependent modulation of the P2–P3 complex and LPP components’ amplitude at the left frontal site for the ERPs computed by averaging. Yet, the GLM reveals the impact of subsequent fixations on the ERPs time-locked on stimulus onset. Results are also in line with the valence hypothesis. The observed differences between the two estimation methods (Average vs. GLM) suggest the predominance of the right hemisphere at the stimulus onset and the implication of the left hemisphere in the processing of the information encoded by subsequent fixations. Concerning the first EFRP, the Lambda response and the P2 component are modulated by the emotion of surprise compared to the neutral emotion, suggesting an impact of high-level factors, in parieto-occipital sites. Moreover, no difference is observed on the second and subsequent EFRP. Taken together, the results stress the significant gain obtained in analyzing the EFRPs using the GLM method and pave the way toward efficient ecological emotional dynamic stimuli analyses.

From the very beginning, psychology has always oscillated between a physiological approach of emotion and an intellectualist one, neglecting therefore in the affective life what is really authentically affective. In daily life, the word emotion in the first place typifies experiential phenomena which are beyond ordinary ones. Because of the movements of the soul which characterize them, the philosophers have designated these phenomena by words underlining their kinetic dimension. Aristotle used the word kinesis. Latter, Descartes used emotion, which in his time meant riot or agitation. As a matter of fact, the emotional feelings are perceptions of the dynamic commitment of the body in the interaction process. However, the kinesthetic value of emotions has practically been left aside in most of the recent psychological theories which have privileged the axiological judgment which is as central in emotions.This paper presents arguments which speak in favor of the renewal of a perceptual model of emotion which allows better explaining the link between intentionality and phenomenology. This model suggests reconsidering the perception process by calling upon Gibson’s (1979) ecological theory. According to the latter, perception is an extraction by action and the affordance is the action possibility given by the environment to the living organism. In this perspective, the perceptual model which is described here conceives emotions as giving to the subject a value laden world in the form of objects calling for action. In other terms, perception is enactive. The signification of the object or of the event is not a cognitive appraisal considered as a process of intellectual evaluation, but rather a form of comprehension mediated by the own subject’s corporal mobilization. The latter approach based on relational action thus could reconcile the naturalistic and the intellectualist approaches of emotions. However, this approach calls for a real paradigmatic turning point.