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Background: Attentional processes are influenced by both stimulus characteristics and individual factors such as mood or personal experience. Research has suggested that attentional biases to socially relevant stimuli may occur in individuals with a history of peer victimization in childhood and adolescence. Based on this, the present study aimed to examine attentional processes in response to emotional faces at both the behavioral and neurophysiological levels in participants with experiences of peer victimization. Methods: In a sample of 60 adult participants with varying severity of retrospectively reported peer victimization in childhood and adolescence, the dot-probe task was administered with angry, disgusted, sad, and happy facial expressions. In addition to behavioral responses, physiological responses (i.e., event-related potentials) were analyzed. Results: Analyses of mean P100 and P200 amplitudes revealed altered P200 amplitudes in individuals with higher degrees of peer victimization. Higher levels of relational peer victimization were associated with increased P200 amplitudes in response to facial expressions, particularly angry and disgusted facial expressions. Hierarchical regression analyses showed no evidence for an influence of peer victimization experiences on reaction times or P100 amplitudes in response to the different emotions. Conclusion: Cortical findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of peer victimization mobilize more attentional resources when confronted with negative emotional social stimuli. Peer victimization experiences in childhood and adolescence appear to influence cortical processes into adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Attentional processes are influenced by both stimulus characteristics and individual factors such as mood or personal experience. Research has suggested that attentional biases to socially relevant stimuli may occur in individuals with a history of peer victimization in childhood and adolescence. Based on this, the present study aimed to examine attentional processes in response to emotional faces at both the behavioral and neurophysiological levels in participants with experiences of peer victimization. Methods In a sample of 60 adult participants with varying severity of retrospectively reported peer victimization in childhood and adolescence, the dot-probe task was administered with angry, disgusted, sad, and happy facial expressions. In addition to behavioral responses, physiological responses (i.e., event-related potentials) were analyzed. Results Analyses of mean P100 and P200 amplitudes revealed altered P200 amplitudes in individuals with higher degrees of peer victimization. Higher levels of relational peer victimization were associated with increased P200 amplitudes in response to facial expressions, particularly angry and disgusted facial expressions. Hierarchical regression analyses showed no evidence for an influence of peer victimization experiences on reaction times or P100 amplitudes in response to the different emotions. Conclusion Cortical findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of peer victimization mobilize more attentional resources when confronted with negative emotional social stimuli. Peer victimization experiences in childhood and adolescence appear to influence cortical processes into adulthood.

Abstract Recent research shows that emotional facial expressions impact behavioral responses only when their valence is relevant to the task. Under such conditions, threatening faces delay attentional disengagement, resulting in slower reaction times and increased omission errors compared to happy faces. To investigate the neural underpinnings of this phenomenon, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to record the brain activity of 23 healthy participants while they completed two versions of the go/no-go task. In the emotion task (ET), participants responded to emotional expressions (fearful or happy faces) and refrained from responding to neutral faces. In the gender task (GT), the same images were displayed, but participants had to respond based on the posers’ gender. Our results confirmed previous behavioral findings and revealed a network of brain regions (including the angular gyrus, the ventral precuneus, the left posterior cingulate cortex, the right anterior superior frontal gyrus, and two face-responsive regions) displaying distinct activation patterns for the same facial emotional expressions in the ET compared to the GT. We propose that this network integrates internal representations of task rules with sensory characteristics of facial expressions to evaluate emotional stimuli and exert top-down control, guiding goal-directed actions according to the context.

Individuals who with suicide behaviors pay more attention to negative signals than positive ones. However, it is unclear that whether this bias exists when suicide ideators perceive interpersonal stimuli (such as faces with emotion) and the underlying neural mechanism of the attention process. The present study aimed to examine the attentional bias toward emotional facial expressions by employing event-related potentials in a population with suicide ideation. Twenty-five undergraduates with suicide ideation (SI group) and sixteen undergraduates without suicide ideation (NSI group) participated in a modified dot-probe task. Compared to the NSI group, the SI group exhibited: (1) a longer mean reaction time to fearful faces; (2) a larger N1 component to fearful faces; (3) a larger N1 component to the location of sad faces, as well as to the opposite location of fearful faces and happy faces; and (4) a larger N1 component to the contralateral location of happy faces, whereas the NSI group elicited a larger N1 component to the ipsilateral location of happy faces. These results indicated that the SI group was more sensitive to negative emotions (fearful and sad faces) than positive emotions (happy faces), and the negative interpersonal stimuli in suicide ideators was processed at an early attention stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the perceptual-attentional limitations hypothesis, the confusion between expressions of disgust and anger may be due to the difficulty in perceptually distinguishing the two, or insufficient attention to their distinctive cues. The objective of the current study was to test this hypothesis as an explanation for the confusion between expressions of disgust and anger in adults using eye-movements. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to identify each emotion in 96 trials composed of prototypes of anger and prototypes of disgust. In Experiment 2, fixation points oriented participants' attention toward the eyes, the nose, or the mouth of each prototype. Results revealed that disgust was less accurately recognised than anger (Experiment 1 and 2), especially when the mouth was open (Experiment 1 and 2), and even when attention was oriented toward the distinctive features of disgust (Experiment 2). Additionally, when attention was oriented toward certain zones, the eyes (which contain characteristics of anger) had the longest dwell times, followed by the nose (which contains characteristics of disgust; Experiment 2). Thus, although participants may attend to the distinguishing features of disgust and anger, these may not aid them in accurately recognising each prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coarse-to-fine hypothesis posits that, in the Human visualsystem, a coarse representation of visual information is propa-gated quickly through the retina to the cortex, whereas a finer,more detailed representation is propagated more slowly. In aprevious study we showed that recurrent synaptic connectionshelp predict low intensity EFEs. Furthermore, a feedback loopcoming from coarser information processing is postulated toinfluence later processing of finer features. In this paper, weintend to examine the value of coarser information and recur-rence in the processing of dynamic Emotional Facial Expres-sions (EFE). In a step forward in studying the importance ofrecurrent connectivity in the coarse-to-fine model, we testedits advantage for discriminating emotions for different spatialfrequencies and facial expression intensities. Using ArtificialNeural Networks, we modeled recurrent synaptic connectionswith a recurrent feedback loop. Using a Gabor filter bank, wecomputed different levels of spatial frequency features. Our re-sults replicate the advantage of recurrence at first facial expres-sion intensities. Our main finding is that the recurrent model isalso better when predicting high spatial frequencies features.Additionally, mid-to-low spatial frequencies are more usefulto the prediction of EFEs. We conclude that feature process-ing feedback has a significant effect in disambiguating facialexpressions when information is particularly complex, i.e., athigh spatial frequencies and low EFE intensities.

Introduction: Previous research has indicated altered attentional processing in individuals with experiences of maltreatment or victimization in childhood and adolescence. The present study examined the impact of child and adolescent experiences of relational peer victimization on attentional processes in adulthood when confronted with emotional facial expressions. Methods: As part of an online study, a community sample of adults completed a facial dot-probe task. In the present task, pictures of facial expressions displaying four different emotions (anger, disgust, happiness, and sadness) were used. Results: The results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that retrospective reports of peer victimization made a significant contribution to the prediction of facilitated orienting processes for sad facial expressions. Experiences of emotional child maltreatment, on the other hand, made a significant contribution to the prediction of attentional biases for angry facial expressions. Discussion: Our results emphasize the relevance of experiences of emotional and relational maltreatment in childhood and in adolescence for the processing of social stimuli in adulthood. The findings regarding emotional child maltreatment aremore indicative of attentional biases in the context of threat detection, whereas the altered attentional processes in peer victimization are more indicative of mood-congruent biases. These altered processesmay be active in social situations and may therefore influence future social situations, behavior, feelings, and thus mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When deciding whether to cross the street or not, pedestrians take into consideration information provided by both vehicle kinematics and the driver of an approaching vehicle. It will not be long, however, before drivers of autonomous vehicles (AVs) will be unable to communicate their intention to pedestrians, as they will be engaged in activities unrelated to driving. External human–machine interfaces (eHMIs) have been developed to fill the communication gap that will result by offering information to pedestrians about the situational awareness and intention of an AV. Several anthropomorphic eHMI concepts have employed facial expressions to communicate vehicle intention. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficiency of emotional (smile; angry expression) and conversational (nod; head shake) facial expressions in communicating vehicle intention (yielding; non-yielding). Participants completed a crossing intention task where they were tasked with deciding appropriately whether to cross the street or not. Emotional expressions communicated vehicle intention more efficiently than conversational expressions, as evidenced by the lower latency in the emotional expression condition compared to the conversational expression condition. The implications of our findings for the development of anthropomorphic eHMIs that employ facial expressions to communicate vehicle intention are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionPrevious research has indicated altered attentional processing in individuals with experiences of maltreatment or victimization in childhood and adolescence. The present study examined the impact of child and adolescent experiences of relational peer victimization on attentional processes in adulthood when confronted with emotional facial expressions.MethodsAs part of an online study, a community sample of adults completed a facial dot-probe task. In the present task, pictures of facial expressions displaying four different emotions (anger, disgust, happiness, and sadness) were used.ResultsThe results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that retrospective reports of peer victimization made a significant contribution to the prediction of facilitated orienting processes for sad facial expressions. Experiences of emotional child maltreatment, on the other hand, made a significant contribution to the prediction of attentional biases for angry facial expressions.DiscussionOur results emphasize the relevance of experiences of emotional and relational maltreatment in childhood and in adolescence for the processing of social stimuli in adulthood. The findings regarding emotional child maltreatment are more indicative of attentional biases in the context of threat detection, whereas the altered attentional processes in peer victimization are more indicative of mood-congruent biases. These altered processes may be active in social situations and may therefore influence future social situations, behavior, feelings, and thus mental health.

Daily life demands that we differentiate between a multitude of emotional facial expressions (EFEs). The mirror neuron system (MNS) is becoming increasingly implicated as a neural network involved with understanding emotional body expressions. However, the specificity of the MNS's involvement in emotion recognition has remained largely unexplored. This study investigated whether six basic dynamic EFEs (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) would be differentiated through event-related desynchronisation (ERD) of sensorimotor alpha and beta oscillatory activity, which indexes sensorimotor MNS activity. We found that beta ERD differentiated happy, fearful, and sad dynamic EFEs at the central region of interest, but not at occipital regions. Happy EFEs elicited significantly greater central beta ERD relative to fearful and sad EFEs within 800 - 2,000 ms after EFE onset. These differences were source-localised to the primary somatosensory cortex, which suggests they are likely to reflect differential sensorimotor simulation rather than differential attentional engagement. Furthermore, individuals with higher trait anxiety showed less beta ERD differentiation between happy and sad faces. Similarly, individuals with higher trait autism showed less beta ERD differentiation between happy and fearful faces. These findings suggest that the differential simulation of specific affective states is attenuated in individuals with higher trait anxiety and autism. In summary, the MNS appears to support the skills needed for emotion processing in daily life, which may be influenced by certain individual differences. This provides novel evidence for the notion that simulation-based emotional skills may underlie the emotional difficulties that accompany affective disorders, such as anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we tested the respective importance of low spatial frequencies (LSF) and high spatial frequencies (HSF) for conscious visual recognition of emotional stimuli by using an attentional blink paradigm. Thirty-eight participants were asked to identify and report two targets (happy faces) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation of distractors (angry faces). During attentional blink, conscious perception of the second target (T2) is usually altered when the lag between the two targets is short (200–500 ms) but is restored at longer lags. The distractors between T1 and T2 were either non-filtered (broad spatial frequencies, BSF), low-pass filtered (LSF), or high-pass filtered (HSF). Assuming that prediction abilities could be at the root of conscious visual recognition, we expected that LSF distractors could result in a greater disturbance of T2 reporting than HSF distractors. Results showed that both LSF and HSF play a role in the emergence of exogenous consciousness in the visual system. Furthermore, HSF distractors strongly affected T1 and T2 reporting irrespective of the lag between targets, suggesting their role for facial emotion processing. We discuss these results with regards to other models of visual recognition. .

Pedestrians base their street-crossing decisions on vehicle-centric as well as driver-centric cues. In the future, however, drivers of autonomous vehicles will be preoccupied with non-driving related activities and will thus be unable to provide pedestrians with relevant communicative cues. External human–machine interfaces (eHMIs) hold promise for filling the expected communication gap by providing information about a vehicle's situational awareness and intention. In this paper, we present an eHMI concept that employs a virtual human character (VHC) to communicate pedestrian acknowledgement and vehicle intention (non-yielding; cruising; yielding). Pedestrian acknowledgement is communicated via gaze direction while vehicle intention is communicated via facial expression. The effectiveness of the proposed anthropomorphic eHMI concept was evaluated in the context of a monitor-based laboratory experiment where the participants performed a crossing intention task (self-paced, two-alternative forced choice) and their accuracy in making appropriate street-crossing decisions was measured. In each trial, they were first presented with a 3D animated sequence of a VHC (male; female) that either looked directly at them or clearly to their right while producing either an emotional (smile; angry expression; surprised expression), a conversational (nod; head shake), or a neutral (neutral expression; cheek puff) facial expression. Then, the participants were asked to imagine they were pedestrians intending to cross a one-way street at a random uncontrolled location when they saw an autonomous vehicle equipped with the eHMI approaching from the right and indicate via mouse click whether they would cross the street in front of the oncoming vehicle or not. An implementation of the proposed concept where non-yielding intention is communicated via the VHC producing either an angry expression, a surprised expression, or a head shake; cruising intention is communicated via the VHC puffing its cheeks; and yielding intention is communicated via the VHC nodding, was shown to be highly effective in ensuring the safety of a single pedestrian or even two co-located pedestrians without compromising traffic flow in either case. The implications for the development of intuitive, culture-transcending eHMIs that can support multiple pedestrians in parallel are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Costly punishment describes decisions of an interaction partner to punish an opponent for violating rules of fairness at the expense of personal costs. Here, we extend the interaction process by investigating the impact of a socio-emotional reaction of the opponent in response to the punishment that indicates whether punishment was successful or not. In a modified Ultimatum game, emotional facial expressions of the proposer in response to the decision of the responder served as feedback stimuli. We found that both honored reward following acceptance of an offer (smiling compared to neutral facial expression) and successful punishment (sad compared to neutral facial expression) elicited a reward positivity, indicating that punishment was the intended outcome. By comparing the pattern of results with a probabilistic learning task, we show that the reward positivity on sad facial expressions was specific for the context of costly punishment. Additionally, acceptance rates on a trial-by-trial basis were altered according to P3 amplitudes in response to the emotional facial reaction of the proposer. Our results are in line with the concept of costly punishment as an intentional act following norm-violating behavior. Socio-emotional stimuli have an important influence on the perception and behavior in economic bargaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following theoretical proposals emphasizing the role of caregiver behavior for child emotion processing, this study investigated whether maternal sensitivity and non‐intrusiveness predicted child attention to emotional facial expressions, assessed via eye tracking, as the earliest stage of emotion regulation. Maternal behavior and child attention were assessed at 12 (N = 118) and 24 months. Cross‐lagged panel analyses revealed predictive effects of maternal sensitivity at 12 months on child attention to sad and happy expressions at 24 months. Moreover, maternal non‐intrusiveness at 12 months predicted child attention to sad expressions at 24 months. Effects were independent of child gender and temperament. The findings highlight the pervasive impact of caregiver sensitivity on emotion processing in the early years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Threatening expressions are detected quickly and accurately, warning the observer of the presence of a potential danger. During the detection process, a facial expression of surprise could play an important role as a cue for orientation in conditions of uncertainty that call for a swift and precise response. With a view to analysing this contingency, an experiment was conducted in which 70 subjects undertook a spatial cueing task that involved facial expressions of surprise (vs. neutral ones) as orientation cues, and facial expressions of fear, anger and happiness as target stimuli. The results revealed a priming effect of the expression of surprise solely in the detection of the expression of anger, reducing response times and the percentage of errors. The data indicate that the expression of surprise, when processed as an independent stimulus, could prime the detection of those stimuli that constitute a direct threat, such as the expression of anger, with this being a crucial distinction for understanding the circumstances in which the expression of anger is detected more effectively than other kinds of expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Major depressive disorder has been associated with specific attentional biases in processing emotional facial expressions: heightened attention for negative and decreased attention for positive faces. However, using visual search paradigms, previous reaction-time-based research failed, in general, to find evidence for increased spatial attention toward negative facial expressions and reduced spatial attention toward positive facial expressions in depressed individuals. Eye-tracking analyses allow for a more detailed examination of visual search processes over time during the perception of multiple stimuli and can provide more specific insights into the attentional processing of multiple emotional stimuli. Methods Gaze behavior of 38 clinically depressed individuals and 38 gender matched healthy controls was compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Pictures of happy, angry, and neutral facial expressions were utilized as target and distractor stimuli. Four distinct measures of eye gaze served as dependent variables: (a) latency to the target face, (b) number of distractor faces fixated prior to fixating the target, (c) mean fixation time per distractor face before fixating the target and (d) mean fixation time on the target. Results Depressed and healthy individuals did not differ in their manual response times. Our eye-tracking data revealed no differences between study groups in attention guidance to emotional target faces as well as in the duration of attention allocation to emotional distractor and target faces. However, depressed individuals fixated fewer distractor faces before fixating the target than controls, regardless of valence of expressions. Conclusions Depressed individuals seem to process angry and happy expressions in crowds of faces mainly in the same way as healthy individuals. Our data indicate no biased attention guidance to emotional targets and no biased processing of angry and happy distractors and targets in depression during visual search. Under conditions of clear task demand depressed individuals seem to be able to allocate and guide their attention in crowds of angry and happy faces as efficiently as healthy individuals.

When deciding whether to cross the street or not, pedestrians take into consideration information provided by both vehicle kinematics and the driver of an approaching vehicle. It will not be long, however, before drivers of autonomous vehicles (AVs) will be unable to communicate their intention to pedestrians, as they will be engaged in activities unrelated to driving. External human–machine interfaces (eHMIs) have been developed to fill the communication gap that will result by offering information to pedestrians about the situational awareness and intention of an AV. Several anthropomorphic eHMI concepts have employed facial expressions to communicate vehicle intention. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficiency of emotional (smile; angry expression) and conversational (nod; head shake) facial expressions in communicating vehicle intention (yielding; non-yielding). Participants completed a crossing intention task where they were tasked with deciding appropriately whether to cross the street or not. Emotional expressions communicated vehicle intention more efficiently than conversational expressions, as evidenced by the lower latency in the emotional expression condition compared to the conversational expression condition. The implications of our findings for the development of anthropomorphic eHMIs that employ facial expressions to communicate vehicle intention are discussed.

Using still pictures of emotional facial expressions as experimental stimuli, reduced amygdala responses or impaired recognition of basic emotions were repeatedly found in people with psychopathic traits. The amygdala also plays an important role in short‐latency facial mimicry responses. Since dynamic emotional facial expressions may have higher ecological validity than still pictures, we compared short‐latency facial mimicry responses to dynamic and static emotional expressions between adolescents with psychopathic traits and normal controls. Facial EMG responses to videos or still pictures of emotional expressions (happiness, anger, sadness, fear) were measured. Responses to 500‐ms dynamic expressions in videos, as well as the subsequent 1500‐ms phase of maximal (i.e., static) expression, were compared between male adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders and high (n = 14) or low (n = 17) callous‐unemotional (CU) traits, and normal control subjects (n = 32). Responses to still pictures were also compared between groups. EMG responses to dynamic expressions were generally significantly smaller in the high‐CU group than in the other two groups, which generally did not differ. These group differences gradually emerged during the 500‐ms stimulus presentation period but in general they were already seen a few hundred milliseconds after stimulus onset. Group differences were absent during the 1500‐ms phase of maximal expression and during exposure to still pictures. Subnormal short‐latency mimicry responses to dynamic emotional facial expressions in the high‐CU group might have negative consequences for understanding emotional facial expressions of others during daily life when human facial interactions are primarily dynamic. During human interactions, short‐latency facial mimicry responses occur to dynamic emotional facial expressions of others. These are preconscious, automatic responses which cannot be voluntarily controlled. They may be important for emotional understanding of others and appear to be subnormal in male adolescents with psychopathic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that the human visual system can detect a face and elicit a saccadic eye movement toward it very efficiently compared to other categories of visual stimuli. In the first experiment, we tested the influence of facial expressions on fast face detection using a saccadic choice task. Face‐vehicle pairs were simultaneously presented and participants were asked to saccade toward the target (the face or the vehicle). We observed that saccades toward faces were initiated faster, and more often in the correct direction, than saccades toward vehicles, regardless of the facial expressions (happy, fearful, or neutral). We also observed that saccade endpoints on face images were lower when the face was happy and higher when it was neutral. In the second experiment, we explicitly tested the detection of facial expressions. We used a saccadic choice task with emotional‐neutral pairs of faces and participants were asked to saccade toward the emotional (happy or fearful) or the neutral face. Participants were faster when they were asked to saccade toward the emotional face. They also made fewer errors, especially when the emotional face was happy. Using computational modeling, we showed that this happy face advantage can, at least partly, be explained by perceptual factors. Also, saccade endpoints were lower when the target was happy than when it was fearful. Overall, we suggest that there is no automatic prioritization of emotional faces, at least for saccades with short latencies, but that salient local face features can automatically attract attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this study was to investigate the influence of stimulus duration manipulations of pictures expressing universal six basic emotions by using a prospective paradigm including verbal estimation and reproduction tasks. The study was conducted with 75 participants (47 female and 28 male) who verbally estimated and reproduced the duration of emotional facial expressions (anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, happiness and neutral) presented for different durations (500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 ms). In each presentation duration, durations of all emotional facial expressions were perceived to be shorter than target durations and temporal distortions increase with duration of intervals. On the other hand, durations of all emotional facial expressions except the sadness facial expression were perceived longer than the duration of neutral facial expression. According to internal clock model and in the context of arousal and attention, tendency to underestimate the duration of emotional stimuli compared to target duration was consistent with an attentional model while tendency to overestimate duration of the emotional stimuli compared to duration of neutral stimulus was consistent with the arousal based model. The findings of this study suggested that in regard to the effects of emotional facial expressions on time perception, not only the involvement of effects emanating from arousal and attention but also memory and decision making processes could have an effect due to the type of temporal task difference.

Pedestrians base their street-crossing decisions on vehicle-centric as well as driver-centric cues. In the future, however, drivers of autonomous vehicles will be preoccupied with non-driving related activities and will thus be unable to provide pedestrians with relevant communicative cues. External human–machine interfaces (eHMIs) hold promise for filling the expected communication gap by providing information about a vehicle’s situational awareness and intention. In this paper, we present an eHMI concept that employs a virtual human character (VHC) to communicate pedestrian acknowledgement and vehicle intention (non-yielding; cruising; yielding). Pedestrian acknowledgement is communicated via gaze direction while vehicle intention is communicated via facial expression. The effectiveness of the proposed anthropomorphic eHMI concept was evaluated in the context of a monitor-based laboratory experiment where the participants performed a crossing intention task (self-paced, two-alternative forced choice) and their accuracy in making appropriate street-crossing decisions was measured. In each trial, they were first presented with a 3D animated sequence of a VHC (male; female) that either looked directly at them or clearly to their right while producing either an emotional (smile; angry expression; surprised expression), a conversational (nod; head shake), or a neutral (neutral expression; cheek puff) facial expression. Then, the participants were asked to imagine they were pedestrians intending to cross a one-way street at a random uncontrolled location when they saw an autonomous vehicle equipped with the eHMI approaching from the right and indicate via mouse click whether they would cross the street in front of the oncoming vehicle or not. An implementation of the proposed concept where non-yielding intention is communicated via the VHC producing either an angry expression, a surprised expression, or a head shake; cruising intention is communicated via the VHC puffing its cheeks; and yielding intention is communicated via the VHC nodding, was shown to be highly effective in ensuring the safety of a single pedestrian or even two co-located pedestrians without compromising traffic flow in either case. The implications for the development of intuitive, culture-transcending eHMIs that can support multiple pedestrians in parallel are discussed.

Background: The concept of alexithymia is characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one's emotions. Alexithymic individuals are impaired in the recognition of others' emotional facial expressions. Alexithymia is quite common in patients suffering from major depressive disorder. The face-in-the-crowd task is a visual search paradigm that assesses processing of multiple facial emotions. In the present eye-tracking study, the relationship between alexithymia and visual processing of facial emotions was examined in clinical depression.Materials and Methods: Gaze behavior and manual response times of 20 alexithymic and 19 non-alexithymic depressed patients were compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Alexithymia was empirically measured via the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia-Scale. Angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions of different individuals were shown as target and distractor stimuli. Our analyses of gaze behavior focused on latency to the target face, number of distractor faces fixated before fixating the target, number of target fixations, and number of distractor faces fixated after fixating the target.Results: Alexithymic patients exhibited in general slower decision latencies compared to non-alexithymic patients in the face-in-the-crowd task. Patient groups did not differ in latency to target, number of target fixations, and number of distractors fixated prior to target fixation. However, after having looked at the target, alexithymic patients fixated more distractors than non-alexithymic patients, regardless of expression condition.Discussion: According to our results, alexithymia goes along with impairments in visual processing of multiple facial emotions in clinical depression. Alexithymia appears to be associated with delayed manual reaction times and prolonged scanning after the first target fixation in depression, but it might have no impact on the early search phase. The observed deficits could indicate difficulties in target identification and/or decision-making when processing multiple emotional facial expressions. Impairments of alexithymic depressed patients in processing emotions in crowds of faces seem not limited to a specific affective valence. In group situations, alexithymic depressed patients might be slowed in processing interindividual differences in emotional expressions compared with non-alexithymic depressed patients. This could represent a disadvantage in understanding non-verbal communication in groups.

Background: The concept of alexithymia is characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one's emotions. Alexithymic individuals are impaired in the recognition of others' emotional facial expressions. Alexithymia is quite common in patients suffering from major depressive disorder. The face-in-the-crowd task is a visual search paradigm that assesses processing of multiple facial emotions. In the present eye-tracking study, the relationship between alexithymia and visual processing of facial emotions was examined in clinical depression. Materials and Methods: Gaze behavior and manual response times of 20 alexithymic and 19 non-alexithymic depressed patients were compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Alexithymia was empirically measured via the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia-Scale. Angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions of different individuals were shown as target and distractor stimuli. Our analyses of gaze behavior focused on latency to the target face, number of distractor faces fixated before fixating the target, number of target fixations, and number of distractor faces fixated after fixating the target. Results: Alexithymic patients exhibited in general slower decision latencies compared to non-alexithymic patients in the face-in-the-crowd task. Patient groups did not differ in latency to target, number of target fixations, and number of distractors fixated prior to target fixation. However, after having looked at the target, alexithymic patients fixated more distractors than non-alexithymic patients, regardless of expression condition. Discussion: According to our results, alexithymia goes along with impairments in visual processing of multiple facial emotions in clinical depression. Alexithymia appears to be associated with delayed manual reaction times and prolonged scanning after the first target fixation in depression, but it might have no impact on the early search phase. The observed deficits could indicate difficulties in target identification and/or decision-making when processing multiple emotional facial expressions. Impairments of alexithymic depressed patients in processing emotions in crowds of faces seem not limited to a specific affective valence. In group situations, alexithymic depressed patients might be slowed in processing interindividual differences in emotional expressions compared with non-alexithymic depressed patients. This could represent a disadvantage in understanding non-verbal communication in groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Major depressive disorder has been associated with specific attentional biases in processing emotional facial expressions: heightened attention for negative and decreased attention for positive faces. However, using visual search paradigms, previous reaction-time-based research failed, in general, to find evidence for increased spatial attention toward negative facial expressions and reduced spatial attention toward positive facial expressions in depressed individuals. Eye-tracking analyses allow for a more detailed examination of visual search processes over time during the perception of multiple stimuli and can provide more specific insights into the attentional processing of multiple emotional stimuli. Methods: Gaze behavior of 38 clinically depressed individuals and 38 gender matched healthy controls was compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Pictures of happy, angry, and neutral facial expressions were utilized as target and distractor stimuli. Four distinct measures of eye gaze served as dependent variables: (a) latency to the target face, (b) number of distractor faces fixated prior to fixating the target, (c) mean fixation time per distractor face before fixating the target and (d) mean fixation time on the target. Results: Depressed and healthy individuals did not differ in their manual response times. Our eye-tracking data revealed no differences between study groups in attention guidance to emotional target faces as well as in the duration of attention allocation to emotional distractor and target faces. However, depressed individuals fixated fewer distractor faces before fixating the target than controls, regardless of valence of expressions. Conclusions: Depressed individuals seem to process angry and happy expressions in crowds of faces mainly in the same way as healthy individuals. Our data indicate no biased attention guidance to emotional targets and no biased processing of angry and happy distractors and targets in depression during visual search. Under conditions of clear task demand depressed individuals seem to be able to allocate and guide their attention in crowds of angry and happy faces as efficiently as healthy individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the emotion recognition performance of heroin abstainers under the con ditions of audio-visual congruent and incongruent, explore the integrated processing characteristics of emotional face and voice. Methods: A total of 32 male heroin abstainers (abstainers group) and 30 normal men ( control group) were recruited. The audio-visual emotion classification task was used to ask the participants to ignore the emotional voice and make judgments on the types of emotional face (anger, happiness). Results: The reaction time was shorter under congruent condition than under incongruent condition in heroin abstainers[ ( 670 ± 66) ms vs. (687 ± 71) ms, P <0. 001] . And the differences in reaction time between incongruent and congruent condition were lower in heroin abstainers than in the controls[ (32 ± 31 )ms vs. ( 17 ± 21) ms, P < 0. 05]. Under the angry voice conditions, the reac tion time was shorter to angry faces than to happy faces in the control group[ ( 653 ± 94) ms vs. ( 679 ± 78) ms, P <0. 05], and there was no significant difference between angry faces and happy faces in heroin abstainers. Con clusion: Heroin abstainers have the facilitation effect of emotional cross-model integration, but the ability of integra tion is weaker than normal people. What' s more, impaired cross-model integration in heroin abstainers may be refleeted in insensitivity to angry voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Successful identification of emotional expression in patients is of considerable importance in the diagnosis of diseases and while developing rapport between physicians and patients. Despite the importance of such skills, this aspect remains grossly overlooked in conventional medical training in India. This study aims to explore the extent to which medical students can identify emotions by observing photographs of male and female subjects expressing different facial expressions. Methods: A total of 106 medical students aged 18–25, without any diagnosed mental illnesses, were shown images of the six universal facial expressions (anger, sadness, fear, happiness, disgust, and surprise) at 100% intensity with an exposure time of 2 seconds for each image. The participants marked their responses after each image was shown. Collected data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Results: Participants could identify 76.54% of the emotions on average, with higher accuracy for positive emotions (95.6% for happiness) and lower for negative emotions (46% for fear). There were no significant variations in identification with respect to sex of the observers. However, it was seen that participants could identify emotions better from male faces than those from female faces, a finding that was statistically significant. Negative emotions were identified more accurately from male faces, while positive emotions were identified better from female ones. Conclusions: Male participants identified emotions better from male faces, while females identified positive emotions better from female faces and negative ones from male faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research suggests that acute alcohol consumption impairs processing of emotional faces. As emotion processing plays a key role in effective social interaction, these impairments may be one mechanism by which alcohol changes social behaviour. This study investigated the effect of individual differences on this relationship by comparing emotion recognition performance after acute alcohol consumption in individuals with high and low trait aggression. Methods: Regular non-dependent drinkers, either high or low in trait aggression participated in a double-blind placebo-controlled experiment (N = 88, 50% high trait aggressive). Participants attended two sessions. In one they consumed an alcoholic drink (0.4 g/kg) and in the other they consumed a matched placebo. They then completed two computer-based tasks: one measured global and emotion-specific recognition performance across six primary emotions (anger, sadness, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise), the other measured processing bias of two ambiguously expressive faces (happy–angry/happy–sad). Results: There was evidence of poorer global emotion recognition after alcohol. In addition, there was evidence of poorer sensitivity to sadness and fear after alcohol. There was also evidence for a reduced bias towards happiness following alcohol and weak evidence for an increased bias towards sadness. Conclusions: These findings suggest that alcohol impairs global emotion recognition. They also highlight a reduced ability to detect sadness and fearful facial expressions. As sadness and fear are cues of submission and distress (i.e. function to curtail aggression), failure to successfully detect these emotions when intoxicated may increase the likelihood of aggressive responding. This coupled with a reduced bias towards seeing happiness may collectively contribute to aggressive behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Early neglect or maltreatment has been associated with changes in children's processing of emotional facial expressions, including a hypersensitivity to the emotion of anger. This may facilitate the avoidance of danger in a maltreating environment. However, few studies have examined whether experiences of early life stress (ELS) are associated with atypical avoidance responses towards emotional facial expressions, or whether the effects of ELS can be observed in adult participants. The present study therefore examined the effects of ELS on adults' approach-avoidance tendencies towards angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions. Surprisingly, higher levels of ELS were associated with reduced avoidance of angry facial expressions among individuals with no evidence of mental illness. In contrast, there was no evidence of a relationship between ELS and avoidance of angry facial expressions among individuals with experience of mental illness. These novel findings suggest that ELS-related changes in social cognition can be observed years after the ELS itself occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Major depressive disorder is associated with attentional biases in the explicit processing of emotional facial expressions. It is unclear if attentional biases for emotional faces also exist at an automatic level of perception.Method: Gaze behavior of twenty-nine clinically depressed individuals and twenty-nine gender matched healthy controls was compared in an affective priming task. Happy, neutral, sad, angry, and fearful facial expressions were presented very briefly as primes with forward and backward masking, followed by a neutral expression. Participants' early gaze behavior on neutral faces was analyzed for the eyes and mouth as areas of interest. Only participants who were subjectively unaware of the emotional prime faces were included in the analyses.Results: Masked emotional facial expressions elicited early eye movements toward diagnostic features of the face. Both, depressed patients and healthy controls oriented their initial fixation on the face more often to the eye region after the presentation of fearful or sad compared to happy primes. However, depressed patients oriented their gaze generally far less to the eye and mouth region compared to healthy controls.Limitation: Awareness of emotional prime faces was assessed by a systematic interview but not by an objective detection task.Conclusion: Our data suggest enhanced attentional orienting toward the eye region due to fearful and sad faces in depressed and healthy individuals. In spite of this early expression-specific vigilance, depressed individuals oriented their gaze overall less to the eyes and mouth compared to healthy controls, which might represent an avoidance of facial features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this study was to investigate the influence of stimulus duration manipulations of pictures expressing universal six basic emotions by using a prospective paradigm including verbal estimation and reproduction tasks. The study was conducted with 75 participants (47 female and 28 male) who verbally estimated and reproduced the duration of emotional facial expressions (anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, happiness and neutral) presented for different durations (500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 ms). In each presentation duration, durations of all emotional facial expressions were perceived to be shorter than target durations and temporal distortions increase with duration of intervals. On the other hand, durations of all emotional facial expressions except the sadness facial expression were perceived longer than the duration of neutral facial expression. According to internal clock model and in the context of arousal and attention, tendency to underestimate the duration of emotional stimuli compared to target duration was consistent with an attentional model while tendency to overestimate duration of the emotional stimuli compared to duration of neutral stimulus was consistent with the arousal based model. The findings of this study suggested that in regard to the effects of emotional facial expressions on time perception, not only the involvement of effects emanating from arousal and attention but also memory and decision making processes could have an effect due to the type of temporal task difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the Compassion Fatigue-Short Scale (CFSC) in Turkish. The data of the study were obtained from 128 nurses working in a university hospital. In order to determine the factor structure of the scale, explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, Spearman's correlation coefficient and Cronbach a coefficient, item-total correlation were used for criterion validity. In light of the results of the explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, the scale showed a twodimensional structure. The factor loadings of all items of the scale were found to be over 0.40, and without subtracting any item from the scale, two sub-dimensional structures were accepted similar to the original scale (x2 = 106.72; df = 61; RMSEA = 0.007; p = 0.0001). CF-SC Cronbach a coefficient is 0.876; for secondary trauma sub-dimension of 0.748 and for job burnout sub-dimension of 0.852. As a result of this study, Compassion Fatigue-Short Scale has been found to be a valid and reliable assessment tool in evaluating compassion fatigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional expressions evoke rapid facial reactions in the perceiver that are consistent with the valence of the observed expression. We aimed to investigate whether this robust facial reaction is purely a motor matching response or instead represents underlying affective processes. Participants' (N = 60) corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscle activity was quantified using facial electromyography (EMG) while they viewed three sets of images; (i) upright happy and angry facial expressions, (ii) inverted happy and angry facial expressions, and (iii) sad and happy eyes and mouth expressions. Participants displayed patterns of EMG responding that were consistent with the affective valence of the emotional expression, as opposed to merely matching the observed stimuli (i.e. a motor matching response). Using a novel methodological approach, these findings provide evidence for the contention that affective processing underlies rapid facial mimicry reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to rapidly process others’ emotional signals is crucial for adaptive social interactions. However, to date it is still unclear how observing emotional facial expressions affects the reactivity of the human motor cortex. To provide insights on this issue, we employed single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate corticospinal motor excitability. Healthy participants observed happy, fearful and neutral pictures of facial expressions while receiving TMS over the left or right motor cortex at 150 and 300 ms after picture onset. In the early phase (150 ms), we observed an enhancement of corticospinal excitability for the observation of happy and fearful emotional faces compared to neutral expressions specifically in the right hemisphere. Interindividual differences in the disposition to experience aversive feelings (personal distress) in interpersonal emotional contexts predicted the early increase in corticospinal excitability for emotional faces. No differences in corticospinal excitability were observed at the later time (300 ms) or in the left M1. These findings support the notion that emotion perception primes the body for action and highlights the role of the right hemisphere in implementing a rapid and transient facilitatory response to emotional arousing stimuli, such as emotional facial expressions.

Orientation of gaze toward specific regions of the face such as the eyes or the mouth helps to correctly identify the underlying emotion. The present eye-tracking study investigates whether facial features diagnostic of specific emotional facial expressions are processed preferentially, even when presented outside of subjective awareness. Eye movements of 73 healthy individuals were recorded while completing an affective priming task. Primes (pictures of happy, neutral, sad, angry, and fearful facial expressions) were presented for 50 ms with forward and backward masking. Participants had to evaluate subsequently presented neutral faces. Results of an awareness check indicated that participants were subjectively unaware of the emotional primes. No affective priming effects were observed but briefly presented emotional facial expressions elicited early eye movements toward diagnostic regions of the face. Participants oriented their gaze more rapidly to the eye region of the neutral mask after a fearful facial expression. After a happy facial expression, participants oriented their gaze more rapidly to the mouth region of the neutral mask. Moreover, participants dwelled longest on the eye region after a fearful facial expression, and the dwell time on the mouth region was longest for happy facial expressions. Our findings support the idea that briefly presented fearful and happy facial expressions trigger an automatic mechanism that is sensitive to the distribution of relevant facial features and facilitates the orientation of gaze toward them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empathic behavior and related neural processing are strongly modified by group membership. Shared neural circuits for the production and perception of facial emotional expressions represent mirror neuron mechanisms which play a pivotal role for empathy. In this study, we investigate the influence of group membership on mirror neuron mechanisms for emotional facial expressions. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging task, 178 healthy subjects perceived emotional and neutral facial expressions of artificial ingroup and outgroup members, displayed as 5 s video clips, and produced these facial expressions themselves. Before scanning, artificial group membership was manipulated ad-hoc through a minimal group paradigm. Shared neural activity for emotional facial expression production and perception was revealed in a large network with right-hemispheric preponderance encompassing motor mirror neuron regions, i.e., inferior frontal gyrus, supplementary motor area and middle temporal gyrus, in addition to limbic regions, i.e., amygdala, hippocampus, para-hippocampus, and insula. Within this network there was greater neural activation for ingroup compared to outgroup members in temporal poles, amygdalae, the left insula, the left inferior frontal gyrus, and the inferior and middle temporal gyrus, the right hippocampus and parahippocampus. We validate and extend knowledge on brain regions with mirror neuron properties. Most crucially, we provide evidence for the influence of group membership on regions within the mirror neuron system, indicating more neural resonance (mirroring) for ingroup facial emotional expressions. • There is enhanced neural resonance (mirroring) for ingroup facial emotions. • Such ingroup bias affects amygdala, temporal pole, and hippocampus activation. • Ad-hoc created minimal group membership sufficiently induces this ingroup bias. • Knowledge about brain regions with mirror neuron properties is extended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widespread cortical-subcortical networks are involved in the recognition and discrimination of emotional contents of facial and vocal expression, whereby the cerebellum and basal ganglia are two subcortical regions implicated in these networks with limited evidence to their specific contributions. To investigate this we compared patients with circumscribed cerebellar lesions and patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) on an approved test battery. We studied two groups with subcortical disease, focal cerebellar infarction (n = 22) and PD (n = 22), and a neurological control group with focal supratentorial ischemia (SI) (n = 16) were. Assessments were according to inpatient protocols for neuropsychological routine evaluation, including tests of memory, executive function and attention. Participants completed the Tuebingen Affect Battery, a recognized measure of recognition and discrimination of facial and vocal expression of emotion. As a result, cerebellar lesions were associated with greater impairment than PD and SI in recognition and discrimination of cues of both facial and vocal expressions of differing basic emotions. No confounding effect of other cognitive domains, particularly executive function and attention, was found. Taken together, our findings suggest a specific contribution of the cerebellum to cerebral networks that process facial and vocal emotion expression, related to rapid decisions regulating appropriate behavioral responses in social environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that neurotypical individuals struggle to interpret the emotional facial expressions of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The current study uses motion-capture to objectively quantify differences between the movement patterns of emotional facial expressions of individuals with and without ASD. Participants volitionally mimicked emotional expressions while wearing facial markers. Recorded marker movement was grouped by expression valence and intensity. We used Growth Curve Analysis to test whether movement patterns were predictable by expression type and participant group. Results show significant interactions between expression type and group, and little effect of emotion valence on ASD expressions. Together, results support perceptions that expressions of individuals with ASD are different from—and more ambiguous than—those of neurotypical individuals'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]