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The ability to accurately decode others' facial expressions is essential for successful social interaction. Previous theories suggest that aspects of parental emotionality-the frequency, persistence and intensity of parents' own emotions-can influence children's emotion perception. Through a combination of mechanisms, parental emotionality may shape how children's brains specialize to respond to emotional expressions, but empirical data are lacking. The present study provides a direct empirical test of the relation between the intensity, persistence and frequency of parents' own emotions and children's neural responses to perceiving emotional expressions. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as typically developing 3- to 5-year-old children (final Ns = 59 and 50) passively viewed faces expressing different emotional valences (happy, angry and fearful) at full and reduced intensity (100% intense expression and 40% intense expression). We examined relations between parental emotionality and children's mean amplitude ERP N170 and negative central responses. The findings demonstrate a clear relation between parental emotionality and children's neural responses (in the N170 mean amplitude and latency) to emotional expressions and suggest that parents may influence children's emotion-processing neural circuitry.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals are physiological indicators of brain activity, offering the advantage of high temporal resolution for capturing subtle emotional changes and providing rich information for emotion recognition. However, extracting effective features from EEG data with a low signal-to-noise ratio poses a significant challenge that hinders progress in this research field. To address this issue, we propose a multi-view time-frequency contrastive learning framework called MV-TFCL to enhance the information representation capability of EEG signals from multiple perspectives. Firstly, we introduce a recursive neural network based on multi-scale time-frequency consistency, which integrates global semantic information across different scales through gated units. To our knowledge, this is the first proposal of the theory of multi-scale time-frequency consistency applied in emotion recognition research. Subsequently, we design a tree-structured time-frequency encoder to capture local semantic information within the time-frequency domain. Finally, we incorporate semantic consistency constraints from both global and local perspectives to learn more generalizable and robust features. Extensive experimental results on two publicly available datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed method.

The framework of event perception suggests that people segment continuous perceptual input into discrete events by forming mental representations of ongoing activity. Prior work extending the segmentation framework to emotion perception shows that a richer emotion vocabulary is associated with segmentation of emotion events in greater agreement with the cultural ingroup. However, little is known about how labeling behaviors themselves shape the segmentation of emotion events. Here, we look at the effect of labeling on emotion segmentation. Participants were randomly assigned to simply segment videos into discrete emotion events or to segment only when an emotion label is available and to label the segmented event. We found that compared to the group that segmented without providing labels, the group that segmented with explicit labeling behaviors were less sensitive at discriminating emotion events from non-emotion events and more conservative to identify an emotion event. The results are discussed with respect to competing theoretical accounts of the impact of labeling on emotion perception and suggest that the conceptual broadening account (where labels invoke idiographic emotion representations) may best account for the findings.

To succeed in social situations, we must learn how social cues predict subsequent events. How do we quickly form associations between a variety of social cues, such as individuals signaling their current emotion state, and social outcomes? To address this question, we developed a task in which participants viewed images of individuals conveying different emotions and searched among these images to gain rewards. Rewards were associated with either individuals' identities or emotion cues. Across four experiments (N=720), individuals learned about rewards more efficiently from individual identity cues versus a wide variety of emotion cues. Participants also generalized cue-outcome associations more easily for individuals versus emotions. Learning was worse if participants experienced a change in the association rule, especially when switching from learning individual-based associations to emotion-based associations. Overall, we show that social cue type influences how associations between cues and rewards are learned, with implications for understanding learning in social contexts.

Children's acquisition of emotion words is a topic of interest across the domains of emotion research, early language acquisition, and social development. Prior research has shown a slow, gradual process of emotion word acquisition during ages 2–5 years and beyond. However, this research has used tasks that are demanding for young children, such as asking them to label or sort facial expressions. Here, in a preregistered study, we used a child-friendly looking-time paradigm---the "looking-while-listening'' task---to assess children's understanding of four emotion words, "happy,'' "sad,'' "angry,'' and "scared.'' We presented 64 two-year-olds (Mean age = 2.51, range: 2.00-2.97) with facial expressions and measured their preferential looking to the target face upon hearing an emotion word. Both younger and older two-year-olds showed above-chance performance when the target and distractor faces differed in valence (e.g., happy vs. sad). When the target and distractor faces were of the same valence (e.g., angry vs. sad), younger two-year-olds' results did not reach significance, but older two-year-olds' results were significantly above chance. These results suggest that within-valence mappings of emotion words to facial expressions emerges at least during the second half of age two. Full paper here: [https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nsq5t].

Crossmodal correspondences are associations between perceptual features from different senses that aid in crossmodal binding. The semantic coding of these correspondences is expected to capture and mediate the emergence of perceptual crossmodal correspondences. However, the cross-cultural nature of such semantic coding has not been thoroughly studied. This research involved five languages across three different linguistic families (English, Dutch, Turkish, Chinese and Italian). Using distributional semantics, modality exclusivity norms and emotional lexicons, networks were constructed to represent semantic crossmodal correspondences and assess their relationship with Valence, Arousal and Dominance. Results indicate that emotions, particularly Valence and Dominance, play pivotal roles in shaping the structure of semantic crossmodal correspondences networks across languages. Moreover, the findings reveal that some types of semantic crossmodal correspondences might be shared among different languages in various language families, suggesting shared cognitive processes. This supports the significance of emotions as fundamental components in semantic crossmodal correspondences. Additionally, the study provides evidence supporting shared crossmodal correspondences among languages and cultures.

This study investigates the cognitive plausibility of a pretrained multimodal model, CLIP, in recognizing emotions evoked by abstract visual art. We employ a dataset comprising images with associated emotion labels and textual rationales of these labels provided by human annotators. We perform linguistic analyses of rationales, zero-shot emotion classification of images and rationales, apply similarity-based prediction of emotion, and investigate color-emotion associations. The relatively low, yet above baseline, accuracy in recognizing emotion for abstract images and rationales suggests that CLIP decodes emotional complexities in a manner not well aligned with human cognitive processes. Furthermore, we explore color-emotion interactions in images and rationales. Expected color-emotion associations, such as red relating to anger, are identified in images and texts annotated with emotion labels by both humans and CLIP, with the latter showing even stronger interactions. Our results highlight the disparity between human processing and machine processing when connecting image features and emotions.

The current study aimed to examine how the recognition of grey-scale photos of fearful or angry female bodies would be affected by three conditions: social situation (single person vs. facing vs. nonfacing dyad) the orientation of figures (upright vs. inverted); emotion complementarity (same vs. complementary). We hypothesized that the recognition of emotions would be the most accurate when either single or facing body pairs were presented, while the inversion would impair the perception of affective expressions. Facing bodies in fact had an advantage over nonfacing ones, same emotion condition also had higher accuracy than complementary, as well as the overall accuracy was higher for anger than fear, thus context was an important factor in differentiating between these two negative emotions. Inversion effect was not confirmed for emotions conveyed by bodies, therefore our results demonstrated that not only configural, but part-by-part analysis is also required for emotion recognition.Keywords: body inversion effect, social interactions, bodily emotional expressions

Currently, emotion recognition based on electroencephalograms (EEGs) has a wide range of applications. Although many approaches have been proposed for automatic emotion recognition with favorable performance, there are still several challenges: (1) how to sufficiently model the long- and short-term temporal feature discrepancies and redundant spatial information of EEGs and (2) how to alleviate the negative impact of the ambiguity of emotion classes. To tackle these issues, we propose the CSET-CCA, a novel framework for EEG-based emotion recognition. The feature extractor of this model combines the 1D convolutional neural network (CNN), channel Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) module and transformer. It can extract the temporal features of EEG signals from local and global perspectives and select the critical channels in emotion recognition. Moreover, to adaptively perceive the confusion degrees of classes and increase the model's attention on confusing emotion classes, we design class confusion-aware (CCA) attention. We evaluate the CSET-CCA with the SEED and SEED-V datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

A plethora of research has identified that undergraduate students experience higher levels of general anxiety disorder (GAD) with questionnaires primarily being used diagnose students. However, the potential for linguistic analysis and the emotional Stroop test as measurements of GAD remains unexplored, especially if both were to be used together. The present study aimed to produce a novel measure of GAD using both linguistic measures and the emotional Stroop task. This research study employed a quantitative approach and an experimental research design. A volunteer sample of 17 undergraduate students completed an online questionnaire, a written task, and an emotional Stroop task distributed via social media and the University of Birmingham Research Participation Scheme. This study produced a novel questionnaire for GAD and was utilised as a baseline measure. This study used two independent T-tests to measure the overall sentiment of written responses of participants and the frequency of first-person singular pronouns in written response. Additionally, two independent T-tests were used to measure reaction times and accuracy on the emotional Stroop Task. The findings highlighted no statistical differences between higher and lower levels of GAD and linguistic responses and reaction times and accuracy on the emotional Stroop test, suggesting that the measures utilised in the present study may not be able to predict GAD. As such, the findings of this study underscore the complexity of GAD and extend our understanding of GAD measurements. By illuminating the emotional, behavioural and cognitive factors of GAD, this study advocates for more awareness in university settings and proactive support for undergraduate students.

This research studies how 24 experts in sport, music, and business were able to make successful and repeated career transitions to senior levels in their field. It examined – among other aspects – the roles of cognitive flexibility, personal intelligence, generative thinking, motivation, and contextual intelligence in career transitions. It also examined how identity changes and adapts during a career transition and how self concept evolves over the course of a career.In-depth interviews were analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively and served as the basis for evaluating several theories of expertise, cognition, motivation, and intelligence. Key findings include: deliberate practice was rarely mentioned as a contributor to transitions; the early development of expertise in multiple domains contributed to its generalizability; transition expertise evolved over the course of a career; and self concept did not unfold in a linear progression of sequential stages as predicted by many theories in the field.

In this paper, I explore two issues with the pluralist approach to social cognition. First, the pluralist approach does not assume any particular cognitive framework that could accommodate the variety of strategies in social cognition. Second, the pluralist approach suggests that a variety of strategies are employed in social cognition but neglects to address how mediation takes place between strategies. I argue that both these issues can be addressed if the pluralist approach situates itself in the predictive processing framework. To elaborate on this, I propose that 1) the strategies for social cognition include obtaining and testing theories in generative models about the behavior and mental states of others, 2) interactional synchrony is a strategy employed in simple social situations and 3) affordances play an unprecedented role in mediating between strategies.

Previous research about the intensity of emotional facial expressions has relied on stimulus sets of morphed facial expressions that have been generated artificially. Ecologically valid open-access facial stimulus sets with varying intensities of multiple different expressions are rare. However, there is a growing need for a validated facial stimulus set that would include multiple levels of intensities. This study aimed to develop and test the psychometric properties of a stimulus set with real facial expressions (8 men and 8 women) with 11 intensity levels for five facial expression categories: angry, happy, neutral, surprised and sad. 52 individuals rated the valence, arousal and intensity of the 656 stimuli. Descriptive statistics, internal consistency of the rating for each stimulus, emotion category, and intensity level were described. The stimuli and summary data are available upon request (https://osf.io/f8ews/).

In our study, we address conflicts between individuals and groups, such as cyberbully on social media, as a challenge related to the distinction between the self and others. To address this issue using technology, we propose the concept of introducing facial synchronization in the virtual realm as a means to manipulate the boundary between oneself and others.We designed an experiment using Cyberball that simulates an ostracism environment, effectively partitioning the boundary between the self and others. This task was conducted in Virtual Reality (VR), with the agent's facial expressions synchronized with those of the participant.Our findings indicated a reduction in feelings of alienation within the ostracism environment. This discovery has potential implications for communication media, particularly in enhancing interfaces for individuals who may experience exclusionary behavior on social media.

Electroencephalography (EEG) plays a pivotal role in the diagnosis of various neurological conditions, most notably major depressive disorder (MDD). However, deep learning-based methods currently employed for MDD detection tasks exhibit inadequate generalization capabilities, particularly across different EEG electrode channels, and demonstrate limited feature representation capacity. In this paper, we present a novel approach referred to as adaptive feature learning (AFL), which leverages kernel embedding to facilitate the learning of domain-invariant features across subjects within a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. This method aims to enhance the model's ability to generalize across multiple subjects' EEG signals. Furthermore, our research revealed that batch normalization (BN) layers within the existing MDD detection network frequently result in feature channel suppression, potentially compromising the representation power of the features. To address this issue, we propose channel activation (CA), which employs decorrelation to reactivate suppressed feature maps, thereby enhancing the model's feature representation capability, particularly for subtle EEG changes. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is evaluated using the leave-one-subject-out protocol on MODMA and PRED+CT datasets, yielding detection accuracies of 90.56\% (MODMA) and 96.51\% (PRED+CT). Our experimental findings exhibit the superior performance of our method compared to state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods in terms of MDD recognition.

Emotion recognition based on electroencephalogram (EEG) signals is a current focus in brain-computer interface research. However, due to the individual differences, how to build a simple and effective model and quickly adapt to the target subject are significant challenges in cross-subject emotion recognition. In this study, we proposed an approach by combining the Dual-Attention network and Meta-Transfer Learning (MTL) strategy based on k-means clustering for meta-task sampling. The Dual-Attention network extracts EEG features through a channel attention block and a temporal attention block. The MTL strategy trains the model to learn both common and individual features among subjects. The meta-task sampling method based on k-means clustering adaptively groups the source domain samples, sampling support and query sets for meta-tasks from Different Groups(DG sampler). The DG sampler allows the model to ”grow in diversity”, further enhancing its generalization capabilities. Binary classification experiments were conducted on the DEAP dataset, achieving accuracies of 72.35% and 71.77% in the arousal and valence dimensions, respectively. The results have reached the state-of-the art level and demonstrated significant performance enhancement in cross-subject EEG-based emotion recognition.

This study presents ADViRDS, an innovative scale and dataset specifically developed for examining the psychological traits of domestic violence (DV) perpetrators. Recognizing the critical need to understand the psychological dynamics of perpetrators, our research shifts the focus from the experiences of DV victims to the characteristics of the perpetrators.Our approach involves a six-dimensional scale designed to detect the psychological traits of DV perpetrators, formulated with insights from established DV research and psychologists. To complement this scale, we constructed a detailed dataset containing 574 individual entries from the Chinese social media platform "Zhihu." Each entry was carefully annotated by experienced professionals, ensuring a high degree of accuracy and relevance.We conducted a comprehensive analysis using a range of models, including Zero-Shot classification, GPT series, and fine-tuned pre-trained models, to evaluate their effectiveness in identifying individuals with psychological predispositions to DV. The findings reveal significant insights into the models' capabilities, highlighting the nuances in detecting DV tendencies through psychological profiling.Our research offers a new paradigm in DV studies, focusing on the psychological traits of perpetrators for a comprehensive understanding of DV dynamics and prevention.

Brain-computer interface technology has made significant progress in the field of intelligent human-computer interaction. Among them, electroencephalography-based emotion recognition, as one of the important research directions in emotional brain-computer interaction, has received widespread attention. However, most previous studies were limited to feature extraction of global brain networks and local brain areas in the EEG spatial domain but ignored the channel-level dynamic features of EEG. To address this limitation, we proposed a Channel-Adaptive Graph Convolutional Network with Temporal Encoder (CAG-TEN). In CAG-TEN, the channel-adaptive graph convolutional module assigns a unique parameter space to each channel, focusing on channel-level dynamic features. Additionally, the temporal encoder module, inspired by the Encoders concept, is used to explore long-term temporal dependencies in EEG sequences. We conduct rigorous comparative experiments of CAG-TEN against several representative baseline models on the SEED dataset and achieve optimal performance.

Emotional physiological responses are altered not only by external events, but also by the emotions of the people in front of us. While these interpersonal emotional linkages are considered an important aspect of empathy, it is unclear how they relate to cognitive empathy, that is, how we perceive others' emotions. We investigated the relationship between emotional linkage and emotional cognition in an experiment in which two participants estimate each other's emotions while their heart rates were measured during a thrilling joint task using a block game. We also collected data from the two observers because, in reality, in addition to understanding the emotions of the interacting partner, it is sometimes necessary to understand the emotions of a non-interacting person from a third-person perspective. The results suggest that, for game players, their own heart rate is related to perceived partner emotion, and for observers, the degree of heart rate synchrony between observers is related to perceived player emotion. Capturing emotional cognition in a joint task requires consideration of both individual emotion and interpersonal emotional linkages.

The semantic representation of abstract words is a topic of discussion within the embodied cognition framework. Existing theories propose the involvement of emotional, linguistic, and social experiences in abstract word representation. Focusing on ‘socialness' — a variable with limited empirical evidence — our study explores whether abstract words are associated with richer social experiences. Two semantic categorization tasks (explicit and implicit) with socialness priming and a lexical decision task with socialness priming were conducted to examine the effect of socialness on abstract words recognition. Additionally, we run similar experiments with affective priming to examine the effect of valence on abstract words recognition. Our results indicate that only valence facilitates the recognition of abstract words and only in the explicit task. Conclusively, we find no evidence supporting a non-strategic effect of socialness and valence on abstract words recognition, thus challenging existing theories on the grounding of abstract words in social information and emotion.

Texts about fictional characters are often written in a third person singular (3SG) perspective. In a self-paced reading study, Child et al. (2018) found that emotional information is processed more easily when the narrative uses second person singular (2SG) rather than 3SG. In the current study, we explore how 2SG and 3SG are processed in Dutch. Because Dutch is a language with a formal-informal distinction in 2SG, we also contrast formal 2SG-V (e.g., u, 'you') to informal 2SG-T (e.g., jij, 'you') forms. We find a main effect of perspective on target processing, with 2SG read faster than 3SG. In contrast, spillover regions (three words following the target) are read slower following 2SG than 3SG, and spillover regions were read slower following 2SG-V than following 2SG-T. This means that processing emotional narratives through a 2SG perspectives induces a processing cost compared to 3SG perspectives, and this increases with formal 2SG.

The transition to parenthood requires parents develop caregiving behaviors, such as the ability to identify their infant’s emotions and regulate their own emotional response. Research has identified patterns of neural activation in parenting contexts that are interpreted as socioemotional processing. However, no prior research has directly tested whether mothers’ neural responses to their infant’s affect are the same as those involved in emotion perception/experience and regulation in other contexts. We employed conjunction analyses to clarify which components of mothers’ neural response to viewing their infant’s affect are shared with passively viewing and labeling adult affective faces (emotion perception/experience and implicit emotion regulation, respectively) in 24 mothers three months postpartum. Our results support a common neural response to viewing infant and adult affect in regions associated with emotion perception/experience (bilateral hippocampi, amygdalae, thalami, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex), but no areas of common response to viewing negative infant affect and implicitly regulating negative adult affect outside of the occipital lobe and cerebellum. This study provides corroborating evidence for shared neural patterns being involved in perceiving/experiencing infant and adult affect but not implicit regulation of infant and adult negative affect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Several behaviors occur in the aftermath of within‐group conflicts. These include spontaneous affiliation toward the victim from an uninvolved third party. When third‐party affiliations reduce the stress of the victim, this behavior has been defined as consolation. Given the absence of previous reports, the objective of the present study was to evaluate the presence of third‐party post‐conflict affiliation when dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) observe their owners arguing. We carried out two studies varying the intensity and the duration of the dispute. Affiliative behaviors toward each of the owners were registered, as well as stress‐related behaviors. Our findings support the existence of third‐party affiliation from dogs toward their owners during and after a conflict between them, evidenced as higher rates of victim‐directed affiliative behaviors in the experimental condition versus the control, in both studies. Moreover, dogs exhibited more stress‐related behaviors in the experimental condition compared to the control, but only in the second study, which suggests these stimuli were experienced as aversive, even though they were not aimed at the dogs. In addition, in the second study dogs displayed aggressor‐directed behaviors that could be interpreted as appeasement. Finally, there was no evidence that the level of the bond between the dog and each owner acts as a modulator of affiliative behavior. Further studies are required to expand our understanding of these abilities of dogs and its effects on the emotional state of the victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: We investigated the prosodic perception of uncertainty cues in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to neurotypical adults (NTC). Method: We used articulatory synthetic speech to express uncertainty in a human-machine scenario by varying the three acoustic cues pause, intonation, and hesitation. Twenty-eight adults with ASD and 28 NTC adults rated each answer for uncertainty, naturalness, and comprehensibility. Results: Both groups reliably perceived different levels of uncertainty. Stimuli were rated as less uncertain by the ASD group, but not significantly. Only when we pooled the recipients' ratings for all three cues, did we find a significant group difference. In terms of reaction time, we observed longer reaction times in the ASD group compared to the neurotypical comparison group for the uncertainty level hesitation & strong intonation, but the differences were not significant after Bonferroni correction. Furthermore, our results showed a significant group difference between the correlation of uncertainty and naturalness, i.e. the correlation in the ASD group is significantly lower than in the NTC group. Obtained effect size estimates can inform sample size calculations in future studies for the reliable identification of group differences. Discussion: In future work, we would like to further investigate the interaction of all three cues and uncertainty perception. It would be interesting to further vary the duration of the pause and also to use different types of fillers. From a developmental perspective, uncertainty perception should also be investigated in children and adolescents with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acceleration of urbanization has resulted in a heightened awareness of the impacts of urban environments on residents' emotional states. This present study focuses on the Lixia District of Jinan City. By using urban street view big data and deep learning methods, we undertook a detailed analysis of the impacts of urban color features on residents' emotional perceptions. In particular, a substantial corpus of street scene image data was extracted and processed. This was performed using a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) and semantic segmentation technology (PSPNet), which enabled the simulation and prediction of the subjective perception of the urban environment by humans. Furthermore, the color complexity and coordination in the street scene were quantified and combined with residents' emotional feedback to carry out a multi-dimensional analysis. The findings revealed that color complexity and coordination were significant elements influencing residents' emotional perceptions. A high color complexity is visually appealing, but can lead to fatigue, discomfort, and boredom; a moderate complexity stimulates vitality and pleasure; high levels of regional harmony and aesthetics can increase perceptions of beauty and security; and low levels of coordination can increase feelings of depression. The environmental characteristics of different areas and differences in the daily activities of residents resulted in regional differences regarding the impacts of color features on emotional perception. This study corroborates the assertion that environmental color coordination has the capacity to enhance residents' emotions, thereby providing an important reference point for urban planning. Planning should be based on the functional characteristics of the region, and color complexity and coordination should be reasonably regulated to optimize the emotional experiences of residents. Differentiated color management enhances urban aesthetics, livability, and residents' happiness and promotes sustainable development. In the future, the influences of color and environmental factors on emotions can be explored in depth, with a view to assist in the formulation of fine urban design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural difference in ensemble emotion perception is an important research question, providing insights into the complexity of human cognition and social interaction. Here, we conducted two experiments to investigate how emotion perception would be affected by other ethnicity effects and ensemble coding. In Experiment 1, two groups of Asian and Caucasian participants were tasked with assessing the average emotion of faces from their ethnic group, other ethnic group, and mixed ethnicity groups. Results revealed that participants exhibited relatively accurate yet amplified emotion perception of their group faces, with a tendency to overestimate the weight of the faces from the other ethnic group. In Experiment 2, Asian participants were instructed to discern the emotion of a target face surrounded by faces from Caucasian and Asian faces. Results corroborated earlier findings, indicating that while participants accurately perceived emotions in faces of their ethnicity, their perception of Caucasian faces was noticeably influenced by the presence of surrounding Asian faces. These findings collectively support the notion that the other ethnicity effect stems from differential emotional amplification inherent in ensemble coding of emotion perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human beings perceive the emotions of others through various cues, such as facial expressions, voice, and bodily posture. These social signals have been acquired evolutionarily, and reports suggest that emotions are recognized to some extent in a culturally universal pattern. It has also been suggested that an observer's approach or avoidance responses toward the expressor occur at the initial stage of emotion perception. However, such approach–avoidance reactions have hitherto been examined mainly in response to facial expressions and not bodily postures. Therefore, this study examined approach–avoidance responses to anger and fear as visualized through facial expressions and bodily postures. The study sample comprised 58 university students. The results showed that, as in a previous study, approach responses to fear and avoidance responses to anger were dominant in both facial expression and bodily posture conditions. This suggests that bodily posture and facial expression are social signals that can elicit an approach–avoidance response from the observer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human beings perceive the emotions of others through various cues, such as facial expressions, voice, and bodily posture. These social signals have been acquired evolutionarily, and reports suggest that emotions are recognized to some extent in a culturally universal pattern. It has also been suggested that an observer's approach or avoidance responses toward the expressor occur at the initial stage of emotion perception. However, such approach–avoidance reactions have hitherto been examined mainly in response to facial expressions and not bodily postures. Therefore, this study examined approach–avoidance responses to anger and fear as visualized through facial expressions and bodily postures. The study sample comprised 58 university students. The results showed that, as in a previous study, approach responses to fear and avoidance responses to anger were dominant in both facial expression and bodily posture conditions. This suggests that bodily posture and facial expression are social signals that can elicit an approach–avoidance response from the observer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is associated with alterations in prosody when speaking (e.g., less variation in pitch, slowed speech rate), but less is known about its impact on emotional prosody. This is particularly important to investigate in parent–child contexts, as parental expression of emotion may contribute to the intergenerational transmission of depression risk. The current study asked mothers of preschool-aged children (with and without a history of major depressive disorder during their child's lifetime) to produce child-relevant sentences in neutral, angry, and happy tones of voice. We examined whether groups' portrayals were acoustically or perceptually different, in speech analyses and listener ratings. Mothers with a history of depression expressed happiness with less range in pitch and a slower speech rate (slower, more monotonous voice) than mothers with no history of depression. Across groups, happy exemplars with less range in pitch were rated as less emotionally intense, recognizable, and authentically happy by listeners; slower speech rate was associated with opposite perceptual ratings. However, listeners' ratings did not differ by depression group as a whole. Results suggest that a history of depression may influence maternal vocal expression of happiness, but that its impact on listeners' perceptions may depend on mothers' idiosyncratic use of acoustic cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate facial emotion perception during social interactions facilitates personal well-being and improves social skills such as empathy and social appraisal (Manstead et al., 1999). In the present study, we attempted to replicate this effect. Participants were presented with an image depicting a face that has been identified by Matsumoto and Ekman (1988) as a universal facial expression of "fear." The expression is characterized by distinct features which collectively signal a state of apprehension or distress across diverse cultural contexts. Then participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: congruent, incongruent, or no context scenarios. The congruent context scenario suggested the face expressed fear whereas the incongruent scenario suggested the face expressed anger. Participants selected the emotion they felt was expressed by the face in the picture. We expected the congruent and no-context groups to choose fear as the expression more often than the incongruent group. A 1-way ANOVA between the 3 groups found a significant effect, F(2, 42) = 38.50, p < .001, p2 = .64. Congruent and no-context groups chose fear as the facial expression significantly more often, thereby confirming our hypothesis and replicating previous findings. The effect of context on emotion perception is strong and replicable, suggesting that context plays an important role in emotion perception despite the universality of facial expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract While perceiving the emotional state of others may be crucial for our behavior even when this information is present outside of central vision, emotion perception studies typically focus on central visual field. We have recently investigated emotional valence (pleasantness) perception across the parafovea (≤ 4°) and found that for briefly presented (200 ms) emotional face images (from the established KDEF image-set), positive (happy) valence was the least affected by eccentricity (distance from the central visual field) and negative (fearful) valence the most. Furthermore, we found that performance at 2° predicted performance at 4°. Here we tested (n = 37) whether these effects replicate with face stimuli of different identities from a different well-established image-set (NimStim). All our prior findings replicated and eccentricity-based modulation magnitude was smaller with NimStim (~ 16.6% accuracy reduction at 4°) than with KDEF stimuli (~ 27.3% reduction). Our current investigations support our earlier findings that for briefly presented parafoveal stimuli, positive and negative valence perception are differently affected by eccentricity and may be dissociated. Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of investigating emotions beyond central vision and demonstrate commonalities and differences across different image sets in the parafovea, emphasizing the contribution of replication studies to substantiate our knowledge about perceptual mechanisms.

Music is an important part of life for many people. It can evoke a wide range of emotions, including sadness, happiness, anger, tension, relief and excitement. People with hearing loss and people with cochlear implants have reduced abilities to discriminate some of the features of musical sounds that may be involved in evoking emotions. This paper reviews these changes in perceptual abilities and describes how they affect the perception of emotion in music. For people with acquired partial hearing loss, it appears that the perception of emotion in music is almost normal, whereas congenital partial hearing loss is associated with impaired perception of music emotion. For people with cochlear implants, the ability to discriminate changes in fundamental frequency (associated with perceived pitch) is much worse than normal and musical harmony is hardly perceived. As a result, people with cochlear implants appear to judge emotion in music primarily using tempo and rhythm cues, and this limits the range of emotions that can be judged. This article is part of the theme issue 'Sensing and feeling: an integrative approach to sensory processing and emotional experience'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background-objective: The eyes play an important role in communicating emotions and shape the determination of other facial attributes. Here, we explored the relationship between eye size, perceived intensity and attractiveness of facial expressions. Methods: A sample of N = 63 participants (men and women, aged 18-35) rated attractiveness and emotional intensity for images displaying emotionally expressive women's faces with digitally manipulated eye size (15% smaller, unchanged, or 15% larger). Results: The analysis of perceived intensity showed an interaction parameter between eye size and gender. Female individuals reported differences when comparing unchanged and larger eyes; male participants showed differences across all eye size comparisons (smaller-unchanged, smaller-larger, unchangedlarger). Regarding perceived attractiveness, faces with smaller eyes registered lower mean scores than both unchanged and larger. The lowest intensity level was associated with neutral faces and the highest with fearful ones. Faces displaying happiness were perceived as the most attractive. Conclusion: Larger eyes seem to make emotions more intense and attractive. We suggest that the more intense phenomenon serves an evolutive purpose, as it might encourage caretaking behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Deficits in Multisensory Integration (MSI) in ASD have been reported repeatedly and have been suggested to be caused by altered longrange connectivity. Here we investigate behavioral and ERP correlates of MSI in ASD using ecologically valid videos of emotional expressions. Methods: In the present study, we set out to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of audiovisual MSI in young autistic and neurotypical adolescents. We employed dynamic stimuli of high ecological validity (500 ms clips produced by actors) that depicted fear or disgust in unimodal (visual and auditory), and bimodal (audiovisual) conditions. Results: We report robust MSI effects at both the behavioral and electrophysiological levels and pronounced differences between autistic and neurotypical participants. Specifically, neurotypical controls showed robust behavioral MSI for both emotions as seen through a significant speed-up of bimodal response time (RT), confirmed by Miller's Race Model Inequality (RMI), with greater MSI effects for fear than disgust. Adolescents with ASD, by contrast, showed behavioral MSI only for fear. At the electrophysiological level, the bimodal condition as compared to the unimodal conditions reduced the amplitudes of the visual P100 and auditory P200 and increased the amplitude of the visual N170 regardless of group. Furthermore, a cluster-based analysis across all electrodes revealed that adolescents with ASD showed an overall delayed and spatially constrained MSI effect compared to controls. Conclusion: Given that the variables we measured reflect attention, our findings suggest that MSI can be modulated by the differential effects on attention that fear and disgust produce. We also argue that the MSI deficits seen in autistic individuals can be compensated for at later processing stages by (a) the attention-orienting effects of fear, at the behavioral level, and (b) at the electrophysiological level via increased attentional effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Experimental studies suggest that short or disrupted sleep impairs memory consolidation, mood, and perception of emotional stimuli. However, studies have chiefly relied on laboratory‐based study designs and small sample sizes. The aim of this fully online and pre‐registered study was to investigate the association between sleep and overnight memory consolidation, emotion perception, and affect in a large, self‐selected UK sample. A total of 1646 participants (473 completed) took part in an online study, where they completed a declarative (word‐pairs) memory task, emotion perception task (valence ratings of images), and rated their affect within 2 h of bed‐time. The following morning, participants reported on their state affect, sleep for the previous night, completed a cued recall task for the previously presented word‐pairs, rated the valence of previously viewed images, and completed a surprise recognition task. Demographic data and habitual sleep quality and duration (sleep traits) were also recorded. Habitual sleep traits were associated with immediate recall for the word‐pairs task, while self‐reported sleep parameters for the specific night were not associated with overnight memory consolidation. Neither habitual sleep traits, nor nightly sleep parameters were associated with unpleasantness ratings to negative stimuli or overnight habituation. Habitual poor sleep was associated with less positive and more negative affect, and morning affect was predicted by the specific night's sleep. This study suggests that overnight emotional processing and declarative memory may not be associated with self‐reported sleep across individuals. More work is needed to understand how findings from laboratory‐based studies extrapolate to real‐world samples and contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research has found an in-group advantage (IGA) favouring native speakers in emotional prosody perception over non-native speakers, the effects of semantics on emotional prosody perception remain unclear. This study investigated the effects of semantics on emotional prosody perception in Chinese words and sentences for native and non-native Chinese speakers. The critical manipulation was the congruence of prosodic (positive, negative) and semantic (positive, negative, and neutral) valence. Participants listened to a series of audio clips and judged whether the emotional prosody was positive or negative for each utterance. The results revealed an IGA effect: native speakers perceived emotional prosody more accurately and quickly than non-native speakers in Chinese words and sentences. Furthermore, a semantic congruence effect was observed in Chinese words, where both native and non-native speakers recognised emotional prosody more accurately in the semantic-prosody congruent condition than in the incongruent condition. However, in Chinese sentences, this congruence effect was only present for non-native speakers. Additionally, the IGA effect and semantic congruence effect on emotional prosody perception were influenced by prosody valence. These findings illuminate the role of semantics in emotional prosody perception, highlighting perceptual differences between native and non-native Chinese speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The menopausal transition brings with it many physical, cognitive, and affective changes in a woman's life, impacting quality of life. Whereas prior work has examined impact on general mental health and cognitive function, research on basic affective processing during menopause remains scarce. Methods: Using a median-split procedure, this pre-registered study examined the impact of stronger (N = 46 women) vs. milder (N = 47 women) menopausal symptoms using a behavioural task of subjective emotion perception (embody) and a passive eye tracking viewing task of emotional faces in addition to self-report questionnaires. After 3 months, participants completed the questionnaires again to examine whether objective measures of emotion perception (eye tracking) might predict mental health at follow-up. Results: As anticipated, women with stronger vs. milder menopausal symptoms reported increased symptoms of anxiety, depression, stress, emotion regulation difficulties, and lower quality of life during both time points. While no evidence was found in the behavioural task, eye tracking data indicated blunted emotion perception in women with high menopausal symptoms, while women with low symptoms spent more time looking at happy faces relative to fearful or surprised faces. Although eye tracking or hormonal data did not predict mental health at follow-up, a higher estradiol/FSH ratio indicated a higher quality of life. Conclusions: This study documented an impact of the menopausal transition and strength of menopausal symptoms in particular on objective emotion perception as well as mental health and quality of life in women suffering from stronger vs. milder menopausal symptoms. Clinical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to show that a particular view of emotion sharing and a specific hypothesis on infant social perception strengthen each other. The view of emotion sharing is called "the straightforward view." The hypothesis on infant social perception is called "the pairing account." The straightforward view suggests that participants in emotion sharing undergo one and the same overarching emotion. The pairing account posits that infants perceive others' embodied experiences as belonging to someone other than the self through a process of assimilation to, and accommodation of, their own embodied experience. The connection between the two theories lies in the domain-general process of association by similarity, which functions both in the individuation of a unitary emotion and in the interpretation of the sensory stimulus. By elaborating on this connection, the straightforward view becomes more solid from the cognitive-developmental standpoint and the pairing account expands its explanatory power. Since the straightforward view requires minimal forms of self- and other-awareness, the paper provides a characterization of the developmental origin of the sense of us, i.e., the experience of self and other as co-subjects of a shared emotional state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While perceiving the emotional state of others may be crucial for our behavior even when this information is present outside of central vision, emotion perception studies typically focus on central visual field. We have recently investigated emotional valence (pleasantness) perception across the parafovea (≤ 4°) and found that for briefly presented (200 ms) emotional face images (from the established KDEF image-set), positive (happy) valence was the least affected by eccentricity (distance from the central visual field) and negative (fearful) valence the most. Furthermore, we found that performance at 2° predicted performance at 4°. Here we tested (n = 37) whether these effects replicate with face stimuli of different identities from a different well-established image-set (NimStim). All our prior findings replicated and eccentricity-based modulation magnitude was smaller with NimStim (~ 16.6% accuracy reduction at 4°) than with KDEF stimuli (~ 27.3% reduction). Our current investigations support our earlier findings that for briefly presented parafoveal stimuli, positive and negative valence perception are differently affected by eccentricity and may be dissociated. Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of investigating emotions beyond central vision and demonstrate commonalities and differences across different image sets in the parafovea, emphasizing the contribution of replication studies to substantiate our knowledge about perceptual mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated neural correlates of Emotion Recognition Accuracy (ERA) using the Assessment of Contextualized Emotions (ACE). ACE infuses context by presenting emotion expressions in a naturalistic group setting and distinguishes between accurately perceiving intended emotions (signal), and bias due to perceiving additional, secondary emotions (noise). This social perception process is argued to induce perspective taking in addition to pattern matching in ERA. Thirty participants were presented with an fMRI-compatible adaptation of the ACE consisting of blocks of neutral and emotional faces in single and group-embedded settings. Participants rated the central character's expressions categorically or using scalar scales in consequent fMRI scans. Distinct brain activations were associated with the perception of emotional vs. neutral faces in the four conditions. Moreover, accuracy and bias scores from the original ACE task performed on another day were associated with brain activation during the scalar (vs. categorical) condition for emotional (vs. neutral) faces embedded in group. These findings suggest distinct cognitive mechanisms linked to each type of emotional rating and highlight the importance of considering cognitive bias in the assessment of social emotion perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The street spaces in tourist-oriented traditional villages served both the daily lives of villagers and the leisure activities of tourists. However, due to insufficient understanding of the spatial characteristics and under-exploration of spatial genes, these spaces often suffered from homogenization during tourism development. Thus, identifying the characteristics and connotations of such streets, understanding the relationship between tourists' perceptions and built environment elements, and developing optimization strategies for these rural street spaces were urgent issues. Many studies have evaluated street space characteristics from tourists' behavior, but few have focused on rural areas. Especially, research combining new technologies like artificial intelligence to study the psychological perceptions of tourists is still in its infancy. This study used a typical traditional village as a case study and applied the YOLOv5 deep-learning model to build a perception evaluation system based on three dimensions: tourists' aggregation degree, stay time, and facial expressions. The study conducted a multivariate regression analysis on 21 factors across 4 aspects: street scale morphology, environmental facilities, ground-floor interface, and street business types. Results indicated that the functional business type of the scene had the greatest impact on tourists' perception of the street space environment, followed by ground-floor features and environmental facilities. The regression coefficient for business in situ values and spatial perception was 0.47, highlighting it as a key factor influencing characteristic perception. Landscape water systems, flat ground-floor façades, and business diversity also positively affected tourists' perception. This study utilized advanced techniques like the YOLOv5 model, known for its speed and accuracy, to scientifically analyze tourists' behavior and perceptions, serving as feedback and evaluation for the village's built environment. Empirical analysis of Yuanjia Village validated the effectiveness of the multidimensional approach and spatial gene theory. Ultimately, this method identified 12 street characteristic factors significantly affecting tourists' perceptions. The uniqueness of this study lies in its comprehensive approach, combining empirical research, spatial gene theory, and advanced object detection technology, providing new insights for village spatial planning and construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionWe investigated the prosodic perception of uncertainty cues in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to neurotypical adults (NTC).MethodWe used articulatory synthetic speech to express uncertainty in a human-machine scenario by varying the three acoustic cues pause, intonation, and hesitation. Twenty-eight adults with ASD and 28 NTC adults rated each answer for uncertainty, naturalness, and comprehensibility.ResultsBoth groups reliably perceived different levels of uncertainty. Stimuli were rated as less uncertain by the ASD group, but not significantly. Only when we pooled the recipients’ ratings for all three cues, did we find a significant group difference. In terms of reaction time, we observed longer reaction times in the ASD group compared to the neurotypical comparison group for the uncertainty level hesitation & strong intonation, but the differences were not significant after Bonferroni correction. Furthermore, our results showed a significant group difference between the correlation of uncertainty and naturalness, i.e. the correlation in the ASD group is significantly lower than in the NTC group. Obtained effect size estimates can inform sample size calculations in future studies for the reliable identification of group differences.DiscussionIn future work, we would like to further investigate the interaction of all three cues and uncertainty perception. It would be interesting to further vary the duration of the pause and also to use different types of fillers. From a developmental perspective, uncertainty perception should also be investigated in children and adolescents with ASD.