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A robust method for measuring an individual's sensitivity to facial expressions.

Delicato, Louise (2020) A robust method for measuring an individual's sensitivity to facial expressions. Attention, perception & psychophysics. ISSN 1943-393X

Item Type: Article

Abstract

This paper describes a method to measure the sensitivity of an individual to different facial expressions. It shows that individual participants are more sensitive to happy than to fearful expressions and that the differences are statistically significant using the model-comparison approach. Sensitivity is measured by asking participants to discriminate between an emotional facial expression and a neutral expression of the same face. The expression was diluted to different degrees by combining it in different proportions with the neutral expression using morphing software. Sensitivity is defined as measurement of the proportion of neutral expression in a stimulus required for participants to discriminate the emotional expression on 75% of presentations. Individuals could reliably discriminate happy expressions diluted with a greater proportion of the neutral expression compared with that required for discrimination of fearful expressions. This tells us that individual participants are more sensitive to happy compared with fearful expressions. Sensitivity is equivalent when measured on two different testing sessions, and greater sensitivity to happy expressions is maintained with short stimulus durations and stimuli generated using different morphing software. Increased sensitivity to happy compared with fear expressions was affected at smaller image sizes for some participants. Application of the approach for use with clinical populations, as well as understanding the relative contribution of perceptual processing and affective processing in facial expression recognition, is discussed.

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More Information

Additional Information: ** From PubMed via Jisc Publications Router
Uncontrolled Keywords: Discrimination, Duration, Emotion recognition, Faces, Image size, Individual, Morph, n-of-1
SWORD Depositor: Publication Router
Depositing User: Publication Router

Identifiers

Item ID: 12069
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-020-02043-w
ISSN: 1943-393X
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/12069
Official URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-0...

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Louise Delicato: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8271-2324

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 26 May 2020 19:03
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2020 10:49

Contributors

Author: Louise Delicato ORCID iD

University Divisions

Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing > School of Psychology

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