IF YOU SEE WHAT I SEE, THEN I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL: HOW SCENE CONTEXT AND FACIAL MIMICRY DIFFERENTIALLY AFFECT SITUATED RECOGNITION OF DYNAMIC AND STATIC EXPRESSIONS

Abstract

Testing facial expression recognition has primarily relied on facial stimuli consisting of static images of posed expressions or computer generated animations. In recent years, the ecological validity of results based on such stimuli has come under scrutiny. It was important for the research in this thesis to increase ecological validity by testing expression recognition to natural dynamic facial expressions presented with a context scene. Accounting for an effect of context on expression recognition was one objective in the current work. Another objective was to test the explanation for expression recognition offered by simulation theory involving facial mimicry. Past studies demonstrated that a disruption to mimicry impaired expression recognition in static and computer animated faces. Disrupted mimicry had not been tested on natural, dynamic expressions presented with scene context. In the task for this research participants were presented with multiple pairings of a natural dynamic facial expression and a context scene, and asked to judge whether the model’s expression was in response to the given context scene. It was hypothesized that a disruption to facial mimicry that was intended to interfere with motor activity in the simulation process would impair recognition to static more than dynamic expressions. It was also hypothesized that when expressions were difficult to discriminate as the true or false response to a context scene, the observer’s embodied response to the context scene would bias judgments about the expression as a match to their own. Over three experiments, the effects of context were always greater on judgments to dynamic than static expressions, and greater on long than brief expressions. Accuracy was better to dynamic long than brief and static expressions. Effects of disrupted mimicry interacted with duration rather than static and dynamic quality of expressions, resulting in a weak facilitation in recognition of long expressions. Overall, the results indicate that static and dynamic expressions are processed differently, that mimicry may not necessarily underlie expression recognition when expressions are presented with context, and that the use of natural dynamic expressions in context may provide a more appropriate paradigm for research into ecologically relevant emotion recognition processes