A new look at emotion perception: Concepts speed and shape facial emotion recognition.

Abstract

Decades ago, the "New Look" movement challenged how scientists thought about vision by suggesting that conceptual processes shape visual perceptions. Currently, affective scientists are likewise debating the role of concepts in emotion perception. Here, we utilized a repetition-priming paradigm in conjunction with signal detection and individual difference analyses to examine how providing emotion labels-which correspond to discrete emotion concepts-affects emotion recognition. In Study 1, pairing emotional faces with emotion labels (e.g., "sad") increased individuals' speed and sensitivity in recognizing emotions. Additionally, individuals with alexithymia-who have difficulty labeling their own emotions-struggled to recognize emotions based on visual cues alone, but not when emotion labels were provided. Study 2 replicated these findings and further demonstrated that emotion concepts can shape perceptions of facial expressions. Together, these results suggest that emotion perception involves conceptual processing. We discuss the implications of these findings for affective, social, and clinical psychology.

Emotions in “Black and White” or Shades of Gray? How We Think About Emotion Shapes Our Perception and Neural Representation of Emotion

“…First, while emotion theory has long noted top-down contributions to emotion perception (Barrett, 2006; Ochsner et al, 2004), few studies have examined how the categories we use to describe emotion shape emotion themselves (cf. Nook et al, 2015), and fewer still have asked what neural mechanisms underlie such effects. Previous emotion perception studies have focused on the presence vs. absence of emotion language when making a judgment about a stimulus rather than categorical nature of that judgment per se (Gendron et al, 2012; Kassam & Mendes, 2013; Lieberman et al, 2007; Lindquist et al, 2015; Nook et al, 2015; Roberson & Davidoff, 2000).…”

“…Nook et al, 2015), and fewer still have asked what neural mechanisms underlie such effects. Previous emotion perception studies have focused on the presence vs. absence of emotion language when making a judgment about a stimulus rather than categorical nature of that judgment per se (Gendron et al, 2012; Kassam & Mendes, 2013; Lieberman et al, 2007; Lindquist et al, 2015; Nook et al, 2015; Roberson & Davidoff, 2000). Our study design differed from prior work in that linguistic terms were provided in both conditions and what we varied was the categorical vs. continuous way in which they guided judgments.…”

“…One study found that orienting children to think in more categorical vs. continuous ways when perceiving another child's emotional states influenced downstream judgments, leading to more extreme preferences about whether they wanted to play with that child (Master, Markman, & Dweck, 2012). Other studies have shown that emotion words may shape (Gendron, Lindquist, Barsalou, & Barrett, 2012; Pessoa, Japee, Sturman, & Ungerleider, 2006; Roberson & Davidoff, 2000), constitute (Barrett, 2006; Lindquist, Satpute, & Gendron, 2015; Nook, Lindquist, & Zaki, 2015), or disrupt processes that generate affect (Kassam & Mendes, 2013; Lieberman et al, 2007). This work has focused on the role of language in emotion (i.e., contrasting the presence vs. absence of emotion words in the task), but has not specifically addressed whether the categorical quality of the judgments also plays a role.…”

Robot education peers in a situated primary school study: Personalisation promotes child learning

“…For example, emotion perception has been found to require conceptual processing, and is thus open to contextual influences (e.g. visual and social) [52]. Furthermore, recent theoretical developments in the domain of social cognition, emphasising contingent behaviours, suggest that the context of the interaction shapes the individual’s disposition to engage in interaction, resulting in a difficulty in handling out-of-context cues [53].…”

The Impact of Robot Tutor Nonverbal Social Behavior on Child Learning

“…Experimental evidence with perception of emotions would seem to provide additional weight to such a perspective (Nook et al, 2015). This has clear implications for designers of social robot behavior when human perceptions or outcomes are of any degree of importance.…”