Children's ability to control the facial expression of laughter and smiling: Knowledge and behaviour

Abstract

A total of 64 children, aged 7 and 10, watched a clown performing three sketches rated as very funny by the children. Two experimental conditions were created by asking half of the participants to suppress their laughter. Facial expressions were videotaped and analysed with FACS. For both ages, the results show a significant shorter duration (but not a lower frequency) of episodes of laughter and Duchenne smiles, and greater frequency of facial control movements in the suppression compared to the free expression group. The detailed results on individual facial action units used to control amusement expressions suggest hypotheses on the nature of the underlying processes. The participants' explicit knowledge of their control strategies was assessed through standardised interviews. Although behavioural control strategies were reported equally frequently by the two age groups, 10-year-olds verbalised more mental control strategies than 7-year-olds. This theoretically expected difference was not related to the actual ability to control facial expression. This result challenges the commonly held assumption that explicit knowledge of control strategies results in a greater ability to execute such control in ongoing social interactions.

Induction and Profiling of Strong Multi-Componential Emotions in Virtual Reality

“…Sometimes an emotional response belongs directly to the subject (e.g., a subjective feeling) but sometimes it is expressed through the avatar (e.g., avoidance behaviour). Observational paradigms such as field studies (e.g., [36], [37], [38], [39]) boast ecological validity but often lack the appropriate scientific control for reliable induction of emotion, can be impractical, or limit the comprehensive measurement (e.g., physiological changes).…”

Laughter and Smiling in 16 Positive Emotions

“…So far, studies on the expressive patterns of positive emotions were often limited to either a small set of emotions, and/or are specific to one modality (i.e., facial features or vocalizations; for a review see [7]). For example, [25] claimed that sensory pleasures, mirth, happiness, and joy are expressed by smiling. In posing studies, awe, pride and amusement contained a smile in 56 -85% of the expressions (see [26]).…”

“…Evidence is mixed on whether the AU6 can serve as a "reliable" muscle which is an inevitable sign of enjoyment as compared to posed smiles (AU6 also occurs in posed DDs [11] [17]), but it was shown that the action of the AU6 plays an important role in the perception of spontaneity, authenticity, genuineness of smiles and judgment accuracy [30] [31] [32] [33]. 2 [15] [19] [25] [34] defined the basis of joyful laughter (Duchenne laughter) to consist of a DD plus an audible, laughter-related vocalization and open mouth. DD laughter is typically lasting longer than DD smiling, and entails a more intense contraction of the zygomatic major muscle.…”

The vocal communication of different kinds of smile

“…These modulated expressions, rather than the prototypical displays, are the "normal" forms of emotional expression that need to be explored. Although a number of studies have explored display rules (Ceschi & Scherer, 2003;Levenson, 1994;Levenson, 2002), virtually nothing seems to be known about the display rules for vocalizations.…”