Introducing ACASS: An Annotated Character Animation Stimulus Set for Controlled (e)Motion Perception Studies

Lammers, Sebastian; Bente, Gary; Tepest, Ralf; Jording, Mathis; Roth, Daniel; Vogeley, Kai

doi:10.3389/frobt.2019.00094

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…In games, for instance, many sub-scenes are prerecorded and thus the same for all audience members, and the same holds true for VR. Moreover, for both games and VR experiences, it is exceptionally well possible to quantify and precisely time-lock contents ( Bente et al, 2007 ; Huskey et al, 2018a ; Lammers et al, 2019 ; Calcagnotto et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating media content analysis, reception analysis, and media effects studies

Schmälzle

Huskey

2023

Front. Neurosci.

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Every day, the world of media is at our fingertips, whether it is watching movies, listening to the radio, or browsing online media. On average, people spend over 8 h per day consuming messages from the mass media, amounting to a total lifetime dose of more than 20 years in which conceptual content stimulates our brains. Effects from this flood of information range from short-term attention bursts (e.g., by breaking news features or viral ‘memes’) to life-long memories (e.g., of one’s favorite childhood movie), and from micro-level impacts on an individual’s memory, attitudes, and behaviors to macro-level effects on nations or generations. The modern study of media’s influence on society dates back to the 1940s. This body of mass communication scholarship has largely asked, “what is media’s effect on the individual?” Around the time of the cognitive revolution, media psychologists began to ask, “what cognitive processes are involved in media processing?” More recently, neuroimaging researchers started using real-life media as stimuli to examine perception and cognition under more natural conditions. Such research asks: “what can media tell us about brain function?” With some exceptions, these bodies of scholarship often talk past each other. An integration offers new insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms through which media affect single individuals and entire audiences. However, this endeavor faces the same challenges as all interdisciplinary approaches: Researchers with different backgrounds have different levels of expertise, goals, and foci. For instance, neuroimaging researchers label media stimuli as “naturalistic” although they are in many ways rather artificial. Similarly, media experts are typically unfamiliar with the brain. Neither media creators nor neuroscientifically oriented researchers approach media effects from a social scientific perspective, which is the domain of yet another species. In this article, we provide an overview of approaches and traditions to studying media, and we review the emerging literature that aims to connect these streams. We introduce an organizing scheme that connects the causal paths from media content → brain responses → media effects and discuss network control theory as a promising framework to integrate media content, reception, and effects analyses.

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Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating media content analysis, reception analysis, and media effects studies

Schmälzle

Huskey

2023

Front. Neurosci.

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“…To avoid ceiling effects in emotion recognition due to the use of explicit expressive gestures, e.g., a fist clinch (see for instance Aviezer et al, 2012;Reynolds et al, 2019), we used stimulus material from recently published animation database ACASS (Lammers et al, 2019). The database consists of motion capture recordings of actors performing manual tasks (such as painting, mopping, sanding) in different moods (angry, happy, sad).…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Animation stimuli were taken from a recently published database ACASS (Annotated Character Animation Stimulus Set; Lammers et al, 2019). ACASS consists of motion capture datasets of human actors performing six different everyday activities (sweeping, wiping a table, painting with a roller, painting with a brush, mopping, sanding a table) in three different moods (angry, happy, sad).…”

Section: Stimulus Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…FBX files contain the mocap data collected with an optical motion capture system (Optitrack ™ , NaturalPoint, Inc., Oregon, United States) mapped onto a simple virtual character (wooden mannequin). Stimulus features and production details can be found in Lammers et al (2019). Of note, the VC animations didn't show facial expressions (see Figure 1).…”

Section: Stimulus Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring the effects of co-location on emotion perception in shared virtual environments: An ecological perspective

Bente

Schmälzle

Jahn

et al. 2023

Front. Virtual Real.

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Inferring emotions from others’ non-verbal behavior is a pervasive and fundamental task in social interactions. Typically, real-life encounters imply the co-location of interactants, i.e., their embodiment within a shared spatial-temporal continuum in which the trajectories of the interaction partner’s Expressive Body Movement (EBM) create mutual social affordances. Shared Virtual Environments (SVEs) and Virtual Characters (VCs) are increasingly used to study social perception, allowing to reconcile experimental stimulus control with ecological validity. However, it remains unclear whether display modalities that enable co-presence have an impact on observers responses to VCs’ expressive behaviors. Drawing upon ecological approaches to social perception, we reasoned that sharing the space with a VC should amplify affordances as compared to a screen display, and consequently alter observers’ perceptions of EBM in terms of judgment certainty, hit rates, perceived expressive qualities (arousal and valence), and resulting approach and avoidance tendencies. In a between-subject design, we compared the perception of 54 10-s animations of VCs performing three daily activities (painting, mopping, sanding) in three emotional states (angry, happy, sad)—either displayed in 3D as a co-located VC moving in shared space, or as a 2D replay on a screen that was also placed in the SVEs. Results confirm the effective experimental control of the variable of interest, showing that perceived co-presence was significantly affected by the display modality, while perceived realism and immersion showed no difference. Spatial presence and social presence showed marginal effects. Results suggest that the display modality had a minimal effect on emotion perception. A weak effect was found for the expression “happy,” for which unbiased hit rates were higher in the 3D condition. Importantly, low hit rates were observed for all three emotion categories. However, observers judgments significantly correlated for category assignment and across all rating dimensions, indicating universal decoding principles. While category assignment was erroneous, though, ratings of valence and arousal were consistent with expectations derived from emotion theory. The study demonstrates the value of animated VCs in emotion perception studies and raises new questions regarding the validity of category-based emotion recognition measures.

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“…A recent study found participants with ASD to have difficulties in MENT-but not in MNS-related parts of a novel paradigm (Marx, 2018). The paradigm used by Marx was developed to specifically activate MNS and MENT with as little differences between conditions as possible (Lammers, 2017;Lammers et al, 2019). It utilizes motion capture based animations of two everyday activities (mopping, sweeping), each carried out in two moods (angry, happy).…”

Section: Movement Perception and Production In Asdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative Analysis of Motor Behavior in Adults with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

Lammers¹

2020

Preprint

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an umbrella term for a range of conditions that share core symptoms such as restricted interests, repetitive behaviors and deficits in social interaction and communication. Motor impairments in ASD have been investigated mainly in children and adolescents. Although the results are equivocal, some researchers proposed motor impairments to be a core symptom of ASD. Research in adults with ASD remains scarce, but existing evidence suggests that an age-related decrease in motor symptoms is likely. In addition, the level of functioning may have an influence on motor skills. In the current project, motion capture technology was used to quantify motor behavior of adults with and without high functioning ASD. Participants were recorded (1) while performing neutral walking movements, and (2) while performing mood-influenced everyday activities. The results show no significant differences in walking movements between participants with or without ASD. In contrast, the results of the mood-influenced movements show significant group differences. Together, these results suggest that general motor skills in adults with high functioning ASD are not impaired, while the production of nonverbal bodily cues is significantly different. These bodily cues carry information (e.g. about mood) that are relevant for nonverbal communication. It has been shown that the recognition of perceived movements increases when movements are more similar to the movements of the perceiver. The current results thus show that the difficulties in nonverbal communication between persons with and without ASD may stem from differences in movement profiles.

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Introducing ACASS: An Annotated Character Animation Stimulus Set for Controlled (e)Motion Perception Studies

Cited by 5 publications

References 46 publications

Integrating media content analysis, reception analysis, and media effects studies

Integrating media content analysis, reception analysis, and media effects studies

Measuring the effects of co-location on emotion perception in shared virtual environments: An ecological perspective

Quantitative Analysis of Motor Behavior in Adults with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

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