Out of Focus: Facial Feedback Manipulation Modulates Automatic Processing of Unattended Emotional Faces

Kuehne, Maria; Siwy, Isabelle; Zaehle, Tino; Heinze, Hans‐Jochen; Lobmaier, Janek S.

doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01445

Cited by 12 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…vMMN has also been identified in response to complex stimuli such as facial expressions peaking within a large time window including one or two deflections depending on the study (100-500 ms, refs. [15][16][17][18][19][20]. In a previous study on typically developed adults (TD) using a tightly controlled paradigm, we also showed that deviant expressions elicited an early and a late vMMN 18 .…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Emotional visual mismatch negativity: a joint investigation of social and non-social dimensions in adults with autism

et al. 2021

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Unusual behaviors and brain activity to socio-emotional stimuli have been reported in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Atypical reactivity to change and intolerance of uncertainty are also present, but little is known on their possible impact on facial expression processing in autism. The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is an electrophysiological response automatically elicited by changing events such as deviant emotional faces presented among regular neutral faces. While vMMN has been found altered in ASD in response to low-level changes in simple stimuli, no study has investigated this response to visual social stimuli. Here two deviant expressions were presented, neutral and angry, embedded in a sequence of repetitive neutral stimuli. vMMN peak analyses were performed for latency and amplitude in early and late time windows. The ASD group presented smaller amplitude of the late vMMN to both neutral and emotional deviants compared to the typically developed adults (TD) group, and only the TD group presented a sustained activity related to emotional change (i.e., angry deviant). Source reconstruction of the vMMNs further revealed that any change processing elicited a reduced activity in ASD group compared to TD in the saliency network, while the specific processing emotional change elicited activity in the temporal region and in the insula. This study confirms atypical change processing in ASD and points to a specific difficulty in the processing of emotional changes, potentially playing a crucial role in social interaction deficits. Nevertheless, these results require to be further replicated with a greater sample size and generalized to other emotional expressions.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Emotional visual mismatch negativity: a joint investigation of social and non-social dimensions in adults with autism

et al. 2021

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“…One of the most common methods of inhibiting facial activity in the lower face involves the so-called pen-in-mouth procedures, where participants are asked to hold a pen in their mouth (e.g. Niedenthal et al, 2001;Soussignan, 2002;Oberman et al, 2007;Maringer et al, 2011;Ponari et al, 2012;Kosonogov et al, 2015;Kuehne et al, 2019). Oberman et al (2007) asked participants to place a pen horizontally in their mouth and hold it in their teeth while not allowing their lips to touch the pen.…”

Section: Embodied Simulation and Emotion Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pacified Face: Early Embodiment Processes and the Use of Dummies

Rychlowska

Vanderwert

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Few things affect us as much as facial expressions, as they inform us about others' feelings and intentions, thereby influencing our own emotions and behaviors. A substantial body of literature links the critical abilities of recognizing and understanding emotion displays with facial mimicry, a sensorimotor process involving rapid imitation of perceived expressions. For example, blocking or altering facial mimicry in adults leads to disruptions in judgments in emotion recognition or emotional language processing. The present review focuses on pacifier use in infancy, a common practice that has the potential to interfere with infants' facial movements in ways identical to laboratory paradigms designed to block facial mimicry. Despite this similarity and the widespread use of infant soothers, little is known about their long-term effects. Here we review studies exploring the psychological correlates and implications of pacifier use. In particular, we discuss how soothers may interfere with the development of social skills in infants and present evidence linking pacifier use with disrupted adults' mimicry of facial expressions displayed by infants. Other preliminary findings reveal negative correlations between the use of soothers and children's spontaneous facial mimicry as well as emotional competence of young adults. Such studies, although correlational, suggest that this widespread parenting practice may affect the development of social skills by influencing emotional coordination. We discuss the implications of these findings and propose avenues for future research that can provide insights into the role of embodied processes in the development of emotional competence and adult functioning.

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“…In contrast, when participants hold the pen with their lips they activate the Musculus orbicularis oris, the contraction of which is incompatible with smiling. Notwithstanding an ongoing intense debate about the replicability of the seminal study by Strack and colleagues 17 – 20 , there is ample evidence that such facial feedback manipulations influence the conscious processing of emotional facial expressions 13 , 21 , 22 and emotional body expressions 23 , as well as the automatic processing of unattended facial emotional expressions 24 . Recently, we investigated the impact of facial feedback on the automatic processing by electrophysiological measurements of the expression-related mismatch negativity (eMMN).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, we interpreted these findings such that the smiling manipulation condition might have facilitated the encoding of happy while impeding the encoding of the sad faces. Therefore, the emotional valence of the happy face might have been stored more effectively than sad faces 24 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Facial feedback manipulation was administered following Strack et al 16 . However, as previous studies have shown no or only minor effects of the holding-the-pen-between-the-lips-manipulation 13 , 24 we restricted our manipulation to the smile-inducing condition, in which participants hold a pen with their teeth. We compared this manipulation to a neutral control condition (holding the pen with the non-dominant hand).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of posed smiling on memory for happy and sad facial expressions

Kuehne

Zaehle

Lobmaier

2021

Sci Rep

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The perception and storage of facial emotional expressions constitutes an important human skill that is essential for our daily social interactions. While previous research revealed that facial feedback can influence the perception of facial emotional expressions, it is unclear whether facial feedback also plays a role in memory processes of facial emotional expressions. In the present study we investigated the impact of facial feedback on the performance in emotional visual working memory (WM). For this purpose, 37 participants underwent a classical facial feedback manipulation (FFM) (holding a pen with the teeth—inducing a smiling expression vs. holding a pen with the non-dominant hand—as a control condition) while they performed a WM task on varying intensities of happy or sad facial expressions. Results show that the smiling manipulation improved memory performance selectively for happy faces, especially for highly ambiguous facial expressions. Furthermore, we found that in addition to an overall negative bias specifically for happy faces (i.e. happy faces are remembered as more negative than they initially were), FFM induced a positivity bias when memorizing emotional facial information (i.e. faces were remembered as being more positive than they actually were). Finally, our data demonstrate that men were affected more by FFM: during induced smiling men showed a larger positive bias than women did. These data demonstrate that facial feedback not only influences our perception but also systematically alters our memory of facial emotional expressions.

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Out of Focus: Facial Feedback Manipulation Modulates Automatic Processing of Unattended Emotional Faces

Cited by 12 publications

References 55 publications

Emotional visual mismatch negativity: a joint investigation of social and non-social dimensions in adults with autism

Emotional visual mismatch negativity: a joint investigation of social and non-social dimensions in adults with autism

The Pacified Face: Early Embodiment Processes and the Use of Dummies

Effects of posed smiling on memory for happy and sad facial expressions

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