The visual discrimination of negative facial expressions by younger and older adults

Mienaltowski, Andrew; Johnson, E. R.; Wittman, Rebecca; Wilson, Anne-Taylor; Sturycz, C.; Norman, J. Farley

doi:10.1016/j.visres.2013.01.006

Cited by 28 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…However, in naturalistic environments, emotions are not always overtly evident, especially when they are not directed towards another person, suggesting that these previous experimental paradigms may not be ecologically valid. This hypothesis is supported by a recent study suggesting that older participants do not always exhibit deficits when discriminating low intensity, negative facial expressions (Mienaltowski et al, 2013). Moreover, it is plausible that in these previous studies, participants were not extracting emotion information from the stimuli per se, but instead selecting responses on the basis of learned and familiar actions.…”

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confidence: 69%

Effects of aging on identifying emotions conveyed by point-light walkers.

Spencer

Sekuler

Bennett

et al. 2016

Psychology and Aging

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The visual system is able to recognize human motion simply from point lights attached to the major joints of an actor. Moreover, it has been shown that younger adults are able to recognize emotions from such dynamic point-light displays. Previous research has suggested that the ability to perceive emotional stimuli changes with age. For example, it has been shown that older adults are impaired in recognizing emotional expressions from static faces. In addition, it has been shown that older adults have difficulties perceiving visual motion, which might be helpful to recognize emotions from point-light displays. In the current study, 4 experiments were completed in which older and younger adults were asked to identify 3 emotions (happy, sad, and angry) displayed by 4 types of point-light walkers: upright and inverted normal walkers, which contained both local motion and global form information; upright scrambled walkers, which contained only local motion information; and upright random-position walkers, which contained only global form information. Overall, emotion discrimination accuracy was lower in older participants compared with younger participants, specifically when identifying sad and angry point-light walkers. In addition, observers in both age groups were able to recognize emotions from all types of point-light walkers, suggesting that both older and younger adults are able to recognize emotions from point-light walkers on the basis of local motion or global form.

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mentioning

confidence: 69%

Effects of aging on identifying emotions conveyed by point-light walkers.

Spencer

Sekuler

Bennett

et al. 2016

Psychology and Aging

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“…In an extensive review, it was noted that there is a consistent tendency for healthy elderly individuals to identify EFEs worse than younger subjects [13], especially when it comes to EFEs with negative valence like fear, anger and sadness, a tendency that has been corroborated elsewhere [15,16]. Cognitive deficits, such as MCI, seem to worsen the difficulties in recognizing EFEs [17,18], specifically the identification of fear [19,20] and anger [21], and in patients with dementia, such as those with AD, the ability to identify emotions is lost as the disease progresses [22,23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Emotional processing in patients with mild cognitive impairment: The influence of the valence and intensity of emotional stimuli

Sarabia‐Cobo

García-Rodríguez

Navas

et al. 2015

Journal of the Neurological Sciences

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“…In fact, Mienaltowski and colleagues (2013) found that older and younger adults had similar performance in recognizing emotions at high intensity when comparing pairs of emotions. To ensure relatively high emotion recognition of virtual agent faces, designers may want to consider displaying facial emotions at medium (60%) intensity or higher.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…However in one study, where the cognitive demands of the task were minimized, age-related differences in recognizing anger and sadness (Mienaltowski et al, 2013). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Younger and older users׳ recognition of virtual agent facial expressions

Beer

Smarr

Fisk

et al. 2015

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

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As technology advances, robots and virtual agents will be introduced into the home and healthcare settings to assist individuals, both young and old, with everyday living tasks. Understanding how users recognize an agent’s social cues is therefore imperative, especially in social interactions. Facial expression, in particular, is one of the most common non-verbal cues used to display and communicate emotion in on-screen agents (Cassell, Sullivan, Prevost, & Churchill, 2000). Age is important to consider because age-related differences in emotion recognition of human facial expression have been supported (Ruffman et al., 2008), with older adults showing a deficit for recognition of negative facial expressions. Previous work has shown that younger adults can effectively recognize facial emotions displayed by agents (Bartneck & Reichenbach, 2005; Courgeon et al. 2009; 2011; Breazeal, 2003); however, little research has compared in-depth younger and older adults’ ability to label a virtual agent’s facial emotions, an import consideration because social agents will be required to interact with users of varying ages. If such age-related differences exist for recognition of virtual agent facial expressions, we aim to understand if those age-related differences are influenced by the intensity of the emotion, dynamic formation of emotion (i.e., a neutral expression developing into an expression of emotion through motion), or the type of virtual character differing by human-likeness. Study 1 investigated the relationship between age-related differences, the implication of dynamic formation of emotion, and the role of emotion intensity in emotion recognition of the facial expressions of a virtual agent (iCat). Study 2 examined age-related differences in recognition expressed by three types of virtual characters differing by human-likeness (non-humanoid iCat, synthetic human, and human). Study 2 also investigated the role of configural and featural processing as a possible explanation for age-related differences in emotion recognition. First, our findings show age-related differences in the recognition of emotions expressed by a virtual agent, with older adults showing lower recognition for the emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral. These age-related difference might be explained by older adults having difficulty discriminating similarity in configural arrangement of facial features for certain emotions; for example, older adults often mislabeled the similar emotions of fear as surprise. Second, our results did not provide evidence for the dynamic formation improving emotion recognition; but, in general, the intensity of the emotion improved recognition. Lastly, we learned that emotion recognition, for older and younger adults, differed by character type, from best to worst: human, synthetic human, and then iCat. Our findings provide guidance for design, as well as the development of a framework of age-related differences in emotion recognition.

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The visual discrimination of negative facial expressions by younger and older adults

Cited by 28 publications

References 30 publications

Effects of aging on identifying emotions conveyed by point-light walkers.

Effects of aging on identifying emotions conveyed by point-light walkers.

Emotional processing in patients with mild cognitive impairment: The influence of the valence and intensity of emotional stimuli

Younger and older users׳ recognition of virtual agent facial expressions

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