Validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set – Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV): A Set of Videos Expressing Low, Intermediate, and High Intensity Emotions

Abstract

Most of the existing sets of facial expressions of emotion contain static photographs. While increasing demand for stimuli with enhanced ecological validity in facial emotion recognition research has led to the development of video stimuli, these typically involve full-blown (apex) expressions. However, variations of intensity in emotional facial expressions occur in real life social interactions, with low intensity expressions of emotions frequently occurring. The current study therefore developed and validated a set of video stimuli portraying three levels of intensity of emotional expressions, from low to high intensity. The videos were adapted from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES) and termed the Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV). A healthy sample of 92 people recruited from the University of Bath community (41 male, 51 female) completed a facial emotion recognition task including expressions of 6 basic emotions (anger, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness) and 3 complex emotions (contempt, embarrassment, pride) that were expressed at three different intensities of expression and neutral. Accuracy scores (raw and unbiased (Hu) hit rates) were calculated, as well as response times. Accuracy rates above chance level of responding were found for all emotion categories, producing an overall raw hit rate of 69% for the ADFES-BIV. The three intensity levels were validated as distinct categories, with higher accuracies and faster responses to high intensity expressions than intermediate intensity expressions, which had higher accuracies and faster responses than low intensity expressions. To further validate the intensities, a second study with standardised display times was conducted replicating this pattern. The ADFES-BIV has greater ecological validity than many other emotion stimulus sets and allows for versatile applications in emotion research. It can be retrieved free of charge for research purposes from the corresponding author.

Diminished sensitivity and specificity at recognising facial emotional expressions of varying intensity underlie emotion-specific recognition deficits in autism spectrum disorders

“…The Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES; van der Schalk, Hawk, Fischer, & Doosje, 2011) adapted to the Bath Intensity variations (ADFES-BIV; Wingenbach et al, 2016) was used as the emotion stimuli. The ADFES-BIV contains 360 videos (+10 practice videos) including the expressions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, contempt, embarrassment, pride, and neutral, each displayed by 12 different encoders (7 male, 5 female), and expressed at low, intermediate, and high intensity.…”

“…Low intensity facial emotional expressions provide less emotional cues to the observer and are harder to recognise than more intense expressions (Wingenbach, Ashwin, & Brosnan, 2016). Only a very limited number of studies have been published including intensity variations of emotional expression in ASD populations.…”

An Automatic Multilevel Facial Expression Recognition System

“…The aim of this work is to build and use an automatic facial expression recognition system to challenge the ADFES-BIV database, and to compare the obtained performance against the one of [7]. That is, since computer vision and machine learning algorithms are inspired by human vision and brain, comparing the performance of automatic systems against the one of humans can help to find new paths forward.…”

“…Wingenbach et al [7] created the ADFES-BIV dataset by editing the 120 videos played by the 12 Northern European actors to add three levels of intensities. That is, out of every selected tape of ADFES, Wingenbach et al created three new videos, displaying the same emotion at three different degrees of intensity, low, medium and high, for a total of 360 videos.…”

“…In 1872, Darwin theory [1] stated that facial expressions display the internal feelings of a person, and, therefore, they have a relevant communicative role. Given their importance in conveying social information about a person and hisher interaction with the environment, facial expressions recognition is an active research field among researchers in psychology [2,3,4,5,6,7].…”