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Expression perceptive fields explain individual differences in the recognition of facial emotions

Murray, Thomas; Binetti, Nicola; Venkataramaiyer, Raghav; Namboodiri, Vinay; Cosker, Darren; Viding, Essi; Mareschal, Isabelle; (2024) Expression perceptive fields explain individual differences in the recognition of facial emotions. Communications Psychology , 2 (1) , Article 62. 10.1038/s44271-024-00111-7. Green open access

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Abstract

Humans can use the facial expressions of another to infer their emotional state, although it remains unknown how this process occurs. Here we suppose the presence of perceptive fields within expression space, analogous to feature-tuned receptive-fields of early visual cortex. We developed genetic algorithms to explore a multidimensional space of possible expressions and identify those that individuals associated with different emotions. We next defined perceptive fields as probabilistic maps within expression space, and found that they could predict the emotions that individuals infer from expressions presented in a separate task. We found profound individual variability in their size, location, and specificity, and that individuals with more similar perceptive fields had similar interpretations of the emotion communicated by an expression, providing possible channels for social communication. Modelling perceptive fields therefore provides a predictive framework in which to understand how individuals infer emotions from facial expressions.

Type: Article
Title: Expression perceptive fields explain individual differences in the recognition of facial emotions
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/s44271-024-00111-7
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00111-7
Language: English
Additional information: © 2024 Springer Nature Limited. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10197513
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