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Inducing a Concurrent Motor Load Reduces Categorization Precision for Facial Expressions

Motor theories of expression perception posit that observers simulate facial expressions within their own motor system, aiding perception and interpretation. Consistent with this view, reports have suggested that blocking facial mimicry induces expression labeling errors and alters patterns of ratin...

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Autores principales: Ipser, Alberta, Cook, Richard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Psychological Association 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4839775/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26618622
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000177
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author Ipser, Alberta
Cook, Richard
author_facet Ipser, Alberta
Cook, Richard
author_sort Ipser, Alberta
collection PubMed
description Motor theories of expression perception posit that observers simulate facial expressions within their own motor system, aiding perception and interpretation. Consistent with this view, reports have suggested that blocking facial mimicry induces expression labeling errors and alters patterns of ratings. Crucially, however, it is unclear whether changes in labeling and rating behavior reflect genuine perceptual phenomena (e.g., greater internal noise associated with expression perception or interpretation) or are products of response bias. In an effort to advance this literature, the present study introduces a new psychophysical paradigm for investigating motor contributions to expression perception that overcomes some of the limitations inherent in simple labeling and rating tasks. Observers were asked to judge whether smiles drawn from a morph continuum were sincere or insincere, in the presence or absence of a motor load induced by the concurrent production of vowel sounds. Having confirmed that smile sincerity judgments depend on cues from both eye and mouth regions (Experiment 1), we demonstrated that vowel production reduces the precision with which smiles are categorized (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, we replicated this effect when observers were required to produce vowels, but not when they passively listened to the same vowel sounds. In Experiments 4 and 5, we found that gender categorizations, equated for difficulty, were unaffected by vowel production, irrespective of the presence of a smiling expression. These findings greatly advance our understanding of motor contributions to expression perception and represent a timely contribution in light of recent high-profile challenges to the existing evidence base.
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spelling pubmed-48397752016-05-02 Inducing a Concurrent Motor Load Reduces Categorization Precision for Facial Expressions Ipser, Alberta Cook, Richard J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform Reports Motor theories of expression perception posit that observers simulate facial expressions within their own motor system, aiding perception and interpretation. Consistent with this view, reports have suggested that blocking facial mimicry induces expression labeling errors and alters patterns of ratings. Crucially, however, it is unclear whether changes in labeling and rating behavior reflect genuine perceptual phenomena (e.g., greater internal noise associated with expression perception or interpretation) or are products of response bias. In an effort to advance this literature, the present study introduces a new psychophysical paradigm for investigating motor contributions to expression perception that overcomes some of the limitations inherent in simple labeling and rating tasks. Observers were asked to judge whether smiles drawn from a morph continuum were sincere or insincere, in the presence or absence of a motor load induced by the concurrent production of vowel sounds. Having confirmed that smile sincerity judgments depend on cues from both eye and mouth regions (Experiment 1), we demonstrated that vowel production reduces the precision with which smiles are categorized (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, we replicated this effect when observers were required to produce vowels, but not when they passively listened to the same vowel sounds. In Experiments 4 and 5, we found that gender categorizations, equated for difficulty, were unaffected by vowel production, irrespective of the presence of a smiling expression. These findings greatly advance our understanding of motor contributions to expression perception and represent a timely contribution in light of recent high-profile challenges to the existing evidence base. American Psychological Association 2015-11-30 2016-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4839775/ /pubmed/26618622 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000177 Text en © 2015 The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
spellingShingle Reports
Ipser, Alberta
Cook, Richard
Inducing a Concurrent Motor Load Reduces Categorization Precision for Facial Expressions
title Inducing a Concurrent Motor Load Reduces Categorization Precision for Facial Expressions
title_full Inducing a Concurrent Motor Load Reduces Categorization Precision for Facial Expressions
title_fullStr Inducing a Concurrent Motor Load Reduces Categorization Precision for Facial Expressions
title_full_unstemmed Inducing a Concurrent Motor Load Reduces Categorization Precision for Facial Expressions
title_short Inducing a Concurrent Motor Load Reduces Categorization Precision for Facial Expressions
title_sort inducing a concurrent motor load reduces categorization precision for facial expressions
topic Reports
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4839775/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26618622
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000177
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