Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The face has a functional value transmitting information about our emotional state. Recognition of emotional facial expressions is crucial, allowing us to adapt our behaviour accordingly. The current program is centered on the processing and recognition of emotional facial expressions. The recognition rates for the expressions of the basic emotions such as happiness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise and sadness are high, surpassing chance level. However, not all emotions are recognized equally well. Variations are observed between emotions with happiness being the most accurately recognized, followed by anger, surprise, disgust, sadness, and finally, fear. While the pattern of errors and general recognition rates seem clear, the underlying processes are not well understood. The main goal of the current program is to test a new comprehensive framework called the Attentional-Perceptual Scan-path for Emotion Recognition (APSER) that I have developed. According to APSER, recognition of emotional facial expressions is accomplished by sequentially attending to individual features of the facial expression. Individual features are integrated into a unified representation and new features are processed until a label is selected. The first axis of the research program includes experiments to explore attentional-perceptual mechanisms. In effect, while the role of attentional-perceptual mechanisms in the recognition of emotional facial expressions is undisputable, it remains unclear how they operate. The second axis will test the new assumptions of APSER, which stipulate that recognition is based on the sequential attention to and perception of individual features of the facial expression as a function of the emotion expressed until the accurate label is selected. The third axis of the program focuses on the applicability of APSER from a developmental perspective as research has shown that children process emotional facial expressions differently than adults. The understanding of basic mechanisms in the recognition and processing of non-verbal behaviour are crucial pillars for a better understanding of social interactions and interventions.