Naming Emotions in Motion: Alexithymic Traits Impact the Perception of Implied Motion in Facial Displays of Affect

Something akin to motion perception occurs when actual motion is not present but implied. However, it is not known if the experience of implied motion occurs during the perception of static faces nor if the effect would vary for different facial expressions. To examine this, participants were presen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Emotion (Washington, D.C.) Vol. 20; no. 2; pp. 311 - 316
Main Authors:	Senior, Carl, Hassel, Stefanie, Waheed, Arisha, Ridout, Nathan
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States American Psychological Association 01-03-2020
Subjects:	Adolescent Adult Affect Affective Symptoms - psychology Alexithymia Anxiety Anxiety - psychology Depression - psychology Emotions Face Perception Facial Expression Facial Expressions Fear Female Happiness Human Humans Major Depression Male Middle Aged Motion Motion Perception Naming Young Adult alexithymia representational momentum implied motion facial expressions of emotion affect perception
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Summary:	Something akin to motion perception occurs when actual motion is not present but implied. However, it is not known if the experience of implied motion occurs during the perception of static faces nor if the effect would vary for different facial expressions. To examine this, participants were presented with pairs of faces where successive expressions depicted either increasing emotional intensity or its diminution. Participants indicated if the second face in the pair was the same as, or different from, the first face shown. To measure general facial emotion recognition ability, the Ekman 60 faces test was administered. As individual differences in depression, anxiety, and alexithymia have been shown to influence face processing, we measured these factors using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS) and the Toronto Alexithymia scale (TAS-20). As expected, participants were more likely to endorse the second face as being a match to the first when its expression implied forward motion compared to backward motion. This effect was larger for happiness and fear and positively related to accuracy on the Ekman 60 faces task. The effect was not related to depression or anxiety but it was negatively related to scores on the difficulty identifying feelings subscale of the TAS-20, suggesting that individuals who have problems identifying their own and others' feelings experienced a reduction in implied motion. Observers process implied motion from some facial expressions of emotion but the experience is modified by the ability to recognize one's own feelings and those of others.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1528-3542 1931-1516
DOI:	10.1037/emo0000546