COMPUTER-ENHANCED EMOTION IN FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Benson & Perrett's (1991 b) computer-based caricature procedure was us ed to alter the positions of anatomical landmarks in photographs of em otional facial expressions with respect to their locations in a refere nce norm face (e.g. a neutral expression). Exaggerating the difference s between an expression and its norm produces caricatured images, wher eas reducing the differences produces 'anti-caricatures'. Experiment 1 showed that caricatured (+50% different from neutral) expressions wer e recognized significantly faster than the veridical (0 %, undistorted ) expressions. This held for all six basic emotions from the Ekman & F riesen (1976) series, and the effect generalized across different pose rs. For experiment 2, caricatured (+ 50 %) and anti-caricatured (- 50 %) images were prepared using two types of reference norm; a neutral-e xpression norm, which would be optimal if facial expression recognitio n involves monitoring changes in the positioning of underlying facial muscles, and a perceptually-based norm involving an average of the exp ressions of six basic emotions (excluding neutral) in the Ekman & Frie sen (1976) series. The results showed that the caricatured images were identified significantly faster, and the anti-caricatured images sign ificantly slower, than the veridical expressions. Furthermore, the neu tral-expression and average-expression norm caricatures produced the s ame pattern of results.