New Tests to Measure Individual Differences in Matching and Labelling Facial Expressions of Emotion, and Their Association with Ability to Recognise Vocal Emotions and Facial Identity

Although good tests are available for diagnosing clinical impairments in face expression processing, there is a lack of strong tests for assessing "individual differences"--that is, differences in ability between individuals within the typical, nonclinical, range. Here, we develop two new tests, one for expression perception (an odd-man-out matching task in which participants select which one of three faces displays a different expression) and one additionally requiring explicit identification of the emotion (a labelling task in which participants select one of six verbal labels). We demonstrate validity (careful check of individual items, large inversion effects, independence from nonverbal IQ, convergent validity with a previous labelling task), reliability (Cronbach's alphas of.77 and.76 respectively), and wide individual differences across the typical population. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the tests by addressing theoretical questions regarding the structure of face processing, specifically the extent to which the following processes are common or distinct: (a) perceptual matching and explicit labelling of expression (modest correlation between matching and labelling supported partial independence); (b) judgement of expressions from faces and voices (results argued labelling tasks tap into a multi-modal system, while matching tasks tap distinct perceptual processes); and (c) expression and identity processing (results argued for a common first step of perceptual processing for expression and identity).This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (http://www.arc.gov.au/) grant DP110100850 to RP and EM and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders (CE110001021) http://www.ccd.edu.au. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Probing emotional influences on cognitive control: an ALE meta-analysis of cognition emotion interactions

Increasing research documents an integration of cognitive control and affective processes. Despite a surge of interest in investigating the exact nature of this integration, no consensus has been reached on the precise neuroanatomical network involved. Using the Activation Likelihood Estimation meta-analysis method, we examined 43 functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies (total number of foci = 332; total number of participants, N =820) from the literature that have reported significant interactions between emotion and cognitive control. Meta-analytic results revealed that concurrent emotion (relative to emotionally neutral trials) consistently increased neural activation during high relative to low cognitive control conditions across studies and paradigms. Specifically, these activations emerged in regions commonly implicated in cognitive control such as the lateral prefrontal cortex (inferior frontal junction, inferior frontal gyrus), the medial prefrontal cortex, and the basal ganglia. In addition, some areas emerged during the interaction contrast that were not present during one of the main effects and included the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and the precuneus. These data provide new evidence for a network of cognition emotion interaction within a cognitive control setting. The findings are discussed within current theories of cognitive and attentional control