Computer graphic manipulations in the study of face perceptions

The face is of unparalleled importance in communication, containing cues used not only in identity recognition but, also for the assessment of character, mood, health and attractiveness. Computer graphic image (CGI) manipulation has enabled the effects of facial cues on perception to be studied from cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology perspectives. A set of studies employing novel computer graphic methods to investigate facial expression, symmetry and dynamic cues related to taste is presented in six experimental chapters (2-7). In Chapter 2 novel photo-realistic stimuli are employed to study the perceptual lateralization of facial cues for perceptions of age, gender, attractiveness, expression and lip-reading. Results suggest a right hemisphere lateralization for all perceptions except lip-reading, which appears left lateralized. Previous studies with photographic and CGI manipulations have implied that humans unlike other animals prefer asymmetry in attractiveness judgements. In Chapter 3, new, more appropriate, CGI techniques were applied to investigate facial symmetry preference. In a series of experiments humans were found to judge more symmetrical faces as more attractive and possible individuals differences in symmetry preference strength were investigated. CGI techniques have enabled consistent qualities related to attractiveness and age to be captured from groups of face images and subsequently manipulated. In Chapter 4, these techniques are applied to capture and manipulate qualities associated with perceived skin health. Chapter 5 represents a foray into dynamic cues related to food consumption using video. Possible facial cues to the strength, taste and the hedonic value of flavours that an observed individual was consuming were investigated. Chapter 6 presents a novel test investigating individual differences in the percept of neutral expression. To illustrate the test: when asked to make faces expressively neutral, depressed individuals chose higher levels anger and disgust compared to controls. The test used novel 'anti-face' expression stimuli. These were later used in Chapter 7 to investigate a recent finding that adaptation to the anti-faces of individuals (faces with the opposite characteristics to a particular individual), facilitated recognition of subsequently presented corresponding individuals. The presence of analogous effects for emotional expressions was found. This effect appears to be robust to changes in individual identity, pattern masking and delays of up to a second between the adaptation and test stimuli. Overall the thesis demonstrates the use of CGI manipulation in testing hypotheses from a variety of areas within face perception and presents a number of novel techniques that may be useful in future face perception research

The Simulation of Smiles (SIMS) model: Embodied simulation and the meaning of facial expression

Recent application of theories of embodied or grounded cognition to the recognition and interpretation of facial expression of emotion has led to an explosion of research in psychology and the neurosciences. However, despite the accelerating number of reported findings, it remains unclear how the many component processes of emotion and their neural mechanisms actually support embodied simulation. Equally unclear is what triggers the use of embodied simulation versus perceptual or conceptual strategies in determining meaning. The present article integrates behavioral research from social psychology with recent research in neurosciences in order to provide coherence to the extant and future research on this topic. The roles of several of the brain's reward systems, and the amygdala, somatosensory cortices, and motor centers are examined. These are then linked to behavioral and brain research on facial mimicry and eye gaze. Articulation of the mediators and moderators of facial mimicry and gaze are particularly useful in guiding interpretation of relevant findings from neurosciences. Finally, a model of the processing of the smile, the most complex of the facial expressions, is presented as a means to illustrate how to advance the application of theories of embodied cognition in the study of facial expression of emotion.Peer Reviewe

The proximate mechanisms and ultimate functions of smiles

Niedenthal et al's classification of smiles erroneously conflates psychological mechanisms and adaptive functions. This confusion weakens the rationale behind the types of smiles they chose to individuate, and it obfuscates the distinction between the communicative versus denotative nature of smiles and the role of perceived-gaze direction in emotion recognitio

Motivational aspects of recognizing a smile

What are the underlying processes that enable human beings to recognize a happy face? Clearly, featural and configural cues will help to identify the distinctive smile. In addition, the motivational state of the observer will influence the interpretation of emotional expressions. Therefore, a model accounting for emotion recognition is only complete if bottom-up and top-down aspects are integrate

How does perceiving eye direction modulate emotion recognition?

Niedenthal et al. postulate that eye contact with the expresser of an emotion automatically initiates embodied simulation. Our commentary explores the generality of such an eye contact effect for emotions other than happiness. Based on the appraisal theory of emotion, we propose that embodied simulation may be reinforced by mutual or averted gaze as a function of emotional contex

Beyond smiles: The impact of culture and race in embodying and decoding facial expressions

Understanding the very nature of the smile with an integrative approach and a novel model is a fertile ground for a new theoretical vision and insights. However, from this perspective, I challenge the authors to integrate culture and race in their model, because both factors would impact upon the embodying and decoding of facial expression

Technologies of the natural: ‘Male enhancement’, gender confirmation surgery, and the ‘monster cock’

Responding to Susan Stryker’s (2006) call to identify the “seams and sutures” of the ‘natural body’, this dissertation analyzes the social incarnation of the ‘natural male body’ through ‘male enhancement’ discourse in Canada and the United States (247). As one of the few sociological investigations into the medical practice of male enhancement, this research reorients our analytical gaze away from the somatic transformations of historically-oppressed people’s sexed bodies, towards bringing the male body, cis masculinity, and whiteness into the spotlight of critique. This investigation is grounded in fifty hours of online observations of a male enhancement forum for cis men interested in augmenting their genitals; and twenty in-depth, qualitative interviews with medical practitioners who specialize in male enhancement procedures. Drawing on the theoretical and analytical tradition of somatechnics, I juxtapose bodies and somatic transformations in relation to each other to reveal the underlying assumptions, justifications, and prohibitions for particular forms of bodily being. I first compare how male enhancement for cis men and gender confirming genital procedures for trans people are discursively produced in contrasting ways, despite how both sets of these procedures use overlapping medical knowledges to intervene on genitals, aiming to produce similar aesthetic results and to reduce patient suffering. Yet male enhancement is discursively framed as ‘restorative’ or ‘augmentative’ of the natural male body, whereas gender confirmation surgeries are rendered ‘constructive’ of an unnatural body. In the second half of my analysis, I demonstrate how male enhancements that result in ‘monster cocks’, by definition, make penetrative sexual practices impossible or cause sexual partners pain, thereby creating a tension between sexual practices that male the body, and dominance practices that accomplish masculinity. Reading the monster cock in relation to discourses about the ‘female reproductive body’, dyspareunia, and racialized bodies, I trace how male enhancement discourse works to shore up the contours of whiteness, cis masculinity, and the male body. This project aims to disrupt the naturalized white male body against which all others are measured, and attempts to make an intervention into how bodies come to matter