Extracting Relevance and Affect Information from Physiological Text Annotation

We present physiological text annotation, which refers to the practice of associating physiological responses to text content in order to infer characteristics of the user information needs and affective responses. Text annotation is a laborious task, and implicit feedback has been studied as a way to collect annotations without requiring any explicit action from the user. Previous work has explored behavioral signals, such as clicks or dwell time to automatically infer annotations, and physiological signals have mostly been explored for image or video content. We report on two experiments in which physiological text annotation is studied first to 1) indicate perceived relevance and then to 2) indicate affective responses of the users. The first experiment tackles the user’s perception of relevance of an information item, which is fundamental towards revealing the user’s information needs. The second experiment is then aimed at revealing the user’s affective responses towards a -relevant- text document. Results show that physiological user signals are associated with relevance and affect. In particular, electrodermal activity (EDA) was found to be different when users read relevant content than when they read irrelevant content and was found to be lower when reading texts with negative emotional content than when reading texts with neutral content. Together, the experiments show that physiological text annotation can provide valuable implicit inputs for personalized systems. We discuss how our findings help design personalized systems that can annotate digital content using human physiology without the need for any explicit user interaction

The MPI Facial Expression Database — A Validated Database of Emotional and Conversational Facial Expressions

The ability to communicate is one of the core aspects of human life. For this, we use not only verbal but also nonverbal signals of remarkable complexity. Among the latter, facial expressions belong to the most important information channels. Despite the large variety of facial expressions we use in daily life, research on facial expressions has so far mostly focused on the emotional aspect. Consequently, most databases of facial expressions available to the research community also include only emotional expressions, neglecting the largely unexplored aspect of conversational expressions. To fill this gap, we present the MPI facial expression database, which contains a large variety of natural emotional and conversational expressions. The database contains 55 different facial expressions performed by 19 German participants. Expressions were elicited with the help of a method-acting protocol, which guarantees both well-defined and natural facial expressions. The method-acting protocol was based on every-day scenarios, which are used to define the necessary context information for each expression. All facial expressions are available in three repetitions, in two intensities, as well as from three different camera angles. A detailed frame annotation is provided, from which a dynamic and a static version of the database have been created. In addition to describing the database in detail, we also present the results of an experiment with two conditions that serve to validate the context scenarios as well as the naturalness and recognizability of the video sequences. Our results provide clear evidence that conversational expressions can be recognized surprisingly well from visual information alone. The MPI facial expression database will enable researchers from different research fields (including the perceptual and cognitive sciences, but also affective computing, as well as computer vision) to investigate the processing of a wider range of natural facial expressions

Emotional Facial Expression Detection in the Peripheral Visual Field

BACKGROUND: In everyday life, signals of danger, such as aversive facial expressions, usually appear in the peripheral visual field. Although facial expression processing in central vision has been extensively studied, this processing in peripheral vision has been poorly studied. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using behavioral measures, we explored the human ability to detect fear and disgust vs. neutral expressions and compared it to the ability to discriminate between genders at eccentricities up to 40°. Responses were faster for the detection of emotion compared to gender. Emotion was detected from fearful faces up to 40° of eccentricity. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate the human ability to detect facial expressions presented in the far periphery up to 40° of eccentricity. The increasing advantage of emotion compared to gender processing with increasing eccentricity might reflect a major implication of the magnocellular visual pathway in facial expression processing. This advantage may suggest that emotion detection, relative to gender identification, is less impacted by visual acuity and within-face crowding in the periphery. These results are consistent with specific and automatic processing of danger-related information, which may drive attention to those messages and allow for a fast behavioral reaction

Circumstellar discs: What will be next?

This prospective chapter gives our view on the evolution of the study of circumstellar discs within the next 20 years from both observational and theoretical sides. We first present the expected improvements in our knowledge of protoplanetary discs as for their masses, sizes, chemistry, the presence of planets as well as the evolutionary processes shaping these discs. We then explore the older debris disc stage and explain what will be learnt concerning their birth, the intrinsic links between these discs and planets, the hot dust and the gas detected around main sequence stars as well as discs around white dwarfs.Comment: invited review; comments welcome (32 pages

Mixed emotions to near-miss outcomes: a psychophysiological study with facial electromyography

Near-misses occur across many forms of gambling and are rated as unpleasant while simultaneously increasing the motivation to continue playing. On slot machines, the icon position relative to the payline moderates the effects of near-misses, with near-misses before the payline increasing motivation, and near-misses after the payline being rated as aversive. Near-misses are also known to increase physiological arousal compared to full-misses, but physiological measures to date have not been able to dissociate positive and negative emotional responses. The present study measured facial electromyography at the corrugator (brow) and zygomaticus (cheek) sites, as well as electrodermal activity (EDA), following gambling outcomes on a two-reel slot machine simulation in 77 novice gamblers. Behavioral data was collected using trial-by-trial ratings of motivation and valence. Wins were rated as more pleasant and increased motivation to continue playing, compared to non-win outcomes. Wins were also accompanied by increased EDA and zygomaticus activity. Near-misses after the payline were rated as more aversive than other non-wins, and this was accompanied by increased EDA and zygomaticus activity. Near-misses before the payline increased motivation to continue playing, and were accompanied by increased EDA. Thus, both subjective and physiological responses to near-misses differ for events falling either side of the payline. The ‘near-miss effect’ is not a unitary phenomenon. Facial EMG has differential sensitivity to positive and negative valence and may be a useful measure for future studies of gambling behavior

Neuroticism Modifies Psychophysiological Responses to Fearful Films

Background: Neuroticism is a personality component frequently found in anxious and depressive psychiatric disorders. The influence of neuroticism on negative emotions could be due to its action on stimuli related to fear and sadness, but this remains debated. Our goal was thus to better understand the impact of neuroticism through verbal and physiological assessment in response to stimuli inducing fear and sadness as compared to another negative emotion (disgust).¦Methods: Fifteen low neurotic and 18 high neurotic subjects were assessed on an emotional attending task by using film excerpts inducing fear, disgust, and sadness. We recorded skin conductance response (SCR) and corrugator muscle activity (frowning) as indices of emotional expression.¦Results: SCR was larger in high neurotic subjects than in low neurotics for fear relative to sadness and disgust. Moreover, corrugator activity and SCR were larger in high than in low neurotic subjects when fear was induced.¦Conclusion: After decades of evidence that individuals higher in neuroticism experience more intense emotional reactions to even minor stressors, our results indicate that they show greater SCR and expressive reactivity specifically to stimuli evoking fear rather than to those inducing sadness or disgust. Fear processing seems mainly under the influence of neuroticism. This modulation of autonomic activity by neurotics in response to threat/fear may explain their increased vulnerability to anxious psychopathologies such as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)

The Emotional and Attentional Impact of Exposure to One's Own Body in Bulimia Nervosa: A Physiological View

Background: Body dissatisfaction is the most relevant body image disturbance in bulimia nervosa (BN). Research has shown that viewing one's own body evokes negative thoughts and emotions in individuals with BN. However, the psychophysiological mechanisms involved in this negative reaction have not yet been clearly established. Our aim was to examine the emotional and attentional processes that are activated when patients with BN view their own bodies. Method: We examined the effects of viewing a video of one's own body on the physiological (eye-blink startle, cardiac defense, and skin conductance) and subjective (pleasure, arousal, and control ratings) responses elicited by a burst of 110 dB white noise of 500 ms duration. The participants were 30 women with BN and 30 healthy control women. The experimental task consisted of two consecutive and counterbalanced presentations of the auditory stimulus preceded, alternatively, by a video of the participant's own body versus no such video. Results: The results showed that, when viewing their own bodies, women with BN experienced (a) greater inhibition of the startle reflex, (b) greater cardiac acceleration in the first component of the defense reaction, (c) greater skin conductance response, and (d) less subjective pleasure and control combined with greater arousal, compared with the control participants. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that, for women with BN, peripheral-physiological responses to self-images are dominated by attentional processes, which provoke an immobility reaction caused by a dysfunctional negative response to their own body.The present research was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [PSI2009-08417 and PSI2012-31395]. P.P. was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and University Jaume I [ECO2011-23634, P1-1B2012-27, and JCI-2010-06790]

Locus of emotion influences psychophysiological reactions to music

It is now widely accepted that the perception of emotional expression in music can be vastly different from the feelings evoked by it. However, less understood is how the locus of emotion affects the experience of music, that is how the act of perceiving the emotion in music compares with the act of assessing the emotion induced in the listener by the music. In the current study, we compared these two emotion loci based on the psychophysiological response of 40 participants listening to 32 musical excerpts taken from movie soundtracks. Facial electromyography, skin conductance, respiration and heart rate were continuously measured while participants were required to assess either the emotion expressed by, or the emotion they felt in response to the music. Using linear mixed effects models, we found a higher mean response in psychophysiological measures for the “perceived” than the “felt” task. This result suggested that the focus on one’s self distracts from the music, leading to weaker bodily reactions during the “felt” task. In contrast, paying attention to the expression of the music and consequently to changes in timbre, loudness and harmonic progression enhances bodily reactions. This study has methodological implications for emotion induction research using psychophysiology and the conceptualization of emotion loci. Firstly, different tasks can elicit different psychophysiological responses to the same stimulus and secondly, both tasks elicit bodily responses to music. The latter finding questions the possibility of a listener taking on a purely cognitive mode when evaluating emotion expression

Motor signatures of emotional reactivity in frontotemporal dementia

Automatic motor mimicry is essential to the normal processing of perceived emotion, and disrupted automatic imitation might underpin socio-emotional deficits in neurodegenerative diseases, particularly the frontotemporal dementias. However, the pathophysiology of emotional reactivity in these diseases has not been elucidated. We studied facial electromyographic responses during emotion identification on viewing videos of dynamic facial expressions in 37 patients representing canonical frontotemporal dementia syndromes versus 21 healthy older individuals. Neuroanatomical associations of emotional expression identification accuracy and facial muscle reactivity were assessed using voxel-based morphometry. Controls showed characteristic profiles of automatic imitation, and this response predicted correct emotion identification. Automatic imitation was reduced in the behavioural and right temporal variant groups, while the normal coupling between imitation and correct identification was lost in the right temporal and semantic variant groups. Grey matter correlates of emotion identification and imitation were delineated within a distributed network including primary visual and motor, prefrontal, insular, anterior temporal and temporo-occipital junctional areas, with common involvement of supplementary motor cortex across syndromes. Impaired emotional mimesis may be a core mechanism of disordered emotional signal understanding and reactivity in frontotemporal dementia, with implications for the development of novel physiological biomarkers of socio-emotional dysfunction in these diseases