Face Perception, Pareidolia, and Emotions: from Holistic to Component Processing and Back

Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation

Description

Face perception is an example for configurational perception that involves emotion perception, person identification and occurs not only in case of human faces but also in case of not-animate things (pareidolia). Our study aims to examine the real-time dynamics of face perception and the relative importance of separate facial components. Based on our results, we would like to make some outlooks regarding innovative applications of face-induced perceptual processes in cases of neural impairments. Several sets of experiments were conducted in examining the impact of facial features on the perception of emotions. Schematic face pictures were used in ​both an eye tracking study and a behavioural experiment. The impact of instructions was controlled.. Although the first fixations are mainly (up to 85%) located in the area of eyes (corresponding with the establishment of the gaze contact), the emotion perception is a slightly later process and is driven by mouth-related facial features. Significantly increased total time of fixations on the area of mouth can be observed when the participants are asked to examine specific emotions. Only few other factors (e.g., distance between eyes and eyes and mouth) matter.. Our results indicate that face perception is a stage-wise process involving both configural and holistic processes. The functions of these stages are different – starting from gaze establishment and ending with emotion reading. These results offer a variety of applications in neuro-cognitive research that will be discussed in our presentation.
Period29 Mar 2023
Event titleRSU International Research Conference 2023: Knowledge for Use in Practice
Event typeConference
OrganiserRīga Stradiņš University
LocationRiga, LatviaShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

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