Dynamic facial expressions are processed holistically, but not more holistically than static facial expressions

Abstract

There is evidence that facial expressions are perceived holistically and featurally. The composite task is a direct measure of holistic processing (although the absence of a composite effect implies the use of other types of processing). Most composite task studies have used static images, despite the fact that movement is an important aspect of facial expressions and there is some evidence that movement may facilitate recognition. We created static and dynamic composites, in which emotions were reliably identified from each half of the face. The magnitude of the composite effect was similar for static and dynamic expressions identified from the top half (anger, sadness and surprise) but was reduced in dynamic as compared to static expressions identified from the bottom half (fear, disgust and joy). Thus, any advantage in recognising dynamic over static expressions is not likely to stem from enhanced holistic processing, rather motion may emphasise or disambiguate diagnostic featural information.

Keywords:

• Emotion recognition
• Facial motion
• Composite effect
• Holistic
• Features
• Inversion effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ A forced choice response is required in this paradigm (six choices for the familiarisation phase and three choices for the composite task). While the reliability of forced choice response in emotion classification has been questioned in the past (Russell, 1993), it is less of an issue here since the composite effect is measured as a difference between aligned and misaligned conditions.

² Analysis of the RT data, with label order as a factor, confirmed that label order did not systematically affect performance as a main effect or interaction (all F < 4.02, all p > .05).

³ See Appendix A, Table A3 for raw RT and baseline RT t-test comparison.