Abstract
We investigated whether an asymmetric relationship between the perception of identity and emo-tional expressions in faces (Schweinberger & Soukup, 1998) may be related to differences in the rela-tive processing speed of identity and expression information. Stimulus faces were morphed across identity within a given emotional expression, or were morphed across emotion within a given identity. In Experiment 1, consistent classifications of these images were demonstrated across a wide range of morphing, with only a relatively narrow category boundary. At the same time, classification reaction times (RTs) reflected the increased perceptual difficulty of the morphed images. In Experiment 2, we investigated the effects of variations in the irrelevant dimension on judgments of faces with respect to a relevant dimension, using a Garner-type speeded classification task. RTs for expression classifica-tions were strongly influenced by irrelevant identity information. In contrast, RTs for identity classifi-cations were unaffected by irrelevant expression information, and this held even for stimuli in which identity was more difficult and slower to discriminate than expression. This suggests that differences in processing speed cannot account for the asymmetric relationship between identity and emotion per-ception. Theoretical accounts proposing independence of identity and emotion perception are dis-cussed in the light of these findings.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beale, I. M., &Keil, F. C. (1995). Categorical effects in the perception of faces.Cognition,57, 217–239.
Bruce, V. (1986). Influences of familiarity on the processing of faces.Perception,15, 387–397.
Bruce, V., Hanna, E., Dench, N., Healy, P., &Burton, A. M. (1992). The importance of “mass” in line drawings of faces.Applied Cognitive Psychology,6, 619–628.
Bruce, V., &Young, A. (1986). Understanding face recognition.British Journal of Psychology,77, 305–327.
Calder, A. J.. Young, A. W., Perrett, D. I., Etcoff, N. L., &Rowland, D. (1996). Categorical perception of morphed facial expressions.Visual Cognition,3, 81–117.
Calder, A. J., Young, A. W., Rowland, D., Perrett, D. I., Hodges, J. R., &Etcoff, N. L. (1996). Facial emotion recognition after bilateral amygdala damage: Differentially severe impairment of fear.Cognitive Neuropsychology,13, 699–745.
Campbell, R., De Gelder, B., &De Haan, E. H. F. (1996). The lateralization of lip-reading: A second look.Neuropsychologia,34, 1235–1240.
De Renzi, E., Faglioni, P., &Spinnler, H. (1968). The performance of patients with unilateral brain damage on face recognition tasks.Cortex,4, 17–34.
Eimas, P. D., Tartter, V. C., Miller, J. L., &Keuthen, N. J. (1978). Asymmetric dependencies in processing phonetic features.Perception & Psychophysics,23, 12–20.
Ellis, A. W. (1989). Neuro-cognitive processing of faces and voices. In A. W. Young & H. D. Ellis (Eds.),Handbook of research on face processing (pp. 207–215). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Ellison, J. W., &Massaro, D. W. (1997). Featural evaluation, integration, and judgment of facial affect.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,23, 213–226.
Etcoff, N. L. (1984). Selective attention to facial identity and facial emotion.Neuropsychologia,22, 281–295.
Etcoff, N. L., &Magee, J. J. (1992). Categorical perception of facial expressions.Cognition,44, 227–240.
Garner, W. R. (1974).The processing of information and structure. Potomac, MD: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Garner, W. R. (1983). Asymmetric interactions of stimulus dimensions in perceptual information processing. In T. J. Tighe & B. E. Shepp (Eds.),Perception, cognition, and development: Interactional analyses (pp. 1–38). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Green, K. P., &Kuhl, P. K. (1991). Integral processing of visual place and auditory voicing information during phonetic perception.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,17, 278–288.
Green, K. P., Tomiak, G. R., &Kuhl, P. K. (1997). The encoding of rate and talker information during phonetic perception.Perception & Psychophysics,59, 675–692.
Hasselmo, M. E., Rolls, E. T., &Baylis, G. C. (1989). The role of expression and identity in the face-selective responses of neurons in the temporal visual cortex of the monkey.Behavioural Brain Research,32, 203–218.
Humphreys, G. W., Donnelly, N., &Riddoch, M. J. (1993). Expression is computed separately from facial identity, and is computed separately for moving and static faces: Neuropsychological evidence.Neuropsychologia,31, 173–181.
Huynh, H., &Feldt, L. S. (1976). Estimation of the box correction for degrees of freedom from sample data in randomized block and split plot designs.Journal of Educational Statistics,1, 69–82.
Johnson, K., &Mullenix, J. W. (1997).Talker variability in speech processing. San Diego: Academic Press.
Mcgurk, H., &Macdonald, J. (1976). Hearing lips and seeing voices.Nature,264, 746–748.
Mullenix, J. W., &Pisoni, D. B. (1990). Stimulus variability and processing dependencies in speech perception.Perception & Psychophysics,47, 379–390.
Schweinberger, S. R., Burton, A. M., Elbert, T., Junghöfer, M., Kelly, S. W., MÜller, M. M., &Soukup, G. R. (1998). Wechsel-wirkungen zwischen der Wahrnehmung von Identität und Emotion in Gesichtern [Interactions between perception of identity and emotion in faces]. In H. Lachnit, A. Jacobs & F. Rosier (Eds.),Experimentelle Psychologie (pp. 333–334). Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Science Publishers.
Schweinberger, S. R., &Soukup, G. R. (1998). Asymmetric relationships among perceptions of facial identity, emotion, and facial speech.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,24, 1748–1765.
Sergent, J. (1985). Influence of task and input factors on hemispheric involvement in face processing.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,11, 846–861.
Sergent, J., Ohta, S., Macdonald, B., &Zuck, E. (1994). Segregated processing of facial identity and emotion in the human brain: A PET study.Visual Cognition,1, 349–369.
Sprengelmeyer, R., Young, A. W., Calder, A. J., Karnat, A., Lange, H. W., Homberg, V., Perrett, D. I., &Rowland, D. (1996). Loss of disgust: Perception of faces and emotions in Huntington’s disease.Brain,119, 1647–1665.
Uttal, W. R., Baruch, T., &Allen, L. (1995). The effect of combinations of image degradations in a discrimination task.Perception & Psychophysics,57, 668–681.
Walker, S., Bruce, V., &O’Malley, C. (1995). Facial identity and facial speech processing: Familiar faces and voices in the McGurk effect.Perception & Psychophysics,57, 1124–1133.
Young, A. W., McWeeny, K. H., Hay, D. C., &Ellis, A. W. (1986). Matching familiar and unfamiliar faces on identity and expression.Psychological Research,48, 63–68.
Young, A. W., Rowland, D., Calder, A. J., Etcoff, N. L., Seth, A., &Perrett, D. I. (1997). Facial expression megamix: Tests of dimensional and category accounts of emotion recognition.Cognition,63, 271–313.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The research reported in this paper was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through a Heisenberg fellowship and Grant Schw 511/4-1 to S.R.S. We are grateful to Paula Niedenthal, Aude Oliva, and Philippe Schyns for lending us the face stimuli that were used to compute the morphed faces in these experiments.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schweinberger, S.R., Burton, A.M. & Kelly, S.W. Asymmetric dependencies in perceiving identity and emotion: Experiments with morphed faces. Perception & Psychophysics 61, 1102–1115 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207617
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207617