Real or Computer Generated?

Watch this video and see if you think this person is really making these or is digitally enhanced.

                                30 Seconds, How many facial expressions?

The answer is A little of both. Computer taken images shown at high speed create an illusion that he is making them at that speed.

Need help "making faces"? Internet has plenty of options!

I don't believe this book was on the New York Times Best Seller list, but I still found it interesting that there are quite a few books related to facial expression for sale on internet sites such as Amazon. They provide a how to or a general guide to determining facial expressions. Most people, me included, would think it was a waste of money but I came to the realization that this book could be used by many different types of people; young, foreign, or even artists. Either way there are books out there that provide help on facial expressions! The link below is a book I found on Amazon.

                         Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists 

Another thing that I found to be interesting on the internet was all the "help" sites for beginning models. The sites show and tell the models how to exercise their face to help bring out the "right" expression when it comes time to be photographed. This website http://learnmorephoto.com/team-effort/tips-for-models/practicing-facial-expressions-pre-shoot-tips.php in particular offered a lot of tips for beginning models. This is an image of the "right" expression.

Dr. Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman is a famous doctor who has performed extensive research on facial expressions and emotion. He has written over 100 articles on emotions and facial expressions. He is the man who claims there are 7 universal facial expressions. Because of his extensive background in facial expression and emotional research some may consider him an expert. 

                                                         
This picture was borrowed from http://www.paulekman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/pekman.jpg

Problem with Close Talking? Blame it on the Brain

Cloud, John. Personal Space: Why People Don't like to Be Crowded. TIME, 3 Sep. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1919910,00.html.

This article discusses why it is so uncomfortable to stand really close to a stranger. This one unanswered question that most people seem to agree with has to do with the amygdalae. The amygdala is part of the brain that consists of regions deep within each temporal lobe controlling fear and the processing of emotion. The first most important point deals with why the amygdalae has come into play. This part of the brain is responsible for keeping you from getting too close to another person, especially if he or she is in your ‘personal space.’ In order to prove this theory, a team of scientists from Caltech chose to do an experiment on a middle—aged woman suffering from Urbach—Wiethe disease, which causes calcification in the temporal lobes. This woman was put through a bunch of tests that required her to determine how uncomfortable she became when another human being approached her and her specific display of emotion towards that person. It was concluded that this woman’s preferred personal distance was 1.1 feet. It has been verified that at 1 foot, it is easy to tell someone’s hygiene, for example, whether or not that person has showered. When standing that close to someone, it can trigger all kinds of emotions and feelings towards that person and you may even make a face without noticing that you are doing it. 

The subject was asked to walk toward an experimenter and then stop whenever she felt a comfortable distance between the two of them. This woman felt so comfortable that she got as close as touching the experimenter’s nose. After adding eight subjects whom have healthy amygdalae, there was a difference in how the healthy amygdalae responds to personal space compared to how an unhealthy amygdalae responds. The subjects with healthy amygdaelae were not as comfortable with a stranger being within a certain distance of themselves. Even if they could not see or hear the experimenter, they were still uncomfortable and displayed various types of emotion that portrayed their uncomfortable feeling. Past research has been proven to show that the brain’s limbic system has a reaction in response to sexually arousing stimuli. In most cases, if we are attracted to someone, there is an initial spark that provokes our response to that stranger, mainly dealing with interest and intrigue and thus the feeling of a particular emotion. 

 This article digs deeper into the more scientific reasoning, which deals with the amygdalae, a part of the brain that controls fear and processing emotions. It is important to understand this scientific explanation in order to dig deeper behind the reasons for the way people act and how they choose to show it in response to certain gestures and facial expressions. 

Picture found at http://www.ibiblio.org/rcip/images/Amygdala500_500.jpg

Depressed and Healthy Adults Interpret Facial Expressions

In an article published in October of 2010, entitled “How do Depressed and Healthy Adults Interpret Nuanced Facial Expressions?” by Jackie K. Gollan et al, the subject of the accuracy of discrimination of emotional stimuli is discussed. Through their experiment, these researchers aimed to support their hypothesis that depressed subjects would more accurately identify expressions of sadness than the non-depressive subjects. In order to do this, they took a sample of 88 un-medicated men and women, half with major depressive disorder and half with no psychiatric illness, and asked them to judge the emotion of 200 pictures of facial expressions. Their research findings showed that depressed subjects were able to very accurately recognize sad expressions, but were much less accurate in their recognition of faces that had more subtle emotional intensity. They also found that both the depressive and non-depressive groups showed increased accuracy in recognizing emotional expressions of increased intensity. Also, they found that as depressive symptoms increased, the accuracy for recognizing sad faces also increased, but accuracy in recognizing surprised faces decreased. Because subjects with depressive symptoms showed a decreased ability to recognize subtle expressions, the researchers theorized that depressive symptoms influence, and are directly related to, the accuracy of recognizing emotional expressions. (Gollan, McCloskey, Hoxha, & Coccaro, 2010) I found this article to be very interesting because this idea had never crossed my mind before. I wonder if the reason that depressed people can more easily recognize sad expressions is because that is the way that he or she usually feels. I would assume that depressed individuals have a more difficult time recognizing happy and surprised expressions because he or she rarely has these emotions.

 Gollan, J.K., McCloskey, M., Hoxha, D., & Coccaro, E.F. (2010). How do depressed and healthy adults interpret nuanced facial expressions?. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Advance online publication. Pages 1-8. Retrieved fromhttp://web.ebscohost.com.www.lib.ncsu.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&hid=106&sid=75e2836a-0c04-473e-9945-c35fdf1fd28d%40sessionmgr104. doi: 10.1037/a0020234

Culture and its Influence in Interpreting Facial Expressions

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080305120850.htm

This article from Science Daily compares how people from Eastern and Western Cultures see things differently when it comes to interpreting emotion. Several Researchers conducted a study where they showed the participants different emotional images. Each image had one model placed in the center and four models placed in the background.  The researched changed the facial expression of the person in the center or a model in the background. The participants were asked to explain what he or she thought the emotion of the center image was. Based on the results, the researchers found that the majority of North Americans claimed that they were not influenced by the background models and the majority of the Japanese participants reported that their decision of the center figures emotion were in fact influenced by the facial expressions of those in the background. The results show that when North Americans are trying to determine one’s emotion they focus solely on the individual’s facial expression. Japanese cultures on the other hand, look at the emotions of everyone in the situation. This article shows that culture plays a key role in determining emotion displayed in facial expression. Because North Americans do not focus on all the individuals in the situation, like the Japanese do, North Americans will more than likely judge expressed emotions differently. Perhaps the the reason that the Japanese look at everyone in the situation is because their culture is said to be a high-context culture. The North American culture is a low-context culture. It seems to me that culture is more influential in interpreting facial expressions than I had thought. 
The picture was found at http://chalk.richmond.edu/education/projects/webunits/geography/hemispherewest.gif

Fake or Genuine Smile

On the BBC Real Smile Versus Fake Smile Quiz I got 19/20 correct.  Fake smiles are created from conscious signals of the brain. Genuine smiles are created from the unconscious brain. Different facial muscles are used to create a genuine and a fake smile. It is sometimes hard to tell the difference between a fake smile and genuine smile. One way to tell that a smile is genuine is by looking to see if his or her eyelid moves. The code that researchers use to determine if a smile is fake or genuine is the Facial Action Coding System, which was created by Dr. Paul Ekman. Now that you know what to look out for try taking the quiz at http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml 
and see how you do!