VISUAL PERCEPTION OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Abstract

Psychophysical method for quantitative specification of facial expressions is presented. The method is based on subjective estimations of similarity between pair of stimuli – face expression and emotional name. Each pair of stimuli was randomly chosen from banks of 25 face pictures and 25 Russian names of emotion, and simultaneously presented on the monitor’s screen. Duration of presentation was equal 1 c., and during the 2 following seconds subject should estimate similarity between the face expression and the name of emotion using integer numbers from 9 (maximal similarity) till 1 (minimal similarity). The estimates were averaged across ten presentations of each pair. In general the results for each subject was presented in the form of a matrix whose rows (faces) and columns (names) represent the two sets of stimuli while the entries contain all pairwise similarities among them. Each row of the matrix can be considered as semantic emotional function of face stimulus as well as spectral distribution of light intensity is considered