Recognition of facial expressions of emotions in tactile drawings by blind children, children with low vision and sighted children.

In the context of blindness, studies on the recognition of facial expressions of emotions by touch are essential to define the compensatory touch abilities and to create adapted tools on emotions. This study is the first to examine the effect of visual experience in the recognition of tactile drawings of facial expressions of emotions by children with different visual experiences. To this end, we compared the recognition rates of tactile drawings of emotions between blind children, children with low vision and sighted children aged 6-12 years. Results revealed no effect of visual experience on recognition rates. However, an effect of emotions and an interaction effect between emotions and visual experience were found. Indeed, while all children had a low average recognition rate, the drawings of fear, anger and disgust were particularly poorly recognized. Moreover, sighted children were significantly better at recognizing the drawings of surprise and sadness than the blind children who only showed high recognition rates for joy. The results of this study support the importance of developing emotion tools that can be understood by children with different visual experiences.

Luciole, a new font for people with low vision.

Low vision affects the ability to read and can be a major barrier to educational success and insertion into the workplace. We designed a new font (Luciole) to improve the readability and comfort for people with low vision. In this study, we analyze the effect of the font type on readability. Luciole was compared to five other fonts (Arial, OpenDyslexic, Verdana, Eido and Frutiger) in 145 French readers (73 with low vision, and 72 normal sighted), aged 6 to 35 years old and divided into four reading expertise groups. Participants completed two tasks, first reading texts on paper and then reading false-words on screen using eye tracking. About half of the participants with low vision had a subjective preference for Luciole when reading on paper and on the screen; lower preference is noted for participants with normal vision. Other readability criteria show a slight advantage of the Luciole font over some fonts (e.g., Eido and OpenDyslexic) in both groups. The results obtained when taking into consideration the level of reading expertise confirm this trend.

Task-related modulation of facial expression processing: An FPVS-EEG study.

In the current study, we examined the role of task-related top-down mechanisms in the recognition of facial expressions. An expression of increasing intensity was displayed at a frequency of 1.5 Hz among the neutral faces of the same model that was displayed at a frequency of 12 Hz (i.e., 12 frames per second, with the expression occurring every eight frames). Twenty-two participants were asked either to recognize the emotion at the expression-specific frequency (1.5 Hz) or to perform an orthogonal task in separate blocks, while a scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. A significant 1.5 Hz response emerged with the increase in expressive intensity over the medial occipital, right and left occipitotemporal, and centro-frontal regions. In these three regions, the magnitude of this response was greater when participants were involved in expression recognition, especially when the intensity of expression was low and ambiguous. Time-domain analysis revealed that engagement in the explicit recognition of facial expression caused a modulation of the response even before the onset of the expression over centro-frontal regions. The response was then amplified over the medial occipital and right and left occipitotemporal regions. Overall, the procedure developed in the present study allowed us to document different stages of the voluntary recognition of facial expressions, from detection to recognition, through the implementation of task-related top-down mechanisms that modulated the incoming information flow. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Mental Health Mobile Apps in the French App Store: Assessment Study of Functionality and Quality.

BACKGROUND: Approximately 800 million people, representing 11% of the world's population, are affected by mental health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated problems and triggered a decline in well-being, with drastic increase in the incidence of conditions such as anxiety, depression, and stress. Approximately 20,000 mental health apps are listed in mobile app stores. However, no significant evaluation of mental health apps in French, spoken by approximately 300 million people, has been identified in the literature yet. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to review the mental health mobile apps currently available on the French Apple App Store and Google Play Store and to evaluate their quality using Mobile App Rating Scale-French (MARS-F). METHODS: Screening of mental health apps was conducted from June 10, 2022, to June 17, 2022, on the French Apple App Store and Google Play Store. A shortlist of 12 apps was identified using the criteria of selection and assessed using MARS-F by 9 mental health professionals. Intraclass correlation was used to evaluate interrater agreement. Mean (SD) scores and their distributions for each section and item were calculated. RESULTS: The highest scores for MARS-F quality were obtained by Soutien psy avec Mon Sherpa (mean 3.85, SD 0.48), Evoluno (mean 3.54, SD 0.72), and Teale (mean 3.53, SD 0.87). Mean engagement scores (section A) ranged from 2.33 (SD 0.69) for Reflexe reussite to 3.80 (SD 0.61) for Soutien psy avec Mon Sherpa. Mean aesthetics scores (section C) ranged from 2.52 (SD 0.62) for Mental Booster to 3.89 (SD 0.69) for Soutien psy avec Mon Sherpa. Mean information scores (section D) ranged from 2.00 (SD 0.75) for Mental Booster to 3.46 (SD 0.77) for Soutien psy avec Mon Sherpa. Mean Mobile App Rating Scale subjective quality (section E) score varied from 1.22 (SD 0.26) for VOS - journal de l'humeur to 2.69 (SD 0.84) for Soutien psy avec Mon Sherpa. Mean app specificity (section F) score varied from 1.56 (SD 0.97) for Mental Booster to 3.31 (SD 1.22) for Evoluno. For all the mental health apps studied, except Soutien psy avec Mon Sherpa (11/12, 92%), the subjective quality score was always lower than the app specificity score, which was always lower than the MARS-F quality score, and that was lower than the rating score from the iPhone Operating System or Android app stores. CONCLUSIONS: Mental health professionals assessed that, despite the lack of scientific evidence, the mental health mobile apps available on the French Apple App Store and Google Play Store were of good quality. However, they are reluctant to use them in their professional practice. Additional investigations are needed to assess their compliance with recommendations and their long-term impact on users.

Emotion regulation in blind and visually impaired children aged 3 to 12 years assessed by a parental questionnaire.

Emotion regulation develops from the earliest years of a child's life and mostly through visual information. Considering the importance of emotion regulation in daily life situations, it is important to study the effect of visual experience on the development of this ability. This study is the first to examine the effect of visual experience and age in emotion regulation by comparing groups of children with different visual status and age. For this purpose, after testing the reliability and consistency of the French version of Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC-vf) with 245 parents of blind, visually impaired and sighted children aged 3-5, 6-8 or 9-12 years, we conducted analyses on the effect of visual status and age on emotion regulation composite scores. The first result confirmed that the ERC-vf can be reliably used on populations of blind and visually impaired children. The second result revealed an effect of visual status on ER composite scores of emotion regulation: Blind children and visually impaired children each had significantly lower composite scores than sighted children. Moreover, the effect of age and the interaction between age and visual status were not significant on ER composite scores. The ER subscale results suggest, however, that age may have a variable effect for blind and visually impaired children as blind children's scores become lower and those of visually impaired children become equal to sighted children with age. The results of our study may help the children's entourage to better adapt their interactions in a context of visual impairment.

When Dogs Shrink the Typical Lengthening Effect Caused by Negative Emotions.

This paper examines how dogs can modulate the effects of emotion on time perception. To this end, participants performed a temporal bisection task with stimulus durations presented in the form of neutral or emotional facial expressions (angry, sad, and happy faces). In the first experiment, dog owners were compared with nondog owners, while in the second experiment, students were randomly assigned to one of the three waiting groups (waiting alone, with another person, or with a dog) before being confronted with the temporal bisection task. The results showed that dogs allowed the participants to regulate the intensity of negative emotional effects, while no statistical differences emerged for the happy facial expressions. In certain circumstances, dogs could even lead the subjects to generate underestimation of time when faced with negative facial expressions.

Make a gesture and I will tell you what you are miming. Pantomime recognition in healthy subjects.

The present paper deals with the question of how people recognize tool-use/transitive actions performed by others. The direct-matching hypothesis assumes that transitive gestures produced by others are recognized by directly activating the same gesture engrams used for making the gesture oneself. By contrast, the context hypothesis posits that the observation of the gesture alone is not sufficient, and that additional contextual information is necessary for recognizing the action. The aim of the present paper is to decide between these two hypotheses. To achieve this purpose, we asked healthy older adults (performers) to mime the use of tools (Experiment 1a). Performance was videotaped and presented to healthy younger adults (observers) in two conditions: (1) Naming the tool associated with the gesture made by the performer (naming condition); (2) Choosing the correct name from 10 alternatives (choice condition). Our results indicated that the performance in the naming condition was relatively poor, emphasizing that people are far from perfect at recognizing pantomimes without contextual information. We also found a great variability among observers, suggesting that the same gesture could evoke different tool-use actions. The performance was better in the choice condition. So, observers benefited from the introduction of tool names. This pattern of results could also be explained by a sequence effect, a lexical-decision effect or an item-selection effect. Experiments 1b and 2 ruled out these possibilities. In short, these points make it difficult to believe that people recognize the actions performed by others by directly activating gesture engrams. Our findings are more consistent with the context hypothesis.

Objective evaluation of stress with the blind by the monitoring of autonomic nervous system activity.

Accessibility for the blind in an urban space must be studied under real conditions in their daily environment. A new approach for evaluating the impact of environmental conditions on blind pedestrians is the objective measure of stress by the monitoring of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity. Original techniques of data analysis and spatial representation are proposed for the detection of the ANS activity through the assessment of the electrodermal activity. Skin resistance was recorded with an EmoSense system on 10 blind subjects who followed a charted course independently. The course was 1065 meters long and consisted of various environmental conditions in an urban space. The spatial frequency of the non-specific skin resistance responses was used to provide a more relevant representation of geographic hotspots. Results of statistical analysis based on this new parameter are discussed to conclude on phenomena causing mental stress with the blind moving in an urban space.