Emotional context can reduce the negative impact of face masks on inferring emotions.

While face masks prevent the spread of disease, they occlude lower face parts and thus impair facial emotion recognition. Since emotions are often also contextually situated, it remains unknown whether providing a descriptive emotional context alongside the facial emotion may reduce some of the negative impact of facial occlusion on emotional communication. To address this question, here we examined how emotional inferences were affected by facial occlusion and the availability of emotional context. Participants were presented with happy or sad emotional faces who were either fully visible or partially obstructed by an opaque surgical mask. The faces were shown either within an emotionally congruent (e.g., "Her cat was found/lost yesterday afternoon") or neutral ("Get ready to see the next person") context. Participants were asked to infer the emotional states of the protagonists by rating their emotional intensity and valence. Facial occlusion by masks impacted the ratings, such that protagonists were judged to feel less intense and more neutral emotions when they wore masks relative to when their face was fully visible. Importantly, this negative impact of visual occlusion by mask was reduced but not fully eliminated when the faces were presented within a congruent emotional context. Thus, visual occlusion of facial emotions impairs understanding of emotions, with this negative effect of face masks partially mitigated by the availability of a larger emotional context.

Transparent masks reduce the negative impact of opaque masks on understanding emotional states but not on sharing them.

While face masks provide necessary protection against disease spread, they occlude the lower face parts (chin, mouth, nose) and consequently impair the ability to accurately perceive facial emotions. Here we examined how wearing face masks impacted making inferences about emotional states of others (i.e., affective theory of mind; Experiment 1) and sharing of emotions with others (i.e., affective empathy; Experiment 2). We also investigated whether wearing transparent masks ameliorated the occlusion impact of opaque masks. Participants viewed emotional faces presented within matching positive (happy), negative (sad), or neutral contexts. The faces wore opaque masks, transparent masks, or no masks. In Experiment 1, participants rated the protagonists' emotional valence and intensity. In Experiment 2, they indicated their empathy for the protagonist and the valence of their emotion. Wearing opaque masks impacted both affective theory of mind and affective empathy ratings. Compared to no masks, wearing opaque masks resulted in assumptions that the protagonist was feeling less intense and more neutral emotions. Wearing opaque masks also reduced positive empathy for the protagonist and resulted in more neutral shared valence ratings. Wearing transparent masks restored the affective theory of mind ratings but did not restore empathy ratings. Thus, wearing face masks impairs nonverbal social communication, with transparent masks able to restore some of the negative effects brought about by opaque masks. Implications for the theoretical understanding of socioemotional processing as well as for educational and professional settings are discussed.

Emotion, Gender and Gaze Discrimination Tasks do not Differentially Impact the Neural Processing of Angry or Happy Facial Expressions-a Mass Univariate ERP Analysis.

Facial expression processing is a critical component of social cognition yet, whether it is influenced by task demands at the neural level remains controversial. Past ERP studies have found mixed results with classic statistical analyses, known to increase both Type I and Type II errors, which Mass Univariate statistics (MUS) control better. However, MUS open-access toolboxes can use different fundamental statistics, which may lead to inconsistent results. Here, we compared the output of two MUS toolboxes, LIMO and FMUT, on the same data recorded during the processing of angry and happy facial expressions investigated under three tasks in a within-subjects design. Both toolboxes revealed main effects of emotion during the N170 timing and main effects of task during later time points typically associated with the LPP component. Neither toolbox yielded an interaction between the two factors at the group level, nor at the individual level in LIMO, confirming that the neural processing of these two face expressions is largely independent from task demands. Behavioural data revealed main effects of task on reaction time and accuracy, but no influence of expression or an interaction between the two. Expression processing and task demands are discussed in the context of the consistencies and discrepancies between the two toolboxes and existing literature.

I can see it in your eyes: Perceived gaze direction impacts ERP and behavioural measures of affective theory of mind.

Looking at someone's eyes is thought to be important for affective theory of mind (aTOM), our ability to infer their emotional state. However, it is unknown whether an individual's gaze direction influences our aTOM judgements and what the time course of this influence might be. We presented participants with sentences describing individuals in positive, negative or neutral scenarios, followed by direct or averted gaze neutral face pictures of those individuals. Participants made aTOM judgements about each person's mental state, including their affective valence and arousal, and we investigated whether the face gaze direction impacted those judgements. Participants rated that gazers were feeling more positive when they displayed direct gaze as opposed to averted gaze, and that they were feeling more aroused during negative contexts when gaze was averted as opposed to direct. Event-related potentials associated with face perception and affective processing were examined using mass-univariate analyses to track the time-course of this eye-gaze and affective processing interaction at a neural level. Both positive and negative trials were differentiated from neutral trials at many stages of processing. This included the early N200 and EPN components, believed to reflect automatic emotion areas activation and attentional selection respectively. This also included the later P300 and LPP components, thought to reflect elaborative cognitive appraisal of emotional content. Critically, sentence valence and gaze direction interacted over these later components, which may reflect the incorporation of eye-gaze in the cognitive evaluation of another's emotional state. The results suggest that gaze perception directly impacts aTOM processes, and that altered eye-gaze processing in clinical populations may contribute to associated aTOM impairments.

The Gaze Cueing Effect and Its Enhancement by Facial Expressions Are Impacted by Task Demands: Direct Comparison of Target Localization and Discrimination Tasks.

The gaze cueing effect is characterized by faster attentional orienting to a gazed-at than a non-gazed-at target. This effect is often enhanced when the gazing face bears an emotional expression, though this finding is modulated by a number of factors. Here, we tested whether the type of task performed might be one such modulating factor. Target localization and target discrimination tasks are the two most commonly used gaze cueing tasks, and they arguably differ in cognitive resources, which could impact how emotional expression and gaze cues are integrated to orient attention. In a within-subjects design, participants performed both target localization and discrimination gaze cueing tasks with neutral, happy, and fearful faces. The gaze cueing effect for neutral faces was greatly reduced in the discrimination task relative to the localization task, and the emotional enhancement of the gaze cueing effect was only present in the localization task and only when this task was performed first. These results suggest that cognitive resources are needed for gaze cueing and for the integration of emotional expressions and gaze cues. We propose that a shift toward local processing may be the mechanism by which the discrimination task interferes with the emotional modulation of gaze cueing. The results support the idea that gaze cueing can be greatly modulated by top-down influences and cognitive resources and thus taps into endogenous attention. Results are discussed within the context of the recently proposed EyeTune model of social attention.

Meaningful faces: Self-relevance of semantic context in an initial social encounter improves later face recognition.

Self-relevant stimuli (i.e. meaningful/important to the observer and related to the self) are typically remembered better than other-relevant stimuli. However, whether a self-relevance memory benefit could be conferred to a novel neutral face, remains to be seen. Recent studies have shown that emotional responses to neutral faces can be altered by using a preceding sentence as context that varies in terms of self-relevance (self/other-relevant) and valence (positive/negative; e.g. "S/he thinks your comment is dumb/smart"). We adapted this paradigm to investigate whether the context conferred by the preceding sentence also impacts memorability of the subsequently presented face. Participants saw faces primed with contextual sentences and rated how aroused, and how positive or negative, the faces made them feel. Later incidental recognition accuracy for the faces was greater when these had been preceded by self-relevant compared to other-relevant sentences. Faces preceded by self-relevant contexts were also rated as more arousing. There was no impact of sentence valence on arousal ratings or on recognition memory for faces. Sentence self-relevance and valence interacted to affect participants' ratings of how positive or negative the faces made them feel during encoding, but did not interact to impact later recognition. Our results indicate that initial social encounters can have a lasting effect on one's memory of another person, producing an enhanced memory trace of that individual. We propose that the effect is driven by an arousal-based mechanism, elicited by faces perceived to be self-relevant.

Feeling through another's eyes: Perceived gaze direction impacts ERP and behavioural measures of positive and negative affective empathy.

Looking at the eyes informs us about the thoughts and emotions of those around us, and impacts our own emotional state. However, it is unknown how perceiving direct and averted gaze impacts our ability to share the gazer's positive and negative emotions, abilities referred to as positive and negative affective empathy. We presented 44 participants with contextual sentences describing positive, negative and neutral events happening to other people (e.g. "Her newborn was saved/killed/fed yesterday afternoon."). These were designed to elicit positive, negative, or little to no empathy, and were followed by direct or averted gaze images of the individuals described. Participants rated their affective empathy for the individual and their own emotional valence on each trial. Event-related potentials time-locked to face-onset and associated with empathy and emotional processing were recorded to investigate whether they were modulated by gaze direction. Relative to averted gaze, direct gaze was associated with increased positive valence in the positive and neutral conditions and with increased positive empathy ratings. A similar pattern was found at the neural level, using robust mass-univariate statistics. The N100, thought to reflect an automatic activation of emotion areas, was modulated by gaze in the affective empathy conditions, with opposite effect directions in positive and negative conditions.. The P200, an ERP component sensitive to positive stimuli, was modulated by gaze direction only in the positive empathy condition. Positive and negative trials were processed similarly at the early N200 processing stage, but later diverged, with only negative trials modulating the EPN, P300 and LPP components. These results suggest that positive and negative affective empathy are associated with distinct time-courses, and that perceived gaze direction uniquely modulates positive empathy, highlighting the importance of studying empathy with face stimuli.

Spontaneous eye-movements in neutral and emotional gaze-cuing: An eye-tracking investigation.

Our attention is spontaneously oriented in the direction where others are looking. This attention shift manifests as faster responses to peripheral targets when they are gazed at by a central face instead of gazed away from, and this effect is even more pronounced when the face expresses an emotion. This so called gaze-cuing effect, and its enhancement by emotion, is thought to reflect covert attention orienting. However, eye movements are typically not monitored in gaze-cuing paradigms, yet free viewing and saccadic reaction time research suggests individuals commonly and quickly look at gazed-at locations. Furthermore, in dynamic gaze-cuing studies, emotional faces differ from neutral faces in their affective content but also in their apparent facial motion, both of which could affect participants' eye-movements. We investigated the contribution of overt orienting to the gaze-cuing effect by monitoring eye-movements during emotional and neutral gaze-cuing trials. We found that eye-movements were infrequent, and when they occurred, they were directed toward the target, not toward the gazed-at location. Removing trials with eye-movements did not affect gaze-cuing much, confirming it reflects a covert attention process. However, participants were more likely to move their eyes during neutral trials, which lacked perceived face movement, than during emotion trials or neutral movement trials. Including these eye-movement contaminated trials in our analysis resulted in an impaired ability to detect the gaze-cuing variations with emotion. In contrast, removing trials with eye-movements, or including a neutral movement control such as a neutral tongue protrusion, revealed more subtle emotional modulation of gaze-cuing.

Perceived Gaze Direction Differentially Affects Discrimination of Facial Emotion, Attention, and Gender - An ERP Study.

The perception of eye-gaze is thought to be a key component of our everyday social interactions. While the neural correlates of direct and averted gaze processing have been investigated, there is little consensus about how these gaze directions may be processed differently as a function of the task being performed. In a within-subject design, we examined how perception of direct and averted gaze affected performance on tasks requiring participants to use directly available facial cues to infer the individuals' emotional state (emotion discrimination), direction of attention (attention discrimination) and gender (gender discrimination). Neural activity was recorded throughout the three tasks using EEG, and ERPs time-locked to face onset were analyzed. Participants were most accurate at discriminating emotions with direct gaze faces, but most accurate at discriminating attention with averted gaze faces, while gender discrimination was not affected by gaze direction. At the neural level, direct and averted gaze elicited different patterns of activation depending on the task over frontal sites, from approximately 220-290 ms. More positive amplitudes were seen for direct than averted gaze in the emotion discrimination task. In contrast, more positive amplitudes were seen for averted gaze than for direct gaze in the gender discrimination task. These findings are among the first direct evidence that perceived gaze direction modulates neural activity differently depending on task demands, and that at the behavioral level, specific gaze directions functionally overlap with emotion and attention discrimination, precursors to more elaborated theory of mind processes.

Individual differences in the emotional modulation of gaze-cuing.

Gaze-cuing refers to the spontaneous orienting of attention towards a gazed-at location, characterised by shorter response times to gazed-at than non-gazed at targets. Previous research suggests that processing of these gaze cues interacts with the processing of facial expression cues to enhance gaze-cuing. However, whether only negative emotions (which signal potential threat or uncertainty) can enhance gaze-cuing is still debated, and whether this emotional modulation varies as a function of individual differences still remains largely unclear. Combining data from seven experiments, we investigated the emotional modulation of gaze-cuing in the general population as a function of participant sex, and self-reported subclinical trait anxiety, depression, and autistic traits. We found that (i) emotional enhancement of gaze-cuing can occur for both positive and negative expressions, (ii) the higher the score on the Attention to Detail subscale of the Autism Spectrum Quotient, the smaller the emotional enhancement of gaze-cuing, especially for happy expressions, and (iii) emotional modulation of gaze-cuing does not vary as a function of participant anxiety, depression or sex, although women display an overall larger gaze-cuing effect than men.

Is it about me? Time-course of self-relevance and valence effects on the perception of neutral faces with direct and averted gaze.

Most face processing research has investigated how we perceive faces presented by themselves, but we view faces everyday within a rich social context. Recent ERP research has demonstrated that context cues, including self-relevance and valence, impact electrocortical and emotional responses to neutral faces. However, the time-course of these effects is still unclear, and it is unknown whether these effects interact with the face gaze direction, a cue that inherently contains self-referential information and triggers emotional responses. We primed direct and averted gaze neutral faces (gaze manipulation) with contextual sentences that contained positive or negative opinions (valence manipulation) about the participants or someone else (self-relevance manipulation). In each trial, participants rated how positive or negative, and how affectively aroused, the face made them feel. Eye-tracking ensured sentence reading and face fixation while ERPs were recorded to face presentations. Faces put into self-relevant contexts were more arousing than those in other-relevant contexts, and elicited ERP differences from 150 to 750 ms post-face, encompassing EPN and LPP components. Self-relevance interacted with valence at both the behavioural and ERP level starting 150 ms post-face. Finally, faces put into positive, self-referential contexts elicited different N170 ERP amplitudes depending on gaze direction. Behaviourally, direct gaze elicited more positive valence ratings than averted gaze during positive, self-referential contexts. Thus, self-relevance and valence contextual cues impact visual perception of neutral faces and interact with gaze direction during the earliest stages of face processing. The results highlight the importance of studying face processing within contexts mimicking the complexities of real world interactions.