Biases in the Processing of Dynamic Emotional Faces and Emotional Voices

Presenter

Karuna Sharma

Campus

UMass Boston

Sponsor

Vivian Maria Ciaramitaro, Department of Psychology, UMass Boston

Schedule

Session 3, 1:30 PM - 2:15 PM [Schedule by Time][Poster Grid for Time/Location]

Location

Poster Board A94, Campus Center Auditorium, Row 5 (A81-A100) [Poster Location Map]

Abstract

Correct interpretation of emotions is crucial for successful social interactions, but this ability can be compromised in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Emotional processing biases in SAD have been found using static emotional faces. Yet, emotions are complex. Here we used more ecologically valid stimuli, dynamic emotional faces and voices. We created 1s clips of 8 face identities (4 male, 4 female) dynamically changing in emotion from neutral to a low (10%, 20%) or high (40% or 80%) intensity of angry or happy, with 8 additional neutral faces (72 total closed-mouth faces). We created 1s clips of 8 voice identities (4 male, 4 female) changing from neutral to the same low and high intensity of negative (grunting) or positive (laughing) closed-mouth voices. First participants judged faces as angry or happy (baseline), then judged the same faces with concurrent voices, congruent (matched emotion) or incongruent (mismatched emotion), in separate blocks of trials. We considered how emotional voices influenced processing of emotional faces for individuals high (HSA) versus low (LSA) in social anxiety as a function of emotional intensity (low or high) and audio-visual congruency (congruent, incongruent, or a no auditory baseline). We hypothesized HSA versus LSA individuals would judge more ambiguous faces, low in emotional intensity, as angrier, especially when voices were also negative. A 3x2 repeated measures ANOVA (20 HSA+20 LSA participants) revealed significant main effects for emotional intensity and congruency, with no main effect of social anxiety and no significant interactions between social anxiety and congruency or emotional intensity.  

Keywords

Cross-Modal , Dynamic Stimuli , Social Anxiety , Emotional Face Processing

Research Area

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences

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