poliTE-Literatur-Datenbank

Uh, Stepheni (2016): The Relationship Between Sociomoral Disgust and Physical Disgust. Investigation of Facial Affect in Response to Purity and Fairness Violations. In: NEUROETHICS 9 (2)

Abstract: There has been much recent speculation regarding the relationship between sociomoral disgust, which refers to disgust elicited by moral violations, and the type of disgust elicited by physical stimuli such a rotten food. This study investigated whether there were similar facial expressions of disgust elicited by two types of moral transgressions and physically disgusting behaviors. This study also explored whether facial muscle activity would reflect spontaneous person affect knowledge retrieval after participants were presented with minimal information regarding a person's face and behavior. The two types of moral transgressions were fairness and purity moral transgressions, which are two out of the five moral foundations (purity, fairness, harm, authority, ingroup) in the Moral Foundations Theory (Haidt and Joseph, 2004). Facial muscle activity related to disgust (levator labii) and anger as well as overall negative affect (corrugator supercilii) was recorded while participants associated faces with behavioral statements. The same facial muscle activity was also recorded while participants were shown faces that were previously associated with behavioral statements in a later task. Facial disgust reactions were similar in response to physically disgusting behaviors as well as purity transgressions, but fairness transgressions did not elicit significant facial reactions. Faces that had been previously associated with moral transgressions, physically disgusting, or neutral behaviors also did not evoke facial disgust, showing no transfer of person affective trait knowledge, contrary to previous neuroimaging findings (Todorov et al., 2007). These results suggest that purity vs. fairness transgressions differentially elicit facial disgust reactions, with only purity transgressions eliciting facial disgust activity. These results suggest that these two domains of moral transgressions differ in their similarity to the processing of physical disgust stimuli, consistent with theoretical views that posit that only some moral violations have a basis in the basic emotion of disgust.

Keywords: Bewertung von sozialem Verhalten (/sozialer Angemessenheit), corrugator supercilii, Ekel, Emotionaler Zustand, Fairness, Gesicht und assoziierte Zuschreibungen, Gesichtsausdruck, Gestik/Mimik, levator labii, Mimik, Moral foundations theory by Haidt and Joseph, purity transgressing, (Un)fairness, Wut

Allison, Brian; Nejat, Goldie; Kao, Emmeline (2009): The Design of an Expressive Humanlike Socially Assistive Robot. In: Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics 1 (1). DOI: 10.1115/1.2959097

Abstract: It is anticipated that the use of assistive robots will be one of the most important service applications of robotic systems of the future. In this paper, the development of a unique noncontact socially assistive robot consisting of a humanlike demeanor is presented for utilization in hospital wards and nursing/veteran homes to study its role and impact on the well-being of patients, addressing patient's needs and its overall effect on the quality of patient care. The robot will be an embodied entity that will participate in hands-off noncontact social interaction with a patient during the convalescence, rehabilitation, or end-of-life care stage. The robot has been designed as a platform to incorporate the three design parameters of embodiment, emotion, and nonverbal communication to encourage natural human-robot interactions. Herein, we present the overall mechanical design of the socially assistive robot focusing mainly on the development of the actuation system of the face, head, and upper body. In particular, we propose the development of a unique muscle actuation mechanism for the robotic face to allow for the display of rich facial expressions during social assistive interaction scenarios. The novelty of the actuation system is in its use of the dependency of facial muscle activity to minimize the number of individual actuators required to control the robotic face.

Keywords: Design, Disziplin, Embodiment, emotion, Gesicht und assoziierte Zuschreibungen, Gesichtsausdruck, Gestik/Mimik, Ingenieurswissenschaft, Interaktionspartner, Mensch oder Maschine, Mensch-Technik-Relationen (MTR), Nonverbal communication, Nonverbale Kommunikation, Realtechnik, Serviceroboter, Simulation von Emotionen im Gesichtsausdruck, Soziale Robotik, Technik, Übermitteln von Gefühlen/Emotionen

Rolls, Edmund T. (2007): The representation of information about faces in the temporal and frontal lobes. In: Neuropsychologia 45 (1), S. 124-143. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.04.019

DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16797609

Abstract: Neurophysiological evidence is described showing that some neurons in the macaque inferior temporal visual cortex have responses that are invariant with respect to the position, size and view of faces and objects, and that these neurons show rapid processing and rapid learning. Which face or object is present is encoded using a distributed representation in which each neuron conveys independent information in its firing rate, with little information evident in the relative time of firing of different neurons. This ensemble encoding has the advantages of maximising the information in the representation useful for discrimination between stimuli using a simple weighted sum of the neuronal firing by the receiving neurons, generalisation and graceful degradation. These invariant representations are ideally suited to provide the inputs to brain regions such as the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala that learn the reinforcement associations of an individual's face, for then the learning, and the appropriate social and emotional responses, generalise to other views of the same face. A theory is described of how such invariant representations may be produced in a hierarchically organised set of visual cortical areas with convergent connectivity. The theory proposes that neurons in these visual areas use a modified Hebb synaptic modification rule with a short-term memory trace to capture whatever can be captured at each stage that is invariant about objects as the objects change in retinal view, position, size and rotation. Another population of neurons in the cortex in the superior temporal sulcus encodes other aspects of faces such as face expression, eye gaze, face view and whether the head is moving. These neurons thus provide important additional inputs to parts of the brain such as the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala that are involved in social communication and emotional behaviour. Outputs of these systems reach the amygdala, in which face-selective neurons are found, and also the orbitofrontal cortex, in which some neurons are tuned to face identity and others to face expression. In humans, activation of the orbitofrontal cortex is found when a change of face expression acts as a social signal that behaviour should change; and damage to the orbitofrontal cortex can impair face and voice expression identification, and also the reversal of emotional behaviour that normally occurs when reinforcers are reversed.

Keywords: Animals, Computer Simulation, Facial Expression, Frontal Lobe/physiology, Gesicht und assoziierte Zuschreibungen, Gesichtserkennung, Gesichtszüge, Gestik/Mimik, Haplorhini, hierarchy, Humans, Mensch oder Tier, Neurowissenschaften, Social Perception, Temporal Lobe/physiology, Tier und Mensch

Adams, Reginald B.; Kleck, Robert E. (2003): Perceived gaze direction and the processing of facial displays of emotion. In: Psychological science 14 (6), S. 644-647. DOI: 10.1046/j.0956-7976.2003.psci_1479.x

DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14629700

Abstract: There is good reason to believe that gaze direction and facial displays of emotion share an information value as signals of approach or avoidance. The combination of these cues in the analysis of social communication, however, has been a virtually neglected area of inquiry. Two studies were conducted to test the prediction that direct gaze would facilitate the processing of facially communicated approach-oriented emotions (e.g., anger and joy), whereas averted gaze would facilitate the processing of facially communicated avoidance-oriented emotions (e.g., fear and sadness). The results of both studies confirmed the central hypothesis and suggest that gaze direction and facial expression are combined in the processing of emotionally relevant facial information.