The Effect Of Facial Expression Absence On The Recognition Of Different Emotions: An ERP Stud

Facial expressions can convey very rich information in emotional communication.Individuals use facial expressions to recognize emotions.In recent years,the role of body expression in emotion recognition has gradually emerged.Many studies have found that body expression can convey the valence information of emotion and also affect the recognition of facial emotion.But is it possible to accurately identify emotions based on body expressions alone?In addition,most studies on emotions focus on basic emotions,but lack systematic exploration of more types and complex emotions.Can basic emotions and complex emotions be accurately identified by body expressions? Do facial expressions have different effects on the recognition of basic emotions and complex emotions? All of these issues need further investigation.In this study,two experiments were conducted using the N400 semantic paradigm.Three factors of 2(emotion: basic,complex)×2(face: standard,blur)×2(word-image consistency:consistency,inconsistency)were used in within-subject design.In the first experiment,24 subjects were selected to explore whether the presence or absence of facial expressions could affect the recognition of different types of emotions.First,emotional words were presented,and then emotional pictures were presented.The subjects were asked to judge whether the pictures expressed emotions and emotional words were the same.It was found that the recognition speed of basic emotions was faster than that of complex emotions when the facial expression was standard,but the recognition speed of basic emotions was slower than that of complex emotions when the facial expression was blurring.The second experiment was the study of event-related potential,in which female subjects were selected to explore the electrophysiological activities of facial expression loss affecting different types of emotions.The results showed that in the early N170,basic emotion and complex emotion had different hemispheric activation.In the early N400 component,the basic emotion-induced amplitude was larger in the face standard.In the late positive component LP,complex emotion-induced amplitude was larger when the face was standard and word-image was consistent.These findings suggest that(1)Both basic and complex emotions can be accurately identified by body expressions without facial expressions;(2)There may be differences in the understanding and recognition of basic emotions and complex emotions;(3)Facial expression information affects the understanding and recognition of basic emotions in the early stage,and can affect the subjective judgment of complex emotions in the late stage.