Pathognomy

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A woman expressing attention, desire and hope

Pathognomy is "a 'semiotik' of the transient features of someone's face or body, be it voluntary or involuntary". [1] Examples of this can be laughter and winking to the involuntary such as sneezing or coughing. [1] By studying the features or expressions, there is then an attempt to infer the mental state and emotion felt by the individual. [1]

Contents

Johann Kaspar Lavater separated pathognomy from physiognomy to limit the so-called power of persons to manipulate the reception of their image in public. Such division is marked by the disassociation of gestural expressions, and volition from the legibility of moral character. [2] Both he and his critic Georg Christoph Lichtenberg branched this term from physiognomy , which strictly focused on the static and fixed features of peoples faces and the attempt to discover the relatively enduring traits from them. [1]

Pathognomy is distinguished from physiognomy based on key differences in their features. The latter, which is concerned with the examination of an individual's soul through the analysis of his facial features, [3] is used to predict the overall, long-term character of an individual while pathognomy is used to ascertain clues about one's current character. Physiognomy is based on the shapes of the features, and pathognomy on the motions of the features. Furthermore, physiognomy is concerned with man's disposition while pathognomy focuses on man's temporary being and attempts to reveal his current emotional state. [4]

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg states that physiognomy is often used to cover pathognomy, including both fixed and mobile facial features, but the term is overall used to distinguish and identify the characteristics of a person. [1] Pathognomy falls under the term of non-verbal communication, which includes various expressions, ranging from gestures to tone of voice, posture and bodily cues, all of which influence the knowledge and understanding of such emotions. [5]

Study of pathognomy

The science of pathognomy stands as a platform towards the practicality of identifying certain emotions, some of which may be more challenging to identify, such as subtle signs of disease to various psychological disorders. [6] Psychological disorders include depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar personality disorder, eating disorders, Williams syndrome, schizophrenia, and autism spectrum disorders. [7] Emotional recognition through facial expression seems to be the core focus of perception towards understanding the signs of emotions. Over the years, there has been a significant improvement as to how much one can detect emotional signals through non-verbal cues across a variety of databases, [8] from what was based on human emotion recognition, to now a database on computers that provide the same stimuli to research this recognition of emotion further.

Methods used

Computer-based methods

In 1978, Ekman and his colleague Wallace V. Friesen created a taxonomy of facial muscles and their actions, providing an objective measurement, whereby the system describes the facial behaviour being presented. This is known as the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Previous coding systems had a more subjective approach, only attempting to infer the underlying expressions, which heavily relied on an individual's perspective and judgement. The FACS mainly focuses on describing the facial expression being portrayed, but interpretation can later be added by the researcher where the facial behaviours closely relate to the emotional situation. [9]

A freely available database that was based on the FACS is Radboud Faces Database (RaFD). This data set contains Caucasian face images of "8 facial expressions, with three gaze directions, photographed simultaneously from five different camera angles". [10] All RaFD emotions are perceived as clearly expressed, with contempt being the only emotion being less clear than others. [10] Langner et al. concluded that the RaFD is a valuable tool for different research fields towards facial stimuli, including recognition of emotions. In most forms of study that use this database, a method is carried out as follows; participants are presented with the images, and then requested to rate the facial expressions and also rate the attractiveness of each image. This can be further interpreted by the researcher to select the correct stimuli needed for their own research to be carried out. [10]

Facial expression method

The conventional method for studying emotional perception and recognition, which can also be called the basic emotion method, typically consists of presenting facial expression stimuli in a laboratory setting, [11] through the exposure of stimuli that presents males and females, to adults and children, participants are asked to determine the emotion being expressed. Silvan S Tomkins and his protégés, Carol E. Izard and Paul Ekman [11] conducted such a method in the controlled lab environment. They created sets of photographs, posing the six core emotions; anger, fear, disgust, surprise, sadness and happiness. These photos provided the most precise and most robust representations for each emotion that was to be identified. Participants were then required to choose which word fit the face the most through these photographs. This type of method is commonly used to understand and infer the emotions portrayed through expressions made by individuals. [11]

Auditory method

Recognition of emotion can be heavily identified through auditory modality; [8] something which plays a vital role in communication within societies. [8] In terms of the study or recognition of emotions through voice, this can be carried out in multiple ways. The main method of strategy for recognising emotion through voice is labelling and categorising which vocal expression matches which emotional stimuli (for example, happiness, sadness or fear). Older studies presented this method through paper-and-pencil tests with audio being played. The researcher then requested the participant to match the audio to the emotion shown on the paper. [8] In Sauter et al.'s research, [12] they had presented audio stimuli on speakers and asked participants to match the audio to the corresponding emotion by choosing, on a printed sheet, a label illustrated with a photo depicting the facial expression. [8] Chronaki et al. used a fully-computerised method to present the stimuli on headphones and ask participants to select amongst keyboard keys with emotional word labels printed on them. [8] These many modes of research on vocal expression follow a standard method, presenting the stimulus and requesting the participant to provide a matching emotion towards what they have heard. This form can further increase the knowledge of emotions and passions through such non-verbal communications.

See also

Other related disciplines:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face</span> Part of the body that is at the front of the head

The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affect the psyche adversely.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affective computing</span> Area of research in computer science aiming to understand the emotional state of users

Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. While some core ideas in the field may be traced as far back as to early philosophical inquiries into emotion, the more modern branch of computer science originated with Rosalind Picard's 1995 paper on affective computing and her book Affective Computing published by MIT Press. One of the motivations for the research is the ability to give machines emotional intelligence, including to simulate empathy. The machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behavior to them, giving an appropriate response to those emotions.

Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information between humans, but they also occur in most other mammals and some other animal species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physiognomy</span> Assessment of a persons character or personality from their outer appearance

Physiognomy or face reading is the practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face. The term can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object, or terrain without reference to its implied characteristics—as in the physiognomy of an individual plant or of a plant community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face perception</span> Cognitive process of visually interpreting the human face

Facial perception is an individual's understanding and interpretation of the face. Here, perception implies the presence of consciousness and hence excludes automated facial recognition systems. Although facial recognition is found in other species, this article focuses on facial perception in humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Ekman</span> American psychologist (born 1934)

Paul Ekman is an American psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was ranked 59th out of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century in 2002 by the Review of General Psychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face detection</span> Identification of human faces in images

Face detection is a computer technology being used in a variety of applications that identifies human faces in digital images. Face detection also refers to the psychological process by which humans locate and attend to faces in a visual scene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Facial Action Coding System</span> System of classifying human facial movements

The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a system to taxonomize human facial movements by their appearance on the face, based on a system originally developed by a Swedish anatomist named Carl-Herman Hjortsjö. It was later adopted by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, and published in 1978. Ekman, Friesen, and Joseph C. Hager published a significant update to FACS in 2002. Movements of individual facial muscles are encoded by the FACS from slight different instant changes in facial appearance. It has proven useful to psychologists and to animators.

An emotional expression is a behavior that communicates an emotional state or attitude. It can be verbal or nonverbal, and can occur with or without self-awareness. Emotional expressions include facial movements like smiling or scowling, simple behaviors like crying, laughing, or saying "thank you," and more complex behaviors like writing a letter or giving a gift. Individuals have some conscious control of their emotional expressions; however, they need not have conscious awareness of their emotional or affective state in order to express emotion.

Affective science is the scientific study of emotion or affect. This includes the study of emotion elicitation, emotional experience and the recognition of emotions in others. Of particular relevance are the nature of feeling, mood, emotionally-driven behaviour, decision-making, attention and self-regulation, as well as the underlying physiology and neuroscience of the emotions.

Attentional bias refers to how a person's perception is affected by selective factors in their attention. Attentional biases may explain an individual's failure to consider alternative possibilities when occupied with an existing train of thought. For example, cigarette smokers have been shown to possess an attentional bias for smoking-related cues around them, due to their brain's altered reward sensitivity. Attentional bias has also been associated with clinically relevant symptoms such as anxiety and depression.

Visual neuroscience is a branch of neuroscience that focuses on the visual system of the human body, mainly located in the brain's visual cortex. The main goal of visual neuroscience is to understand how neural activity results in visual perception, as well as behaviors dependent on vision. In the past, visual neuroscience has focused primarily on how the brain responds to light rays projected from static images and onto the retina. While this provides a reasonable explanation for the visual perception of a static image, it does not provide an accurate explanation for how we perceive the world as it really is, an ever-changing, and ever-moving 3-D environment. The topics summarized below are representative of this area, but far from exhaustive. To be less topic specific, one can see this textbook for the computational link between neural activities and visual perception and behavior: "Understanding vision: theory, models, and data", published by Oxford University Press 2014.

Paradoxical laughter is an exaggerated expression of humour which is unwarranted by external events. It may be uncontrollable laughter which may be recognised as inappropriate by the person involved. It is associated with mental illness, such as mania, hypomania or schizophrenia, schizotypal personality disorder and can have other causes. Paradoxical laughter is indicative of an unstable mood, often caused by the pseudobulbar affect, which can quickly change to anger and back again, on minor external cues.

Emotional responsivity is the ability to acknowledge an affective stimuli by exhibiting emotion. It is a sharp change of emotion according to a person's emotional state. Increased emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating more response to a stimulus. Reduced emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating less response to a stimulus. Any response exhibited after exposure to the stimulus, whether it is appropriate or not, would be considered as an emotional response. Although emotional responsivity applies to nonclinical populations, it is more typically associated with individuals with schizophrenia and autism.

Beatrice M. L. de Gelder is a cognitive neuroscientist and neuropsychologist. She is professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the Tilburg University (Netherlands), and was senior scientist at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Boston (USA). She joined the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University in 2012. Her research interests include behavioral and neural emotion processing from facial and bodily expressions, multisensory perception and interaction between auditory and visual processes, and nonconscious perception in neurological patients. She is author of books and publications. She was a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and an elected member of the International Neuropsychological Symposia since 1999. She was a fellow at the Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York in 2017, at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Paris in 2020. Recent grants include an Advanced ERC grant and a Synergy ERC grant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music and emotion</span> Psychological relationship between human affect and music

Research into music and emotion seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music. The field, a branch of music psychology, covers numerous areas of study, including the nature of emotional reactions to music, how characteristics of the listener may determine which emotions are felt, and which components of a musical composition or performance may elicit certain reactions.

Images and other stimuli contain both local features and global features. Precedence refers to the level of processing to which attention is first directed. Global precedence occurs when an individual more readily identifies the global feature when presented with a stimulus containing both global and local features. The global aspect of an object embodies the larger, overall image as a whole, whereas the local aspect consists of the individual features that make up this larger whole. Global processing is the act of processing a visual stimulus holistically. Although global precedence is generally more prevalent than local precedence, local precedence also occurs under certain circumstances and for certain individuals. Global precedence is closely related to the Gestalt principles of grouping in that the global whole is a grouping of proximal and similar objects. Within global precedence, there is also the global interference effect, which occurs when an individual is directed to identify the local characteristic, and the global characteristic subsequently interferes by slowing the reaction time.

Social cues are verbal or non-verbal signals expressed through the face, body, voice, motion and guide conversations as well as other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others. These percepts are important communicative tools as they convey important social and contextual information and therefore facilitate social understanding.

Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others, in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and cognitive appraisal; emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.

Facial coding is the process of measuring human emotions through facial expressions. Emotions can be detected by computer algorithms for automatic emotion recognition that record facial expressions via webcam. This can be applied to better understanding of people’s reactions to visual stimuli.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Herrmann-Sinai, Susanne (2019). Hegel's Philosophical Psychology. Routledge. pp. 1–5. ISBN   978-1-138-92736-0.
  2. ↑ J., Lukasik, Christopher (2011). Discerning characters : the culture of appearance in early America. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN   978-0-8122-4287-4. OCLC   731595871.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ↑ Writing Emotions : Theoretical Concepts and Selected Case Studies in Literature. Ingeborg Jandl; Susanne Knaller; Sabine Schönfellner; Gudrun Tockner. Transcript Verlag. 2018. ISBN   978-3-8394-3793-3. OCLC   1046615640.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. ↑ Knapp, James A. (2016-03-03). Shakespeare and the Power of the Face. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315608655. ISBN   978-1-317-05638-6.
  5. ↑ Nonverbal communication. Judee K Burgoon; Valerie Lynn Manusov; Laura K Guerrero (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. 2022. ISBN   978-1-003-09555-2. OCLC   1240266780.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. ↑ "APA Dictionary of Psychology". dictionary.apa.org. Retrieved 2022-02-15.
  7. ↑ Dores, Artemisa R.; Barbosa, Fernando; Queirós, Cristina; Carvalho, Irene P.; Griffiths, Mark D. (2020-10-12). "Recognizing Emotions through Facial Expressions: A Largescale Experimental Study". International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 17 (20): 7420. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17207420 . ISSN   1660-4601. PMC   7599941 . PMID   33053797.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Grosbras, Marie-Hélène; Ross, Paddy D.; Belin, Pascal (2018-10-04). "Categorical emotion recognition from voice improves during childhood and adolescence". Scientific Reports. 8 (1): 14791. Bibcode:2018NatSR...814791G. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-32868-3. ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   6172235 . PMID   30287837.
  9. ↑ "Facial Action Coding System", The Sage Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc, 2017, doi:10.4135/9781483381411.n178, ISBN   978-1-4833-8143-5 , retrieved 2022-02-15
  10. 1 2 3 Langner, Oliver; Dotsch, Ron; Bijlstra, Gijsbert; Wigboldus, Daniel H. J.; Hawk, Skyler T.; van Knippenberg, Ad (December 2010). "Presentation and validation of the Radboud Faces Database". Cognition & Emotion. 24 (8): 1377–1388. doi:10.1080/02699930903485076. hdl: 2066/90703 . ISSN   0269-9931. S2CID   53591987.
  11. 1 2 3 Feldman Barrett, Lisa (2020). How Emotions Are Made : the secret life of the brain. Picador. ISBN   978-1-5290-3936-8. OCLC   1131899184.
  12. ↑ Sauter, Disa A.; Panattoni, Charlotte; Happé, Francesca (March 2013). "Children's recognition of emotions from vocal cues: Emotions in the voice". British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 31 (1): 97–113. doi:10.1111/j.2044-835X.2012.02081.x. PMID   23331109. S2CID   30195929.
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