Datensatz

Zusammenfassung

Adapting to an emotional facial expression biases emotional judgments of an ambiguous facial expression away from the adapted facial expression. Previous studies examining emotional facial adaptation effects used static emotional facial expressions as adaptors. Since natural facial expressions are inherently dynamic, dynamic information might enhance the magnitude of the emotional facial expression adaptation effect. We tested this hypothesis by comparing emotional facial expression adaptation effects for static and dynamic facial expression adaptors. Stimuli were generated using a dynamic 3D morphable face model. We found adaptation effects of similar magnitude for dynamic and static adaptors. When rigid head motion was removed (leaving only non-rigid intrinsic facial motion cues), the adaptation effects with dynamic adaptors disappeared. These results obtained with a novel method for the synthesis of facial expression stimuli suggest that at least part of the cognitive representation of facial expressions is dynamic and depends on head motion.