Transmitting and Decoding Facial Expressions

Authors: Marie L. Smith¹; Garrison W. Cottrell²; Frédéric Gosselin³; Philippe G. Schyns¹

Source: Psychological Science, Volume 16, Number 3, March 2005 , pp. 184-189(6)

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Abstract:

This article examines the human face as a transmitter of expression signals and the brain as a decoder of these expression signals. If the face has evolved to optimize transmission of such signals, the basic facial expressions should have minimal overlap in their information. If the brain has evolved to optimize categorization of expressions, it should be efficient with the information available from the transmitter for the task. In this article, we characterize the information underlying the recognition of the six basic facial expression signals and evaluate how efficiently each expression is decoded by the underlying brain structures.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00801.x

Affiliations: 1: Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom; 2: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego; and 3: Départment de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Publication date: 2005-03-01