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      The Mysterious Noh Mask: Contribution of Multiple Facial Parts to the Recognition of Emotional Expressions

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          Abstract

          Background

          A Noh mask worn by expert actors when performing on a Japanese traditional Noh drama is suggested to convey countless different facial expressions according to different angles of head/body orientation. The present study addressed the question of how different facial parts of a Noh mask, including the eyebrows, the eyes, and the mouth, may contribute to different emotional expressions. Both experimental situations of active creation and passive recognition of emotional facial expressions were introduced.

          Methodology/Principal Findings

          In Experiment 1, participants either created happy or sad facial expressions, or imitated a face that looked up or down, by actively changing each facial part of a Noh mask image presented on a computer screen. For an upward tilted mask, the eyebrows and the mouth shared common features with sad expressions, whereas the eyes with happy expressions. This contingency tended to be reversed for a downward tilted mask. Experiment 2 further examined which facial parts of a Noh mask are crucial in determining emotional expressions. Participants were exposed to the synthesized Noh mask images with different facial parts expressing different emotions. Results clearly revealed that participants primarily used the shape of the mouth in judging emotions. The facial images having the mouth of an upward/downward tilted Noh mask strongly tended to be evaluated as sad/happy, respectively.

          Conclusions/Significance

          The results suggest that Noh masks express chimeric emotional patterns, with different facial parts conveying different emotions This appears consistent with the principles of Noh which highly appreciate subtle and composite emotional expressions, as well as with the mysterious facial expressions observed in Western art. It was further demonstrated that the mouth serves as a diagnostic feature in characterizing the emotional expressions. This indicates the superiority of biologically-driven factors over the traditionally formulated performing styles when evaluating the emotions of the Noh masks.

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          Most cited references5

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          On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: a meta-analysis.

          A meta-analysis examined emotion recognition within and across cultures. Emotions were universally recognized at better-than-chance levels. Accuracy was higher when emotions were both expressed and recognized by members of the same national, ethnic, or regional group, suggesting an in-group advantage. This advantage was smaller for cultural groups with greater exposure to one another, measured in terms of living in the same nation, physical proximity, and telephone communication. Majority group members were poorer at judging minority group members than the reverse. Cross-cultural accuracy was lower in studies that used a balanced research design, and higher in studies that used imitation rather than posed or spontaneous emotional expressions. Attributes of study design appeared not to moderate the size of the in-group advantage.
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            Time course of discrimination between emotional facial expressions: the role of visual saliency.

            Saccadic and manual responses were used to investigate the speed of discrimination between happy and non-happy facial expressions in two-alternative-forced-choice tasks. The minimum latencies of correct saccadic responses indicated that the earliest time point at which discrimination occurred ranged between 200 and 280ms, depending on type of expression. Corresponding minimum latencies for manual responses ranged between 440 and 500ms. For both response modalities, visual saliency of the mouth region was a critical factor in facilitating discrimination: The more salient the mouth was in happy face targets in comparison with non-happy distracters, the faster discrimination was. Global image characteristics (e.g., luminance) and semantic factors (i.e., categorical similarity and affective valence of expression) made minor or no contribution to discrimination efficiency. This suggests that visual saliency of distinctive facial features, rather than the significance of expression, is used to make both early and later expression discrimination decisions. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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              Is it warm? Is it real? Or just low spatial frequency?

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2012
                21 November 2012
                : 7
                : 11
                : e50280
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Okanoya Emotional Information Project (OEIP), Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Nagoya, Japan
                [2 ]Okanoya Emotional Information Project (OEIP), Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Wako, Japan
                [3 ]Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
                [4 ]Brain Science Institute (BSI), RIKEN, Wako, Japan
                [5 ]Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
                University of Sydney, Australia
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: RN KO. Performed the experiments: RN. Analyzed the data: RN HM. Wrote the paper: HM. Arrangement of the study: NK.

                Article
                PONE-D-12-16275
                10.1371/journal.pone.0050280
                3503996
                23185595
                397accfb-3ae6-46e3-96b6-28c88447d035
                Copyright @ 2012

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 28 May 2012
                : 23 October 2012
                Page count
                Pages: 9
                Funding
                This study was supported by the funding from the Japan Science and Technology Agency, Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology, Okanoya Emotional Information Project. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology
                Neuroscience
                Sensory Systems
                Visual System
                Sensory Perception
                Medicine
                Mental Health
                Psychology
                Behavior
                Emotions
                Cognitive Psychology
                Experimental Psychology
                Human Relations
                Sensory Perception
                Social Psychology
                Social and Behavioral Sciences
                Anthropology
                Cultural Anthropology
                Psychology
                Behavior
                Emotions
                Cognitive Psychology
                Experimental Psychology
                Human Relations
                Sensory Perception
                Social Psychology
                Sociology
                Culture

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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