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Differences in configural processing for human versus android dynamic facial expressions.
Alexander Diel1,2, Wataru Sato3, Chun-Ting Hsu3
1RIKEN Information R&D and Strategy Headquarters, Guardian Robot Project, Kyoto, Japan. diela@cardiff.ac.uk.
Scientific Reports
|October 7, 2023
Summary
Human facial expression processing relies on synchrony, unlike androids. Dynamic expressions from humans are affected by feature timing, but android expressions are not, suggesting different configural processing.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Human-Robot Interaction
- Affective Computing
Background:
- Humanlike androids are increasingly used as social agents in research.
- While androids can mimic facial emotions, their processing mechanisms may differ from humans.
- Configural processing, particularly involving feature synchrony, is crucial for human emotion recognition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether android facial emotion expressions engage the same configural processing as human expressions.
- To compare the effects of inversion and asynchrony on the perception of dynamic facial emotions in androids versus humans.
Main Methods:
- Seventy-five participants rated emotion recognition (anger, happiness), arousal, and valence.
- Stimuli included dynamic facial expressions from androids and humans, manipulated for synchrony and inversion.
- Participants evaluated upright/inverted, synchronous/asynchronous expressions from both agent types.
Main Results:
- Facial feature asynchrony significantly reduced human expression ratings (recognition, arousal, valence), except for valence in angry expressions.
- Asynchrony did not affect any ratings for android expressions.
- Global inversion did not impact any measures for either human or android expressions.
Conclusions:
- Dynamic human facial expressions are processed using synchrony-based configural mechanisms.
- Android dynamic facial expressions do not appear to be processed via the same synchrony-dependent configural route.
- This highlights a key difference in how humans and current androids process dynamic social cues.
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