This thesis investigates the effect of emotional facial expressions of a virtual character on people&rsquo / s performance for interactive digital tasks. The basic and universal emotions are used in the study. Facial expressions of these emotions are created according to the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which is a system that describes facial movements in the face. The patterns of cooccurences of Action Units (descriptions of facial movements defined in FACS) for basic emotions are also implemented into emotional facial expressions with regard to findings of the studies in the literature. A study was conducted to validate the recognition of emotion specific facial expressions that are built by Poser software. To investigate the effect of emotional facial expressions on people&rsquo / s performance for digital interactive tasks in a virtual environment, a digital interactive application created by Unity software was used in the final study of the thesis.

A emoção é tema presente em diversas áreas do conhecimento, dentre elas, a Psicologia do Desenvolvimento, na qual Henri Wallon se destaca. Em sua teoria, a expressão emocional é elemento central nos primeiros meses de vida, e propiciaria a constituição do vínculo entre o bebê e os parceiros de interação. A revisão de literatura mostrou diferentes perspectivas teóricas e metodológicas que têm explorado o tema das emoções, cujos resultados, de forma geral, têm apontado a alta capacidade comunicativa e interativa dos bebês a partir das expressões emocionais. No entanto, esses estudos focalizam as expressões faciais, particularmente as positivas, como o sorriso; sendo a maioria realizada em laboratórios, com delineamento transversal e análise quantitativa. Assim, este trabalho tem como objetivo acompanhar as manifestações e o processo de transformação das expressões emocionais de desprazer de um bebê durante o seu primeiro ano de vida, contemplando as diversas formas de manifestação das emoções - faciais, vocais e corporais. As vídeo-gravações utilizadas estão arquivadas no Banco de Imagens do CINDEDI, e são de um bebê que foi filmado em sua residência desde a primeira semana de vida até os doze meses. As gravações foram feitas semanalmente no primeiro semestre e quinzenalmente no segundo, com duração aproximada de uma hora cada. Para a construção do corpus de análise, realizou-se um mapeamento das expressões emocionais de desprazer do bebê e das ações dos parceiros de interação. As categorias para observação e registro dividiram-se em expressões faciais, corporais, vocais e olhar. Para os parceiros de interação, além destas, adicionaram-se as ações direcionadas ao bebê. Para a análise desse material dividiu-se o primeiro ano de vida em quatro trimestres, e selecionou-se um episódio de interação para cada período. A análise possibilitou observar que desde a primeira semana de vida o bebê manifesta articuladamente as expressões faciais, vocais e corporais, para comunicar ao outro o seu incômodo. Nos primeiros dois meses de vida, todas as expressões apresentaram valores aproximados de manifestação, mas a partir do terceiro mês, observa-se que a expressão facial apresenta frequências consideravelmente mais baixas do que as vocais e corporais, as quais permanecem em evidência durante todo o primeiro ano. Além disso, a articulação entre as expressões não é aleatória, mas apresenta uma sequência específica, intensificando a manifestação de incômodo ou irritação do bebê: inicia com o movimento corporal, adiciona-se a expressão vocal e, por fim, a facial, sendo que o choro (vocal e facial) é o último recurso utilizado para exprimir o descontentamento. Os parceiros de interação buscam atender e acalmar o bebê através de diversas ações, que também vão se modificando ao longo do tempo, mas a fala constitui o principal recurso. Assim, as expressões do bebê e as ações dos parceiros estão articuladas de tal maneira que as transformações das manifestações emocionais tornam-se cirscunscritas ao contexto e às relações construídas, evidenciando os processos de regulação e atribuição de significado para as expressões de desprazer. Discute-se, portanto, a emoção constituída por um processo biologicamente cultural, e as práticas educativas compondo a matriz social da qual emergem as manifestações emocionais, circunscrevendo as possibilidades de expressão do bebê. / Emotion is a theme that is present in various fields of knowledge, including developmental psychology, from which Henri Wallon acknowledged. In his theory, emotional expression is as a central theme, understood as constituting of the bond between the baby and her interactional partners in the early months of life. A literature review showed various theoretical and methodological perspectives that have been exploring emotions as a theme. The results of these studies have generally shown the great communicational and interactive capacity of babies through their emotional expressions. However, these studies focus facial expressions, particularly positive ones like the smile. Most researches are carried in laboratories, with a transversal design and quantitative analysis. Thus, the present study aims at following the manifestations and the process of transformation of emotional expressions of displeasure in a baby during her first year of life, contemplating various forms of emotional manifestation - facial, vocal and bodily expressions. The video recordings that were used are part of CINDEDIs Image bank and the baby was recorded at home from her first week of life until her twelfth month. The recordings were made weekly during her first six months of life, and bi-weekly in the next semester, with an approximate duration of one hour each. For the construction of the corpus of analysis, a mapping of both the babys emotional expressions of displeasure and her interactional partners action was carried out. The categories for observation and registry were defined as facial, bodily, vocal and looking expressions. For the interactional partners, another category was added to these, namely, the actions directed towards the baby. For the analysis of this material, the first year was divided into four trimesters and an episode of interaction for each period was selected. The analysis enabled the observation that since her first weeks of life, the baby articulately manifests her facial, vocal and bodily expressions to communicate her unease. In her first two months of life, all of her expressions presented similar count of manifestation, but from the third month on, it is noted that the facial expressions are shown with a considerably lower frequency than the vocal and bodily ones, which are evident throughout the whole first year. Moreover, the articulation among the expressions is not random, but it presents a specific sequence that deepens the manifestation of the babys unease or irritancy: it starts with body movements, to which the vocal expression is added and, finally, the facial expressions. Crying (which is a vocal and facial expression) is the last resource applied in order to express displeasure. The interactional partners seek to respond to the baby and to calm her down through various actions that also change with time, though talking is always their main resource. Thus, the babys expressions and her interactional partners actions are articulated in such a manner that the transformations of emotional manifestations become circumscribed both to the context and to the relationships, which highlights processes of regulation and meaning attribution to expressions of displeasure. It is thus discussed the constitution of emotion by a biologically cultural process, and the educational practices that constitute the social matrix from which these emotional manifestations arise, circumscribing the babys possibilities of expression.

As a universal element of human nature, the experience, expression, and perception of emotions permeate our daily lives. Many emotions are thought to be basic and common to all humanity, irrespective of social or cultural background. Of these emotions, the corresponding facial expressions of a select few are known to be truly universal, in that they can be identified by most observers without the need for training. Facial expressions of emotion are subsequently used as a method of communication, whether through close face-to-face contact, or the use of emoticons online and in mobile texting. Facial expressions are fundamental to acting for stage and screen, and to animation for film and computer games. Expressions of emotion have been the subject of intense experimentation in psychology and computer science research, both in terms of their naturalistic appearance and the virtual replication of facial movements. From this work much is known about expression universality, anatomy, psychology, and synthesis. Beyond the realm of scientific research, animation practitioners have scrutinised facial expressions and developed an artistic understanding of movement and performance. However, despite the ubiquitous quality of facial expressions in life and research, our understanding of how to produce synthetic, dynamic imitations of emotional expressions which are perceptually valid remains somewhat limited. The research covered in this thesis sought to unite an artistic understanding of expression animation with scientific approaches to facial expression assessment. Acting as both an animation practitioner and as a scientific researcher, the author set out to investigate emotional facial expression dynamics, with the particular aim of identifying spatio-temporal configurations of animated expressions that not only satisfied artistic judgement, but which also stood up to empirical assessment. These configurations became known as emotional expression choreographies. The final work presented in this thesis covers the performative, practice-led research into emotional expression choreography, the results of empirical experimentation (where choreographed animations were assessed by observers), and the findings of qualitative studies (which painted a more detailed picture of the potential context of choreographed expressions). The holistic evaluation of expression animation from these three epistemological perspectives indicated that emotional expressions can indeed be choreographed in order to create refined performances which have empirically measurable effects on observers, and which may be contextualised by the phenomenological interpretations of both student animators and general audiences.

In this essay, I want to achieve an accessible and applicable entrance to Alexander Technique as a method for learning to use the body in such a way as to allow emotional expression in music. It is necessary to see the real need of Alexander Technique for the active musician, and therefore important components of music-making will be presented. These components are presented from an Alexander-perspective in order to produce a clear picture of the method of application.The prerequisite for emotional expression in music is musicians and music listeners with the ability to generate, and respond after emotional impressions. Alexander Technique provides an approach to make it easier for musicians, especially guitarists, to express emotions in a performance situation.After years of practice and obtaining musical knowledge and practical skills at the instrument, it is common that muscle tension and ingrained patterns contribute to limited expression. Muscle tensions arising from pressured situations such as auditions, competitions and concerts. Repetitive movements contribute to this, and lays the foundation for an insufficient technique. It is clear that traditional learning methods need to be complemented with an approach that treats body awareness as an essential part of musical performances. The notion that the use of the body affects mental states is now a truism, and one can see an opening towards new approaches that facilitate learning as well as performance of musical works. The emotional expression is in focus here, and this study deals with musical production based on the philosophy that music should be driven by decisions involving emotional expression.

People who are homeless tend to suffer from stress, substance abuse and mental health problems. Music therapy with a closed group of homeless adults residing in an American homeless shelter has shown potential benefit. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore how open group music therapy sessions designed to facilitate emotional expression, interpersonal connection, stimulation, and self-esteem were experienced by homeless adults not residing in a common shelter. The current study made use of a sample of homeless adults visiting a church feeding scheme in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The sessions were framed as music workshops and the main components used included: drumming, vocal and instrumental improvisation, and known songs. A total of six, weekly, open group music therapy workshops were held at the feeding scheme for a maximum of ten participants per session. Videotaped recordings were made of each music therapy session and one different participant was interviewed after the session each week. From the interpretative phenomenological analysis of the transcripts of individual interviews and the videotaped recordings of sessions, a number of themes emerged. From the findings of this study it was concluded that the open group music therapy sessions offered homeless adults opportunities for: increased self-esteem, meaningful interpersonal connection, constructive use of time, stress relief, meeting emotional needs, and transformation. / Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lk2014 / Music / MMus / Unrestricted

The intent of this thesis is to explore the perceived discrepancies between individual scores of psychopathy, particularly the division of primary and secondary psychopathy, and how such scores may moderate the relationship of one's emotional experiences with the corresponding emotional expression. There is evidence to consider that a person's working memory ability and/or volitional suppression of expression may also moderate this relationship and result in constricted emotional expression, a trait often found in primary psychopathy. Undergraduate participants completed the study online, and after exclusions, a final sample size of 126 participants (62.7% women) was used in analyses. An initial linear regression found that primary psychopathy severity showed a negative relationship with performance on a visuo-spatial n-back test of working memory. While age did not relate to expression, women reported a greater strength of expression for both negative and positive emotions than men. Using hierarchical linear regressions, a significant four-way interaction was found between primary psychopathy severity, working memory performance, degree of volitional expression suppression, and internal emotional experience, in predicting the strength of expressing negative emotions. Analysis of simple effects revealed that, for participants scoring higher in primary psychopathy (n = 63), there was a significant three-way interaction for experience of negative emotions, the use of emotional suppression, and working memory performance in predicting the strength of expressing negative emotions. Simple effects of this interaction showed that for a subgroup who were higher in primary psychopathy and volitional suppression of emotional expression (n = 25), there was significant negative relationship between the frequency of experiencing negative emotions and the strength of expressing those emotions. There were no significant interactions involving secondary psychopathy severity or variables relating to positive emotions in any regression. The findings of this study could be useful for future research on psychopathy as it relates to understanding the characteristics and functioning of individuals with psychopathy.

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Question : Cette thèse comporte deux articles portant sur l’étude d’expressions faciales émotionnelles. Le processus de développement d’une nouvelle banque de stimuli émotionnels fait l’objet du premier article, alors que le deuxième article utilise cette banque pour étudier l’effet de l’anxiété de trait sur la reconnaissance des expressions statiques. Méthodes : Un total de 1088 clips émotionnels (34 acteurs X 8 émotions X 4 exemplaire) ont été alignés spatialement et temporellement de sorte que les yeux et le nez de chaque acteur occupent le même endroit dans toutes les vidéos. Les vidéos sont toutes d’une durée de 500ms et contiennent l’Apex de l’expression. La banque d’expressions statiques fut créée à partir de la dernière image des clips. Les stimuli ont été soumis à un processus de validation rigoureux. Dans la deuxième étude, les expressions statiques sont utilisées conjointement avec la méthode Bubbles dans le but d’étudier la reconnaissance des émotions chez des participants anxieux. Résultats : Dans la première étude, les meilleurs stimuli ont été sélectionnés [2 (statique & dynamique) X 8 (expressions) X 10 (acteurs)] et forment la banque d’expressions STOIC. Dans la deuxième étude, il est démontré que les individus présentant de l'anxiété de trait utilisent préférentiellement les basses fréquences spatiales de la région buccale du visage et ont une meilleure reconnaissance des expressions de peur. Discussion : La banque d’expressions faciales STOIC comporte des caractéristiques uniques qui font qu’elle se démarque des autres. Elle peut être téléchargée gratuitement, elle contient des vidéos naturelles et tous les stimuli ont été alignés, ce qui fait d’elle un outil de choix pour la communauté scientifique et les cliniciens. Les stimuli statiques de STOIC furent utilisés pour franchir une première étape dans la recherche sur la perception des émotions chez des individus présentant de l’anxiété de trait. Nous croyons que l’utilisation des basses fréquences est à la base des meilleures performances de ces individus, et que l’utilisation de ce type d’information visuelle désambigüise les expressions de peur et de surprise. Nous pensons également que c’est la névrose (chevauchement entre l'anxiété et la dépression), et non l’anxiété même qui est associée à de meilleures performances en reconnaissance d’expressions faciales de la peur. L’utilisation d’instruments mesurant ce concept devrait être envisagée dans de futures études. / Question: This thesis describes a new database of facial emotional expressions; created specifically for eye-tracking and classification image experiments. This database serves as a basis for the second study, which explores the effect of trait anxiety on the perception of static facial emotional expressions. Methods: Actors were recruited to express facial emotional expressions. Thousands of 1-second movie clips that contained the least head movement and appeared genuine were extracted from the raw videos and selected for the validation. A total of 1088 clips (34 actors X 8 expressions X 4 exemplar) were spatially aligned so that facial features across the stimuli occupied the same space. They were also temporally aligned so that all clips began on the last neutral frame and truncated on the 15th frame (500ms). The last frame (apex) of the clips was extracted to form the static database. Two groups of participants validated the dynamic (N35) and static (N35) stimuli. The static images were used in the 2nd study where participants (N27) varying in trait anxiety were asked to recognize emotional faces, partially revealed through Gaussian apertures (Bubbles). Results: Study 1 describes the process by which the STOIC database was created. It showcases the 80 dynamic (and 80 static) emotional expressions (8 emotions X 10 actors) with the lowest entropy scores. Study 2 shows that trait anxiety is associated with performance and differential use of information. Anxious individuals use low spatial frequency (LSF) information from the mouth region and are better at recognizing negative emotions, especially fear and not anger. Discussion: This thesis presents a new and freely downloadable emotion recognition database containing static and dynamic stimuli. The database possesses unique characteristics that will make it useful to the scientific community and clinicians. We used the static images in the second study to establish a baseline and gain a better understanding about the use of information contained in faces to recognized emotional expressions. The next phase of the project will be to explore the effects of anxiety and depression on the perception of dynamic expressions. We speculate that the use of LSF information in our anxious group disambiguated fear from surprise and led to better performance for that emotion. In addition, we think the overlap between anxiety and depression, which was associated with better performances, may be attributed to concept of neuroticism.

and keywords This thesis is focused on identification of emotional expression in the human face. The theoretical part deals with the introduction to the emotions, expression of basic emotions characteristics and emotion recognition. The empirical part is concerned with the research of emotion identification from photographs and short movie swatches. The aim of this thesis is to evidence the importance of knowing the context of the situation while recognising the emotions. In the research I focused the attention on the six basic emotions (fear, anger, sadness, surprise, joy and disgust/contempt). The research confirmed my assumptions only partially: the knowledge of the context of the situation facilitates identification of some emotions, but some make the identification significantly more difficult (some emotional expressions in the context of the situation were not recognized at all). Keywords: emotions, basic emotions, identification of emotions, emotional expression in the face, context

Expressive writing has been linked to positive psychological and health outcomes in general and medical populations, but research examining this intervention in HIV is limited. Higher levels of emotional expression (EE) and depth processing (DP) during writing have been linked to better health status in HIV. Expressive writing has been shown to improve health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in other populations, but has not been examined in HIV. HRQoL is often compromised in HIV+ individuals and therefore improvements in this area are an appropriate goal of psychosocial interventions. This longitudinal study used HLM analyses to examine the relationship between levels of EE and DP during trauma writing and the rate of change in HRQoL over six months in an ethnically diverse sample of 106 HIV+ men and women. Three subscales of the HIV/AIDS-targeted Quality of Life measure were examined: Overall Healthy Functioing (HRQoL-Overall), Without Health Worries (HRQoL-Health), and Life Satisfaction (HRQoL-Life). All longitudinal analyses controlled for demographic (age, gender, race/ethnicity, education), medical (CD4 and VL) and psychological (stressful life events) factors. No significant effects were found for EE/DP to predict changes in HRQoL over time for the full sample. When men and women were examined separately, there was a non-significant tendency for men to decrease in HRQoL over time and for women to increase over time, and a number of EE/DP variables were significant predictors of rate of change in HRQoL. As hypothesized, for women (n = 44) higher level of Experiential Involvement DP predicted greater increase in HRQoL-Overall and HRQoL-Life, and higher negative EE also predicted greater increase in HRQoL-Life over time. Opposite of the direction hypothesized, higher Self Esteem DP predicted a lower level of increase in HRQoL-Life for women. For men (n = 62), findings appeared to be in the opposite direction of women, with greater Self Esteem DP working as a buffer to decreases in HRQoL-Life and HRQoL-Health over time. Furthermore, higher Experiential Involvement and negative EE appeared detrimental for men as both predicted greater decreases in HRQoL-Life over time and Experiential Involvement also predicted greater decreases in HRQoL-Health. Results should be interpreted with caution, as the overall slopes did not show significant change in HRQoL over time. The reasons for observed gender differences are not known. This is the first study to examine the impact of EE and DP in expressive trauma writing on HRQoL in HIV+ individuals. Implications and limitations are discussed.