title: The eyes are not the window to basic emotions.
abstract: Facial expressions are one of the most important ways to communicate our emotional state. In popular culture and in the scientific literature on face processing, the eye area is often conceived as a very important - if not the most important - cue for the recognition of facial expressions. In support of this, an underutilization of the eye area is often observed in clinical populations with a deficit in the recognition of facial expressions of emotions. Here, we used the Bubbles technique to verify which facial cue is the most important when it comes to discriminating between eight static and dynamic facial expressions (i.e., six basic emotions, pain and a neutral expression). We found that the mouth area is the most important cue for both static and dynamic facial expressions. We conducted an ideal observer analysis on the static expressions and determined that the mouth area is the most informative. However, we found an underutilization of the eye area by human participants in comparison to the ideal observer. We then demonstrated that the mouth area contains the most discriminative motions across expressions. We propose that the greater utilization of the mouth area by the human participants might come from remnants of the strategy the brain has developed with dynamic stimuli, and/or from a strategy whereby the most informative area is prioritized due to the limited capacity of the visuo-cognitive system.
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, Canada H3C 3J7; Département de psychoéducation et de psychologie Université du Québec en Outaouais, C.P. 1250, Succ. Hull, Gatineau, QC, Canada J8X 3X7.
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Blais
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, Canada H3C 3J7.
authors.forename: Cynthia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.affiliation: Département de psychoéducation et de psychologie Université du Québec en Outaouais, C.P. 1250, Succ. Hull, Gatineau, QC, Canada J8X 3X7.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fiset
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, Canada H3C 3J7.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arguin
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, Canada H3C 3J7. Electronic address: frederic.gosselin@umontreal.ca.
authors.forename: Frédéric
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gosselin
mesh_terms: D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions; D005123:Eye; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009055:Mouth; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult