title: Context-dependent categorical perception of surprise.
abstract: Evidence regarding the categorical perception of surprise facial expressions has been equivocal. Surprise is inherently ambiguous with respect to valence: it could be positive or negative. If this ambiguity interferes with categorical perception, disambiguating the valence might facilitate categorical perception. Participants identified and discriminated images that were selected from expression continua: happy-fear, surprise-fear, happy-surprise. Half were presented with a context for the surprise expressions indicating positive or negative valence. Both groups had a typical identification curve, but discrimination performance was better predicted by identification in the context condition for happy-fear and surprise-fear continua, suggesting that categorical perception was facilitated by the disambiguating context.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada. jenna.cheal@gmail.com
authors.forename: Jenna L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Cheal
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Rutherford
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D001244:Association; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D012931:Social Environment; D055815:Young Adult