title: Fashioning the Face: Sensorimotor Simulation Contributes to Facial Expression Recognition.
abstract: When we observe a facial expression of emotion, we often mimic it. This automatic mimicry reflects underlying sensorimotor simulation that supports accurate emotion recognition. Why this is so is becoming more obvious: emotions are patterns of expressive, behavioral, physiological, and subjective feeling responses. Activation of one component can therefore automatically activate other components. When people simulate a perceived facial expression, they partially activate the corresponding emotional state in themselves, which provides a basis for inferring the underlying emotion of the expresser. We integrate recent evidence in favor of a role for sensorimotor simulation in emotion recognition. We then connect this account to a domain-general understanding of how sensory information from multiple modalities is integrated to generate perceptual predictions in the brain.
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1202 West Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Electronic address: adrienne.wood@wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Adrienne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.affiliation: Cardiff University, Tower Building, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK.
authors.forename: Magdalena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rychlowska
authors.affiliation: International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Korb
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1202 West Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
authors.forename: Paula
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Niedenthal
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D003469:Culture; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: cross-modal perceptual integration; embodied simulation; emotion perception; facial expression of emotion; facial mimicry