Emotion Perception from Face, Voice, and Touch: Comparisons and Convergence.
Historically, research on emotion perception has focused on facial expressions, and findings from this modality have come to dominate our thinking about other modalities. Here we examine emotion perception through a wider lens by comparing facial with vocal and tactile processing. We review stimulus characteristics and ensuing behavioral and brain responses and show that audition and touch do not simply duplicate visual mechanisms. Each modality provides a distinct input channel and engages partly nonoverlapping neuroanatomical systems with different processing specializations (e.g., specific emotions versus affect). Moreover, processing of signals across the different modalities converges, first into multi- and later into amodal representations that enable holistic emotion judgments.
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany; National University of Singapore, Singapore. Electronic address: schirmer@cuhk.edu.hk.
Annett
A
Schirmer
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA. Electronic address: radolphs@caltech.edu.
Ralph
R
Adolphs
D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014110:Touch; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014831:Voice