TY - JOUR
T1 - I thought that I heard you laughing
T2 - Contextual facial expressions modulate the perception of authentic laughter and crying
AU - Lavan, Nadine
AU - Lima, Cesar
AU - Harvey, Hannah
AU - Scott, Sophie K.
AU - McGettigan, Carolyn
PY - 2014/9/22
Y1 - 2014/9/22
N2 - It is well established that categorising the emotional content of facial expressions may differ depending on contextual information. Whether this malleability is observed in the auditory domain and in genuine emotion expressions is poorly explored. We examined the perception of authentic laughter and crying in the context of happy, neutral and sad facial expressions. Participants rated the vocalisations on separate unipolar scales of happiness and sadness and on arousal. Although they were instructed to focus exclusively on the vocalisations, consistent context effects were found: For both laughter and crying, emotion judgements were shifted towards the information expressed by the face. These modulations were independent of response latencies and were larger for more emotionally ambiguous vocalisations. No effects of context were found for arousal ratings. These findings suggest that the automatic encoding of contextual information during emotion perception generalises across modalities, to purely non-verbal vocalisations, and is not confined to acted expressions.
AB - It is well established that categorising the emotional content of facial expressions may differ depending on contextual information. Whether this malleability is observed in the auditory domain and in genuine emotion expressions is poorly explored. We examined the perception of authentic laughter and crying in the context of happy, neutral and sad facial expressions. Participants rated the vocalisations on separate unipolar scales of happiness and sadness and on arousal. Although they were instructed to focus exclusively on the vocalisations, consistent context effects were found: For both laughter and crying, emotion judgements were shifted towards the information expressed by the face. These modulations were independent of response latencies and were larger for more emotionally ambiguous vocalisations. No effects of context were found for arousal ratings. These findings suggest that the automatic encoding of contextual information during emotion perception generalises across modalities, to purely non-verbal vocalisations, and is not confined to acted expressions.
U2 - 10.1080/02699931.2014.957656
DO - 10.1080/02699931.2014.957656
M3 - Article
SN - 0269-9931
VL - 29
SP - 935
EP - 944
JO - Cognition and Emotion
JF - Cognition and Emotion
IS - 5
ER -