Emotions in motion: representational momentum for dynamic emotional facial expressions in schizotypal traits

• Autor(a) principal: Cordeiro, Sara Maria dos Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/36223
• topic: Schizotypal traits; Representational momentum; Dynamic faces; Squizophrenia; Emotional processing

The perception of emotional faces is crucial in our everyday social interactions. Some studies have shown an association between the perception of emotional faces and schizotypal traits, a personality structure that resembles the positive, negative, and disorganized symptoms of schizophrenia. However, despite faces being constantly in motion in the real world, most studies still use static emotional faces. Additionally, there is evidence that it is possible to anticipate the immediate emotional state of others based on the perceptual history of their facial expressions. This “emotional anticipation” can be explained by a perceptual phenomenon named representational momentum (RM), in which the offset of a dynamic event is systematically displaced forward, into the immediate future. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of schizotypal traits on emotional anticipation for dynamic emotional faces, by taking advantage of the RM framework. Healthy individuals performed a probe judgment task with a set of avatar faces changing from a fully angry or happy expression towards an ambiguous expression. Each dynamic face was followed by a probe depicting the same expression as the final picture of the sequence (ambiguous) or one slightly changed to greater happiness/anger. Participants indicated if the probe was equal to, or different from, the final picture of the sequence. Participants were divided into two groups by median split of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). Dependent variable was the direction of bias, calculated as the weighted mean of the proportion of equal responses, with positive values indicating forward bias (or RM). We hypothesized that high SPQ group would show a stronger RM than low SPQ, particularly for Happy-to-Ambiguous faces, in line with an increased tendency to perceived threat in ambiguous stimuli in the psychotic-continuum. Results showed no effect of SPQ and, therefore, our hypothesis was not supported. This may indicate that schizotypal traits are not associated with an exaggerated emotional anticipation. Still, our results should be interpreted with caution due to the recruited sample and use of self-report measures. Future studies are needed to understand if RM for dynamic emotional faces is intact across the psychotic-continuum (including in schizophrenia) or solely at a subclinical level.