Facial-Expression Judgment Resulting from Slit Viewing

Abstract

In order to investigate the difference of component importance and the integration of component information in facial-expression judgment, an experiment was conducted using the technique of Slit Viewing, in which a whole figure can be seen by moving the figure behind a stationary slit, with controlling the moving direction of face stimulus and the width of slit. The results showed that the accuracy of recognizing sadness and anger faces was more reduced when they moved to upward than when moved to downward. In contrast, happiness and surprise faces produced high accuracy whatever direction they moved to, even when the slit width was narrow. These results indicated that sadness and anger faces were recognized by utilizing the information contained by upper face components. The results also suggest that happy and surprise faces were recognized holistically and integrated more quickly than other faces.