Abstract
Problem: The purpose of this study is to analyse and describe the temporal course of facial expression. Although many studies have been already attempted on the judgment of facial expression, there was lacking a consideration from a temporal point of view. Accordingly, the conclusions of most of these studies were negative. Now I wanted to take up the same thema from a standpoint which seemed to me most fundamental for the further study.
Procedure : I used as the objects of judgment a few motion pictures from the reason that otherwise we can not see repeatedly the same facial expression. The subject was a two years old boy. An adult, I think, is inadequate to be taken in film beeause he changes his attitude as soon as he is conscious of the situation.
Thus I had nine series of film pictures of facial expressions of emotion, including five of crying and four of laughing. These films were protieded on the waalnld the images were analysed by the following methods.
(1) To measure the length of eye old mouth opening quantitatively, and at the same time record the impressions of these.
(2) To record the impression of the expression of the whole face.
(3) A time-curve was plotted from, these'records.
Summary of results:
(1) There are some specific differences between the temporal courses of crying and those of laughing, and these differences are decided by the internal conditions as well as the situation in which the subject is placed. But, generally speaking, we can find out a tendency that crying continues longer than laughing.
(2) The climaxes of crying of the child show the same intensity irrespective of the causes, but in the case of laughing the climaxes are not the same.
(3) The duration of climax of crying is very short. But a considerably strongcrying as a whole continues long.
The expression of lauphing continues for only a very short time when it is stong, and continues sometimes long (but shorter than crying) when it is weak.
(4) Generally speaking, the speed of the changing of crying is slower than that of laughing.
(5) In all cases the processes of the facial expressions jump up and down, and during the intervals of these there are slow changes.
(6) After crying (sometimes before it) there is a long and slow change of expression. But laughing occurs and vanishes suddenly.
