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Reginald B Adams

Publications and source records attributed to Reginald B Adams.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Effects of direct and averted gaze on the perception of facially communicated emotion.

Research has largely neglected the effects of gaze direction cues on the perception of facial expressions of emotion. It was hypothesized that when gaze direction matches the underlying behavioral intent (approach-avoidance) communicated by an emotional expression, the perception of that emotion would be enhanced (i.e., shared signal hypothesis). Specifically, the authors expected that (a) direct gaze would enhance the perception of approach-oriented emotions (anger and joy) and (b) averted eye gaze would enhance the perception of avoidance-oriented emotions (fear and sadness). Three studies supported this hypothesis. Study 1 examined emotional trait attributions made to neutral faces. Study 2 examined ratings of ambiguous facial blends of anger and fear. Study 3 examined the influence of gaze on the perception of highly prototypical expressions.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Why do fear and anger look the way they do? Form and social function in facial expressions.

The origins of the appearances of anger and fear facial expressions are not well understood. The authors tested the hypothesis that such origins might lie in the expressions' resemblance to, respectively, mature and babyish faces in three studies. In Study 1, faces expressing anger and fear were judged to physically resemble mature and babyish faces. Study 2 indicated that characteristics associated specifically with babyishness are attributed to persons showing fear, whereas characteristics associated with maturity are attributed to persons showing anger. In Study 3, composite faces were used to minimize the possibility that the attributions were based on associations to the anger and fear emotions alone rather than to the physical resemblance of the expressions to static facial appearance cues. These results suggest that fear and anger expressions may serve socially adaptive purposes for those who show them, similar to the social adaptations associated with a babyish or mature facial appearance.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2004

Neural correlates of humor detection and appreciation.

Humor is a uniquely human quality whose neural substrates remain enigmatic. The present report combined dynamic, real-life content and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to dissociate humor detection ("getting the joke") from humor appreciation (the affective experience of mirth). During scanning, subjects viewed full-length episodes of the television sitcoms Seinfeld or The Simpsons. Brain activity time-locked to humor detection moments revealed increases in left inferior frontal and posterior temporal cortices, whereas brain activity time-locked to moments of humor appreciation revealed increases in bilateral regions of insular cortex and the amygdala. These findings provide evidence that humor depends critically upon extant neural systems important for resolving incongruities (humor detection) and for the expression of affect (humor appreciation).

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Facial appearance, gender, and emotion expression.

Western gender stereotypes describe women as affiliative and more likely to show happiness and men as dominant and more likely to show anger. The authors assessed the hypothesis that the gender-stereotypic effects on perceptions of anger and happiness are partially mediated by facial appearance markers of dominance and affiliation by equating men's and women's faces for these cues. In 2 studies, women were rated as more angry and men as more happy-a reversal of the stereotype. Ratings of sadness, however, were not systematically affected. It is posited that markers of affiliation and dominance, themselves confounded with gender, interact with the expressive cues for anger and happiness to produce emotional perceptions that have been viewed as simple gender stereotypes.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Perceived gaze direction and the processing of facial displays of emotion.

There is good reason to believe that gaze direction and facial displays of emotion share an information value as signals of approach or avoidance. The combination of these cues in the analysis of social communication, however, has been a virtually neglected area of inquiry. Two studies were conducted to test the prediction that direct gaze would facilitate the processing of facially communicated approach-oriented emotions (e.g., anger and joy), whereas averted gaze would facilitate the processing of facially communicated avoidance-oriented emotions (e.g., fear and sadness). The results of both studies confirmed the central hypothesis and suggest that gaze direction and facial expression are combined in the processing of emotionally relevant facial information.

Affect↗
PubMed2002

A comparison of neural circuits underlying auditory and visual object categorization.

Knowledge about environmental objects derives from representations of multiple object features both within and across sensory modalities. While our understanding of the neural basis for visual object representation in the human and nonhuman primate brain is well advanced, a similar understanding of auditory objects is in its infancy. We used a name verification task and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to characterize the neural circuits that are activated as human subjects match visually presented words with either simultaneously presented pictures or environmental sounds. The difficulty of the matching judgment was manipulated by varying the level of semantic detail at which the words and objects were compared. We found that blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal was modulated in ventral and dorsal regions of the inferior frontal gyrus of both hemispheres during auditory and visual object categorization, potentially implicating these areas as sites for integrating polymodal object representations with concepts in semantic memory. As expected, BOLD signal increases in the fusiform gyrus varied with the semantic level of object categorization, though this effect was weak and restricted to the left hemisphere in the case of auditory objects.

Adult↗