Inability to move one's face dampens facial expression perception.

ABSTRACT: Humans rely heavily on facial expressions for social communication to convey their thoughts and emotions and to understand them in others. One prominent but controversial view is that humans learn to recognize the significance of facial expressions by mimicking the expressions of others. This view predicts that an inability to make facial expressions (e.g., facial paralysis) would result in reduced perceptual sensitivity to others' facial expressions. To test this hypothesis, we developed a diverse battery of sensitive emotion recognition tasks to characterize expression perception in individuals with Moebius Syndrome (MBS), a congenital neurological disorder that causes facial palsy. Using computer-based detection tasks we systematically assessed expression perception thresholds for stati

SUBMITTER: Japee S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10836030 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature