A sad thumbs up: incongruent gestures and disrupted sensorimotor activity both slow processing of facial expressions.

ABSTRACT: Recognising a facial expression is more difficult when the expresser's body conveys incongruent affect. Existing research has documented such interference for universally recognisable bodily expressions. However, it remains unknown whether learned, conventional gestures can interfere with facial expression processing. Study 1 participants (N = 62) viewed videos of people simultaneously producing facial expressions and hand gestures and reported the valence of either the face or hand. Responses were slower and less accurate when the face-hand pairing was incongruent compared to congruent. We hypothesised that hand gestures might exert an even stronger influence on facial expression processing when other routes to understanding the meaning of a facial expression, such as with sensorim

SUBMITTER: Wood A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6520217 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature