Annie Roy-Charland

Featural processing in recognition of emotional facial expressions

The present study aimed to clarify the role played by the eye/brow and mouth areas in the recognition of the six basic emotions. In Experiment 1, accuracy was examined while participants viewed partial and full facial expressions; in Experiment 2, participants viewed full facial expressions while their eye movements were recorded. Recognition rates were consistent with previous research: happiness was highest and fear was lowest. The mouth and eye/brow areas were not equally important for the recognition of all emotions. More precisely, while the mouth was revealed to be important in the recognition of happiness and the eye/brow area of sadness, results are not as consistent for the other emotions. In Experiment 2, consistent with previous studies, the eyes/brows were fixated for longer periods than the mouth for all emotions. Again, variations occurred as a function of the emotions, the mouth having an important role in happiness and the eyes/brows in sadness. The general pattern of results for the other four emotions was inconsistent between the experiments as well as across different measures. The complexity of the results suggests that the recognition process of emotional facial expressions cannot be reduced to a simple feature processing or holistic processing for all emotions.

Eye movements as direct tests of the GO model for the missing-letter effect.

When asked to detect target letters while reading a text, participants miss more letters in frequently occurring function words than in less frequent content words. To account for this pattern of results, known as the missingletter effect, Greenberg, Healy, Koriat, and Kreiner (2004) proposed the guidance-organization (GO) model, which integrates the two leading models of the missing-letter effect while incorporating innovative assumptions based on the literature on eye movements during reading. The GO model was evaluated by monitoring the eye movements of participants while they searched for a target letter in a continuous text display. Results revealed the usual missing-letter effect, and many empirical benchmark effects in eye movement literature were observed. However, contrary to the predictions of the GO model, response latencies were longer for function words than for content words. Alternative models are discussed that can accommodate both error and response latency data for the missing-letter effect.

Direct assessments of the processing time hypothesis for the missing-letter effect.

When participants search for a target letter while reading, they make more omissions if the target letter is embedded in frequently used words or in the most frequent meaning of a polysemic word. According to the processing time hypothesis, this occurs because familiar words and meanings are identified faster, leaving less time for letter identification. Contrary to the predictions of the processing time hypothesis, with a rapid serial visual presentation procedure, participants were slower at detecting target letters for more frequent words or the most frequent meaning of a word (Experiments 1 and 2) or at detecting the word itself instead of a target letter (Experiment 3). In Experiments 4 and 5, participants self-initiated the presentation of each word, and the same pattern of results was observed as in Experiments 1 and 3. Positive correlations were also found between omission rate and response latencies.

The interaction of word frequency and word class: A test of the GO model's account of the missing-letter effect

When asked to detect target letters while reading a text, participants miss more letters in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. In this phenomenon, known as the missing-letter effect, two factors covary: word frequency and word class. According to the GO model, there should be an interaction between word class and word frequency with more omissions for function than for content words only among high-frequency words. This pattern would be due to the fact that function words could only assume a structure-supporting role if they are identified rapidly, which is only possible for high-frequency words. These predictions were tested by assessing omission rate for frequent and rare function and content words. Results lend support to the GO model with more omissions for frequent than for rare words, and more omissions for the function than for the content word among high-frequency words, but not among low-frequency words. These results were observed both in English (Experiment 1) and in French (Experiment 2).

Solving the chicken-and-egg problem of letter detection and fixation duration in reading

When asked to detect target letters while reading a text, participants miss more letters in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. According to the truncation assumption that characterizes most models of this effect, misses occur when word-processing time is shorter than letter-processing time. Fixation durations for detections and omissions were compared with fixation durations from a baseline condition when participants were searching for a target letter embedded in different words. Although, as predicted by truncation, fixation durations were longer for detections than for omissions, fixation durations for detections were also longer than those for the same words in the baseline condition, demonstrating that longer fixation durations when targets are detected are more likely to be due to demands associated with producing a detection response than to truncation. Also, contrary to predictions from the truncation assumption, the standard deviation of fixation durations for detections was larger than that from the baseline condition.

Confusion of fear and surprise: A test of the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis with eye movement monitoring

Of the basic emotional facial expressions, fear is typically less accurately recognised as a result of being confused with surprise. According to the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis, the difficulty in recognising fear could be attributed to the similar visual configuration with surprise. In effect, they share more muscle movements than they possess distinctive ones. The main goal of the current study was to test the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis in the recognition of fear and surprise using eye movement recording and by manipulating the distinctiveness between expressions. Results revealed that when the brow lowerer is the only distinctive feature between expressions, accuracy is lower, participants spend more time looking at stimuli and they make more comparisons between expressions than when stimuli include the lip stretcher. These results not only support the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis but extend its definition by suggesting that it is not solely the number of distinctive features that is important but also their qualitative value.

Exploring the Impact of Cognition on Young Children's Ability to Navigate a Speech-Generating Device

Abstract This study examined the impact of cognition on young childrens ability to navigate a speech-generating device (SGD) with dynamic paging. Knowledge of which cognitive factors impact navigational skills could help clinicians select the most appropriate SGD for children who have complex communication needs. A total of 65 typically developing children aged 48–77 months were assessed using the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R) and the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). Although significant correlations were found between the ability to navigate an SGD (using a taxonomic organization) and all cognitive factors except for cognitive flexibility, a stepwise linear regression revealed that sustained attention, categorization, and fluid reasoning were the most pragmatic set of factors to predict navigational skills. Future studies are needed to further understand the factors that impact childrens navigational skills.

The influence of multiple readings on the missing-letter effect revisited.

In searching for a target letter while reading, participants make more omissions when the target letter is embedded in frequent function words than when it is embedded in less frequent content words. According to the guidance-organization (GO) model, this occurs because high-frequency function words are processed faster than low-frequency content words, leaving less time available for letter processing. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments by increasing word-processing speed through text repetition, which should translate into higher omission rates. Participants either read the text and searched for the target letter once or read the text three times and searched for a target letter on all readings or the final reading only. In all the experiments in which participants could not anticipate the target letter to be used, results revealed the presence of a large missingletter effect that was unaffected by familiarity with the text. In addition, when participants knew from the start the target letter to be used on the final reading, the missing-letter effect was eliminated. Repeated search of the same text for different targets increased omissions equally for function words and content words, but this finding was present even when a new text was used, suggesting that repetition of the search task, rather than familiarity with the text, was responsible.

The role of eye movements in the missing-letter effect revisited with the rapid serial visual presentation procedure.

When participants read a text while searching for a target letter, they are more likely to miss the target letter embedded in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. This effect is usually observed with a text displayed normally, for which it has been found that frequent function words are fixated for a smaller amount of time than less frequent content words. However, similar pattern of omissions have been observed with a rapid serial visual presentation procedure in which words appear one at a time. These parallel results would demonstrate that fixation duration per se is not the proximal cause of the missing-letter effect only if eye movements are not made during the rapid serial visual presentation procedure. Therefore, the authors performed eye monitoring during the rapid serial visual presentation procedure. Results revealed that, with a rapid serial visual presentation procedure, participants fixated function and content words for almost the entire presentation duration. It is concluded that eye movements are not the proximal cause of the missing-letter effect.

Is Familiarity the All-Purpose Reading Tool? The Case of the Missing-Letter Effect for Self-Generated Texts

Participants performed a letter detection task on a self-generated and on an unfamiliar text to address two questions: Will letter processing differ for self-generated and unfamiliar texts? Is the missing-letter effect immune from text familiarity? The 36 participants were asked to write an essay and then to read it along with an unfamiliar text written by another participant while searching for a target letter. Results revealed the usual missing-letter effect for both familiar and unfamiliar texts and an effect of familiarity with fewer omissions for familiar than for unfamiliar texts. Results are interpreted in light of the Attentional-Disengagement model of the missing-letter effect.