ИСТИНА

We used composite facial expressions to explore the role of diagnostic features in upper and lower half-faces in emotion discrimination. Stimuli were images of six basic emotional expressions plus Neutral of a male poser, and 24 composites combining Happiness, Anger and Fear in upper or lower face with other 5 expressions. These three expressions concentrate their distinguishing features in a single half-face. Stimuli were presented in 930 concurrent pairs, each for 2000 ms. Eighteen participants rated pair wise similarity on a scale from 1 to 9. Full matrices were processed with PROXSCAL multidimensional scaling program. We retained a 5D solution (Stress = 10.3%). D1 and D3 captured lower-face variations: D1 separated X-Happiness (smiling mouth) from other stimuli, with X-Disgust and X-Sadness (closed mouth) at the other extreme; D3 opposed X-Anger (compressed mouth) and X-Fear, X-Surprise (open mouth). Other dimensions were upper-face: D2 opposed Fear-X, Surprise-X (wide-opened eyes) and other expressions; D4 separated Fear-X from Surprise-X, and Sadness-X from others; D5 separated Anger-X from others. Similarity processing treated diagnostic facial features as independent components. That is, the solution resolved into independent upper- and lower- face sub-spaces, with little sign of holistic aspects for these expressions of complex, hard-to-verbalise emotions.