Parr Lisa A
Division of Psychobiology, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Atlanta, Georgia 30329, USA.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2003 Dec;1000:56-78. doi: 10.1196/annals.1280.005.
The ability to recognize and discriminate conspecific faces and facial expressions has played a critical role in the evolution of social communication. Darwin was one of the first to speculate that human and nonhuman primate facial expressions share similar mechanisms for production and functions in expressing emotion. Since his seminal publication, numerous studies have attempted to unravel the meaning of animal signals, with the most success coming from the field of vocal communication, where researchers have identified the referential and emotional nature of specific vocalizations. Studies specifically addressing nonverbal facial displays, however, have faced numerous methodological challenges, including how to objectively describe facial movements and how to study the perception and production of these signals within a social context. In this paper, I will review my studies on chimpanzee face recognition, their ability to categorize facial expressions, and the extent to which chimpanzee facial expressions may convey information about emotion. Finally, recent studies from my lab have begun to address the role of auditory and visual cues in facial expression categorization. Chimpanzees were given the task of matching expressions according to which sensory modality was more salient, the visual or auditory component. For some expressions the visual modality was preferred, while for others the auditory modality was preferred. These data suggest that different social and ecological pressures may shift attention towards one sensory modality over another, such as during long-distance communication or emotional conflict.
识别和区分同种个体的面孔及面部表情的能力在社会交流的进化过程中发挥了关键作用。达尔文是最早推测人类和非人类灵长类动物的面部表情在产生机制和表达情感的功能方面具有相似性的人之一。自他的开创性著作发表以来，众多研究试图揭示动物信号的含义，其中在声音交流领域取得的成功最为显著，研究人员在该领域确定了特定发声的指代性和情感本质。然而，专门针对非语言面部展示的研究面临着诸多方法学挑战，包括如何客观描述面部动作以及如何在社会背景下研究这些信号的感知和产生。在本文中，我将回顾我关于黑猩猩面部识别、它们对面部表情进行分类的能力以及黑猩猩面部表情在多大程度上可能传达情感信息的研究。最后，我实验室最近的研究已开始探讨听觉和视觉线索在面部表情分类中的作用。黑猩猩被给予根据视觉或听觉成分哪个更显著来匹配表情的任务。对于某些表情，视觉方式更受青睐，而对于其他表情，听觉方式更受青睐。这些数据表明，不同的社会和生态压力可能会使注意力从一种感官方式转向另一种感官方式，例如在远距离交流或情感冲突期间。
