Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, 6229 EV, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Psychol Res. 2020 Jul;84(5):1400-1406. doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1133-1. Epub 2019 Jan 2.
Emotions are expressed by the face, the voice and the whole body. Research on the face and the voice has not only demonstrated that emotions are perceived categorically, but that this perception can be manipulated. The purpose of this study was to investigate, via two separate experiments using adaptation and multisensory techniques, whether the perception of body emotion expressions also shows categorical effects and plasticity. We used an approach developed for studies investigating both face and voice emotion perception and created novel morphed affective body stimuli, which varied in small incremental steps between emotions. Participants were instructed to perform an emotion categorisation of these morphed bodies after adaptation to bodies conveying different expressions (Experiment 1), or while simultaneously hearing affective voices (Experiment 2). We show that not only is body expression perceived categorically, but that both adaptation to affective body expressions and concurrent presentation of vocal affective information can shift the categorical boundary between body expressions, specifically for the angry body expressions. Overall, our findings provide significant new insights into emotional body categorisation, which may prove important in gaining a deeper understanding of body expression perception in everyday social situations.
情绪可以通过面部、声音和整个身体来表达。对面部和声音的研究不仅表明情绪是被categorically 感知的，而且这种感知是可以被操纵的。本研究的目的是通过两个使用适应和多感官技术的单独实验来调查，身体情感表达的感知是否也显示出categorical 效应和可塑性。我们使用了一种针对研究面部和声音情感感知的方法，并创建了新的变形情感身体刺激，这些刺激在不同的情感之间以小的增量变化。参与者被指示在适应表达不同表情的身体后（实验 1），或同时听到情感声音时（实验 2）对这些变形身体进行情感分类。我们表明，身体表达不仅是被categorically 感知的，而且对情感身体表达的适应和同时呈现的情感声音信息都可以改变身体表达之间的categorical 边界，特别是对于愤怒的身体表达。总的来说，我们的发现为情感身体分类提供了重要的新见解，这可能对理解日常生活中的身体表达感知具有重要意义。
