Grondhuis Sabrina N, Jimmy Angela, Teague Carolina, Brunet Nicolas M
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Millsaps College, Jackson, MS, United States.
Front Psychol. 2021 Jun 4;12:620768. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.620768. eCollection 2021.
Previous studies have found it is more difficult identifying an emotional expression displayed by an older than a younger face. It is unknown whether this is caused by age-related changes such as wrinkles and folds interfering with perception, or by the aging of facial muscles, potentially reducing the ability of older individuals to display an interpretable expression. To discriminate between these two possibilities, participants attempted to identify facial expressions under different conditions. To control for the variables (wrinkles/folds vs facial muscles), we used Generative Adversarial Networks to make faces look older or younger. Based upon behavior data collected from 28 individuals, our model predicts that the odds of correctly identifying the expressed emotion of a face reduced 16.2% when younger faces (condition 1) are artificially aged (condition 3). Replacing the younger faces with natural old-looking faces (Condition 2), however, results in an even stronger effect (odds of correct identification decreased by 50.9%). Counterintuitively, making old faces (Condition 2) look young (Condition 4) results in the largest negative effect (odds of correct identification decreased by 74.8% compared with natural young faces). Taken together, these results suggest that both age-related decline in the facial muscles' ability to express facial emotions and age-related physical changes in the face, explain why it is difficult to recognize facial expressions from older faces; the effect of the former, however, is much stronger than that of the latter. Facial muscle exercises, therefore, might improve the capacity to convey facial emotional expressions in the elderly.
以往的研究发现，识别老年人脸上展现出的情感表情比年轻人的更难。目前尚不清楚这是由与年龄相关的变化（如皱纹和褶皱干扰感知）导致的，还是由面部肌肉老化（这可能会降低老年人展现可解读表情的能力）导致的。为了区分这两种可能性，参与者尝试在不同条件下识别面部表情。为了控制变量（皱纹/褶皱与面部肌肉），我们使用生成对抗网络使面部看起来更老或更年轻。基于从28个人收集的行为数据，我们的模型预测，当年轻面孔（条件1）被人为老化（条件3）时，正确识别面部所表达情感的几率降低16.2%。然而，用自然的老年面孔（条件2）替换年轻面孔，会产生更强的效果（正确识别几率降低50.9%）。与直觉相反的是，让老年面孔（条件2）看起来年轻（条件4）会产生最大的负面影响（与自然年轻面孔相比，正确识别几率降低74.8%）。综合来看，这些结果表明，面部肌肉表达面部情感能力的与年龄相关的下降以及面部与年龄相关的生理变化，都解释了为什么难以从老年面孔识别面部表情；然而，前者的影响比后者要强得多。因此，面部肌肉锻炼可能会提高老年人传达面部情感表情 的能力。
