Resume: Facial expressions influence the memory color effect, with angry and fearful faces being more strongly influenced than neutral faces. Participants perceived achromatic angry and fearful faces as red-yellow, indicating that expression influences color memory.
This research highlights how emotions and memory color are linked. Future studies aim to investigate attention to different facial expressions and colors.
Key Facts:
- Angry and fearful faces influence memory color more than neutral faces.
- Participants perceived achromatic angry and fearful faces as red-yellow.
- Research published in Journal of vision on May 31, 2024.
Source: TUT
The link between facial expressions and the memory color effect has been elucidated through a joint effort between the Cognitive Neurotechnology Unit and the Visual Perception and Cognition Laboratory of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Toyohashi University of Technology.
The memory color effect refers to the phenomenon whereby knowledge of the typical color of a specific object (its memory color) influences the recognition of its actual color.
This study showed that angry and fearful faces were more affected in terms of color recognition due to the memory color effect compared to neutral faces and that memory colors varied between expressions.
The results of this study have been published online in the Journal of vision on May 31, 2024.
Details
The face is an important feature for recognizing people, and as reflected in Japanese expressions such as “kaoiro wo ukagau” (look at the skin color; that is, be sensitive to one’s mood, read one’s facial expression), facial color plays a key role when recognizing people. reading someone’s emotions.
Recent research has shown that facial color changes an individual’s judgment of expressions, for example, a reddish face is perceived as angry even when faces with the same features are presented.
However, it was not well understood whether everyday memories of facial colors or the memory colors formed by knowledge of the typical colors of specific objects also vary between expressions.
Therefore, the research team focused on the phenomenon in which color recognition changes depending on memory colors, known as the memory color effect, and used facial images with different expressions and colors to conduct a psychophysical experiment.
Experimental participants were asked to select which color a face appeared to have from two options (the ‘typical color’ and the ‘opposite color’) for facial images presented to them.
The typical color is defined as the color that the observer retains as knowledge about the object and in the case of faces refers, among other things, to the skin color. The opposite color refers to the color that is opposite in hue to the typical color.
The experiment used three expression images with an angry face, a neutral face and a fearful face with different colors. The experiment was conducted in a dimly lit room with a constant brightness, which softened the influence of ambient brightness on the appearance of the colors.
The results of the experiment showed that angry and fearful faces that were actually achromatic (gray) appeared to be colored more red-yellow, their typical color, than achromatic neutral faces.
Because red-yellow, the memory color for angry and fearful faces, has higher saturation than for neutral faces, it is possible that the achromatic face color tends to appear colored with the typical color.
This is similar to reports from previous research that expressions introduce a bias in the remembered face color, and that the remembered face color was red-yellow with higher saturation than when it was actually perceived.
First-year PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and lead author of this study, Yuya Hasegawa, explains: “Generally speaking, the color that comes to mind when you think of anger is red, and red is also often used when expressing anger. Do people then regularly and empirically remember angry faces as redder than neutral faces?
“We hypothesized that if people change the color of faces depending on their expression when they remember them, the memory color should differ for each expression, which inspired this study.”
Future prospects
These results are the first to show that expressions influence faces at the level of memory color. Memory and attention are closely linked.
In the future, we will test whether attention is more likely to be directed to ‘red angry faces’ than to normal angry faces or red neutral faces, and explore how we can deepen our understanding of the mechanisms by which remembered facial color differs depending on expression. .
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research JP22K17987, JP20H05956 and JP20H04273.
About this facial expression and memory research news
Author: Shino Okazaki
Source: TUT
Contact: Shino Okazaki – TUT
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: Open access.
“Facial expressions influence the memory of facial colors” by Hasegawa, Y et al. Journal of vision
Abstract
Facial expressions influence the memory of facial colors
Facial color influences the perception of facial expressions, and emotional expressions influence the way facial color is remembered. However, it remains unclear whether facial expressions influence everyday facial color memory.
The memory color effect shows that knowledge about typical colors influences the perception of the actual color of certain objects. To investigate the effect of facial color memory, we examined whether the memory color effect for faces varies depending on facial expression.
We calculated the subjective achromatic point of the facial expression image stimulus and compared the degree to which it was shifted from the actual achromatic point between facial expression conditions.
We hypothesized that if memory of facial color is influenced by the color of the facial expression (e.g., anger is a warm color, fear is a cold color), the subjective achromatic point would vary depending on the facial expression.
In Experiment 1, we recruited 13 participants who adjusted the color of facial expression stimuli (anger, neutral, and fear) and a banana stimulus to be achromatic.
No significant differences in the subjective achromatic point between facial expressions were observed. We next conducted Experiment 2 with 23 participants, because Experiment 1 did not take into account sensitivity to facial color changes; people perceive greater color differences in faces than in non-faces.
Participants selected which facial color they thought the expression stimulus appeared to be, and chose one of two options presented to them.
The results indicated that the subjective achromatic points of anger and fear faces shifted significantly to the opposite color direction compared to neutral faces in the brief presentation condition.
This research suggests that memory color for faces differs depending on facial expressions and supports the idea that the perception of emotional expressions can influence facial color memory.