The role of dynamics in visual adaptation to emotional facial expressions

The effect of adaptation to emotional facial expressions occurs after a prolonged observation of an intense display of a basic emotion (the adaptor) which biases the perception of a subsequent briefly presented face away from the adaptor. Previous studies of this effect mostly explored static images of facial expressions. We conducted two experiments to examine the features of adaptation to dynamic facial expressions. In Experiment 1, we created three types of adaptors based on video clips of the face of a female model who demonstrated the transitions between expressions of happiness and sadness. The adaptors included static expressions, dynamic expressions and dynamic changes from one expression to another. We expected the perception of the test stimuli to be biased away from the emotion displayed in the static adaptors or from the emotion at the end of the dynamic adaptors. The results showed that the static and dynamic expressions resulted in adaptation effects of the same size, and no adaptation occurred to the dynamic changes between two expressions. In Experiment 2, we tested the hypothesis that adaptation to dynamic changes of expression occurs if the duration of the adaptor is doubled (from 5 to 10 seconds). The results of the experiment supported the hypothesis. Overall, we confirmed the effect of adaptation to the emotional content of a facial expression. No adaptation to the temporal structure of the expression (forward versus reversed in time) was found. Correspondence: Olga A. Korolkova, olga.kurakova@gmail.com; Center for Experimental Psychology MSUPE, 2a Shelepikhinskaya Quay, 123390 Moscow, Russia