The HED Task Catalog is under development. IDs are not stable until formal release. Comments are welcome at github.com/hed-standard/hed-task/issues.

Facial Emotion Recognition Task

HED task ID: hedtsk_facial_emotion_recognition

Family: Emotion elicitation and regulation tasks

Also known as: Ekman Faces Task, Facial Emotion Recognition

Identification of an emotion category from a face image; accuracy and RT per emotion index emotion decoding ability.

Description

Participants view photographs of facial expressions (typically from the Ekman and Friesen Pictures of Facial Affect or similar validated sets) and identify the emotion portrayed. The standard set includes six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) plus neutral. Accuracy and RT are measured across emotion categories. The task engages a network including the amygdala (particularly for fear), fusiform face area, superior temporal sulcus, and prefrontal cortex. It is widely used in clinical research on schizophrenia, autism, and mood disorders.

Inclusion test

An experiment is an instance of this task when its procedure matches, it manipulates at least one of the listed variables, and it records at least one of the listed measures.

Procedure

Participants view face photographs displaying basic emotions and identify the expressed emotion from a fixed set (happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, surprised, neutral).

Manipulation

Emotion category; expression intensity (morphed continua); presentation duration; face race/gender.

Measurement

Accuracy per emotion; confusion matrices; unbiased hit rate; RT.

Variations

Named versions that change what the participant experiences or does. The identifier of a variation is hedvar_<task>__<variation>.

Variation

Description

Justification

Static Ekman Faces (6 basic emotions)

hedvar_facial_emotion_recognition__static_ekman_faces_6_basic_emotions

Standard categorization of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise.

Canonical categorical recognition with posed expressions

Morphed Intensity

hedvar_facial_emotion_recognition__morphed_intensity

Expressions blended at different intensities (20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%).

Continuous emotion intensity gradient; participant categorizes or rates on morph scale

Dynamic Expressions

hedvar_facial_emotion_recognition__dynamic_expressions

Video clips transitioning from neutral to full expression.

Temporally unfolding expressions; different stimulus type with motion information

Microexpression Detection

hedvar_facial_emotion_recognition__microexpression_detection

Brief (40–200 ms) expression flashes; tests rapid perception.

Very brief (~40 ms) expressions; different detection difficulty and timing

Emotion-in-Context

hedvar_facial_emotion_recognition__emotion_in_context

Faces presented with body posture and scene context.

Body or scene context accompanies face; changes integration demands

Expression Matching

hedvar_facial_emotion_recognition__expression_matching

Match expression to labeled emotion or to another face.

Match-to-sample format; different response structure from labeling

Compound Expressions

hedvar_facial_emotion_recognition__compound_expressions

Faces showing mixed emotions (happy-surprise, angry-disgust).

Blended or simultaneous multi-emotion displays; different stimulus category

Dimensional Ratings

hedvar_facial_emotion_recognition__dimensional_ratings

Rating faces on continuous valence and arousal rather than category.

Continuous valence/arousal ratings instead of categorical labels; different response type and scale

Cognitive processes

This task is designed to engage the following processes:

Key references

  • Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1976). Pictures of Facial Affect. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

  • Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (1994). Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. Nature, 372(6507), 669-672. (DOI, PubMed)

Further references

  • Calvo, M. G., & Nummenmaa, L. (2016). Perceptual and affective mechanisms in facial expression recognition: An integrative review. Cognition and Emotion, 30(6), 1081–1106. (DOI)

  • Kret, M. E., & De Gelder, B. (2012). A review on sex differences in processing emotional signals. Neuropsychologia, 50(7), 1211–1221. (DOI, PubMed)

  • Dobs, K., Isik, L., Pantazis, D., & Kanwisher, N. (2019). How face perception unfolds over time. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1258. (DOI, PubMed)

  • Palermo, R., & Rhodes, G. (2007). Are you always on my mind? A review of how face perception and attention interact. Neuropsychologia, 45(1), 75–92. [Updated: Barrett, L. F., Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, A. M., & Pollak, S. D. (2019). Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 20(1), 1–68.] (DOI, PubMed)