@article{levesque-lacasse_relationship_2024,

title = {The Relationship Between the Ability to Infer Another's Pain and the Expectations Regarding the Appearance of Pain Facial Expressions: Investigation of the Role of Visual Perception},

author = {A. Lévesque-Lacasse and M. -C. Desjardins and D. Fiset and C. Charbonneau and S. Cormier and C. Blais},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85171357836&doi=10.1016%2fj.jpain.2023.08.007&partnerID=40&md5=dcfeb2e0eb9f13b42122ddfcbc987fc0},

doi = {10.1016/j.jpain.2023.08.007},

issn = {15265900},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Pain},

volume = {25},

number = {1},

pages = {250–264},

abstract = {Although pain is a commonly experienced and observed affective state, it is frequently misinterpreted, which leads to inadequate caregiving. Studies show the ability at estimating pain in others (estimation bias) and detecting its subtle variations (sensitivity) could emerge from independent mechanisms. While estimation bias is modulated by variables such as empathy level, pain catastrophizing tendency, and overexposure to pain, sensitivity remains unimpacted. The present study verifies if these 2 types of inaccuracies are partly explained by perceptual factors. Using reverse correlation, we measured their association with participants' mental representation of pain, or more simply put, with their expectations of what the face of a person in pain should look like. Experiment 1 shows that both parameters are associated with variations in expectations of this expression. More specifically, the estimation bias is linked with expectations characterized by salient changes in the middle face region, whereas sensitivity is associated with salient changes in the eyebrow region. Experiment 2 reveals that bias and sensitivity yield differences in emotional representations. Expectations of individuals with a lower underestimation tendency are qualitatively rated as expressing more pain and sadness, and those of individuals with a higher level of sensitivity as expressing more pain, anger, and disgust. Together, these results provide evidence for a perceptual contribution in pain inferencing that is independent of other psychosocial variables and its link to observers’ expectations. Perspective: This article reinforces the contribution of perceptual mechanisms in pain assessment. Moreover, strategies aimed to improve the reliability of individuals’ expectations regarding the appearance of facial expressions of pain could potentially be developed, and contribute to decrease inaccuracies found in pain assessment and the confusion between pain and other affective states. © 2023 United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc.},

note = {Publisher: Elsevier B.V.},

keywords = {anger, article, chronic pain, disgust, emotion, Emotions, Empathy, Estimation bias, expectation, eyebrow, Facial Expression, Facial expressions of pain, human, Humans, mental representation, Mental representations, motivation, Pain, pain assessment, psychology, questionnaire, reliability, reproducibility, Reproducibility of Results, Reverse correlation, sadness, sensitivity, vision, Visual Perception},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{petrin_maternal_2024,

title = {Maternal childhood emotional abuse increases cardiovascular responses to children’s emotional facial expressions},

author = {R. Pétrin and A. Bérubé and É. St-Pierre and C. Blais},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85192637581&doi=10.1371%2fjournal.pone.0302782&partnerID=40&md5=c464b30fe7cc5b7b0baaf865fdf1f6de},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0302782},

issn = {19326203 (ISSN)},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {19},

number = {5 May},

abstract = {Parents with a history of childhood maltreatment may be more likely to respond inadequately to their child’s emotional cues, such as crying or screaming, due to previous exposure to prolonged stress. While studies have investigated parents’ physiological reactions to their children’s vocal expressions of emotions, less attention has been given to their responses when perceiving children’s facial expressions of emotions. The present study aimed to determine if viewing facial expressions of emotions in children induces cardiovascular changes in mothers (hypo- or hyper-arousal) and whether these differ as a function of childhood maltreatment. A total of 104 mothers took part in this study. Their experiences of childhood maltreatment were measured using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Participants’ electrocardiogram signals were recorded during a task in which they viewed a landscape video (baseline) and images of children’s faces expressing different intensities of emotion. Heart rate variability (HRV) was extracted from the recordings as an indicator of parasympathetic reactivity. Participants presented two profiles: one group of mothers had a decreased HRV when presented with images of children’s facial expressions of emotions, while the other group’s HRV increased. However, HRV change was not significantly different between the two groups. The interaction between HRV groups and the severity of maltreatment experienced was marginal. Results suggested that experiences of childhood emotional abuse were more common in mothers whose HRV increased during the task. Therefore, more severe childhood experiences of emotional abuse could be associated with mothers’ cardiovascular hyperreactivity. Maladaptive cardiovascular responses could have a ripple effect, influencing how mothers react to their children’s facial expressions of emotions. That reaction could affect the quality of their interaction with their child. Providing interventions that help parents regulate their physiological and behavioral responses to stress might be helpful, especially if they have experienced childhood maltreatment. © 2024 Public Library of Science. All rights reserved.},

note = {Publisher: Public Library of Science},

keywords = {adult, alcohol consumption, analysis of variance, article, blood pressure, cardiovascular response, Child, Child Abuse, Childhood, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, demographics, electrocardiogram, Electrocardiography, emotion, Emotional Abuse, Emotions, Ethnicity, Facial Expression, female, Heart Rate, heart rate variability, human, human experiment, Humans, Likert scale, male, mother, mother child relation, Mother-Child Relations, Mothers, parasympathetic tone, physical activity, physiology, post hoc analysis, psychology, questionnaire, sexual abuse, Surveys and Questionnaires},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{berube_parental_2024,

title = {Parental depression moderates the relationship between childhood maltreatment and the recognition of children expressions of emotions},

author = {A. Bérubé and R. Pétrin and C. Blais},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85196266525&doi=10.3389%2ffpsyt.2024.1374872&partnerID=40&md5=ce03a1c39e709fc0f2c773d4f82f3a10},

doi = {10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1374872},

issn = {16640640 (ISSN)},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Psychiatry},

volume = {15},

abstract = {Background: Sensitivity plays a crucial role in parenting as it involves the ability to perceive and respond appropriately to children’s signals. Childhood maltreatment and depression can negatively impact adults’ ability to recognize emotions, but it is unclear which of these factors has a greater impact or how they interact. This knowledge is central to developing efficient, targeted interventions. This paper examines the interaction between parents’ depressive symptoms and childhood maltreatment and its influence on their ability to recognize the five basic emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust) in children’s faces. Method: The sample consisted of 52 parents. Depressive symptoms were measured by the depression subscale of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18), and maltreatment history was assessed by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Children’s emotional stimuli were morphed images created using The Child Affective Facial Expression (CAFE) database. Results: Our findings indicate that depressive symptoms moderate the relationship between parents’ history of childhood maltreatment and emotion recognition skills. Parents with higher depressive symptoms had lower emotion recognition accuracy when they had not experienced maltreatment. When childhood maltreatment was severe, emotion recognition skills were more consistent across all levels of depression. The relationship between depression and emotion recognition was primarily linked to recognizing sadness in children’s faces. Conclusion: These findings highlight how different experiences can affect parental abilities in emotion recognition and emphasize the need for interventions tailored to individual profiles to improve their effectiveness. Copyright © 2024 Bérubé, Pétrin and Blais.},

note = {Publisher: Frontiers Media SA},

keywords = {adult, anger, article, Beck Depression Inventory, Child, Child Abuse, child parent relation, childhood maltreatment, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Depression, disease severity, disgust, educational status, emotion, Emotion Recognition, Facial Expression, female, happiness, human, income, major clinical study, male, parent-child relationship, parental sensitivity, preschool child, questionnaire, recognition, sadness},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{berube_emotion_2023,

title = {Emotion Recognition in Adults With a History of Childhood Maltreatment: A Systematic Review},

author = {A. Bérubé and J. Turgeon and C. Blais and D. Fiset},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85109658115&doi=10.1177%2f15248380211029403&partnerID=40&md5=5654c858d5c0c84bfdd832a4c04dd1d5},

doi = {10.1177/15248380211029403},

issn = {15248380 (ISSN)},

year  = {2023},

date = {2023-01-01},

journal = {Trauma, Violence, and Abuse},

volume = {24},

number = {1},

pages = {278–294},

abstract = {Child maltreatment has many well-documented lasting effects on children. Among its consequences, it affects children’s recognition of emotions. More and more studies are recognizing the lasting effect that a history of maltreatment can have on emotion recognition. A systematic literature review was conducted to better understand this relationship. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol was used and four databases were searched, MEDLINE/PubMed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, and FRANCIS, using three cross-referenced key words: child abuse, emotion recognition, and adults. The search process identified 23 studies that met the inclusion criteria. The review highlights the wide variety of measures used to assess child maltreatment as well as the different protocols used to measure emotion recognition. The results indicate that adults with a history of childhood maltreatment show a differentiated reaction to happiness, anger, and fear. Happiness is less detected, whereas negative emotions are recognized more rapidly and at a lower intensity compared to adults not exposed to such traumatic events. Emotion recognition is also related to greater brain activation for the maltreated group. However, the results are less consistent for adults who also have a diagnosis of mental health problems. The systematic review found that maltreatment affects the perception of emotions expressed on both adult and child faces. However, more research is needed to better understand how a history of maltreatment is related to adults’ perception of children’s emotions. © The Author(s) 2021.},

note = {Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd},

keywords = {adult, anger, Child, Child Abuse, childhood maltreatment, cycle of maltreatment, emotion, Emotion Recognition, Emotions, Facial Expression, Fear, human, Humans, perception, physiology, psychology, systematic review},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{plouffe-demers_facial_2022,

title = {Facial Expression of Pain: Sex Differences in the Discrimination of Varying Intensities},

author = {M. -P. Plouffe-Demers and C. Saumure and D. Fiset and S. Cormier and C. Blais},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85138214204&doi=10.1037%2femo0001156&partnerID=40&md5=d5063c7ab05722c16694952ac5d53027},

doi = {10.1037/emo0001156},

issn = {15283542 (ISSN)},

year  = {2022},

date = {2022-01-01},

journal = {Emotion},

volume = {23},

number = {5},

pages = {1254–1266},

abstract = {It has been proposed that women are better than men at recognizing emotions and pain experienced by others. They have also been shown to be more sensitive to variations in pain expressions. The objective of the present study was to explore the perceptual basis of these sexual differences by comparing the visual information used by men and women to discriminate between different intensities of pain facial expressions. Using the data-driven Bubbles method, we were able to corroborate the woman advantage in the discrimination of pain intensities that did not appear to be explained by variations in empathic tendencies. In terms of visual strategies, our results do not indicate any qualitative differences in the facial regions used by men and women. However, they suggest that women rely on larger regions of the face that seems to completely mediate their advantage. This utilization of larger clusters could indicate either that women integrate simultaneously and more efficiently information coming from different areas of the face or that they are more flexible in the utilization of the information present in these clusters. Women would then opt for a more holistic or flexible processing of the facial information, while men would rely on a specific yet rigid integration strategy. © 2022 American Psychological Association},

note = {Publisher: American Psychological Association},

keywords = {adult, article, controlled study, data-driven methods, effect size, Empathy, Facial Expression, facial expressions, female, human, human experiment, information processing, male, normal human, Pain, pain intensity, qualitative research, sample size, sex difference, sex differences, vision, visual acuity, visual information, Visual Perception},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{leveille_effects_2022,

title = {Effects of Emotion and Emotional Ambiguity on Early Visual Event-Related Potentials},

author = {E. Léveillé and M. Desjardins and G. Dumel and C. Blais and D. Saint-Amour and P. Scherzer and L. De Beaumont},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85135853427&doi=10.1037%2femo0001119&partnerID=40&md5=7e89d6dee0b96766b8a359a3a9be4d73},

doi = {10.1037/emo0001119},

issn = {15283542 (ISSN)},

year  = {2022},

date = {2022-01-01},

journal = {Emotion},

volume = {23},

number = {3},

pages = {787–804},

abstract = {The modulation of early sensory event-related potentials such as the P1, N1, and N170 by emotion and emotional ambiguity is still controversial. Some studies have found a modulation of one or all of these components by one or both of these factors, whereas others have failed to show such results. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of emotion and ambiguity on the behavioral and electrophysiological responses to a morphed emotion recognition task. Thirty-seven healthy participants (19 men) completed an emotion recognition task where photographs of a male face expressing the six basic emotions morphed with another emotion (in a proportion ranging from 26% to 74%) were randomly presented while electroencephalography was recorded. After each face presentation, participants were asked to identify the facial emotion. We found an emotional effect on the P1, N1, and N170, with greater amplitudes for some emotional facial expressions than for others. However, we found no significant emotional ambiguity effect or interaction between emotion and ambiguity for any of these components. These findings suggest that computation of emotional facial expressions (regardless of their ambiguity) occurs from the early stages of brain processing. © 2022 American Psychological Association},

note = {Publisher: American Psychological Association},

keywords = {adult, article, Brain, clinical article, controlled study, Electroencephalography, electroencephalography (EEG), emotion, emotional facial expression (EFE), event related potential, event-related potential (ERP), Facial Expression, female, human, human experiment, male, mass univariate statistics, photography, univariate analysis},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{charbonneau_role_2021,

title = {The role of spatial frequencies for facial pain categorization},

author = {I. Charbonneau and J. Guérette and S. Cormier and C. Blais and G. Lalonde-Beaudoin and F. W. Smith and D. Fiset},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85111138273&doi=10.1038%2fs41598-021-93776-7&partnerID=40&md5=d759d0218de65fce371bb51d7f2593d8},

doi = {10.1038/s41598-021-93776-7},

issn = {20452322},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-01-01},

journal = {Scientific Reports},

volume = {11},

number = {1},

abstract = {Studies on low-level visual information underlying pain categorization have led to inconsistent findings. Some show an advantage for low spatial frequency information (SFs) and others a preponderance of mid SFs. This study aims to clarify this gap in knowledge since these results have different theoretical and practical implications, such as how far away an observer can be in order to categorize pain. This study addresses this question by using two complementary methods: a data-driven method without a priori expectations about the most useful SFs for pain recognition and a more ecological method that simulates the distance of stimuli presentation. We reveal a broad range of important SFs for pain recognition starting from low to relatively high SFs and showed that performance is optimal in a short to medium distance (1.2–4.8 m) but declines significantly when mid SFs are no longer available. This study reconciles previous results that show an advantage of LSFs over HSFs when using arbitrary cutoffs, but above all reveal the prominent role of mid-SFs for pain recognition across two complementary experimental tasks. © 2021, The Author(s).},

note = {Publisher: Nature Research},

keywords = {Adolescent, adult, Classification, Distance Perception, emotion, Emotions, Face, face pain, Facial Expression, Facial Pain, Facial Recognition, female, human, Humans, Knowledge, male, Normal Distribution, Pattern Recognition, procedures, psychology, Psychophysics, recognition, reproducibility, Reproducibility of Results, Visual, Young Adult},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{charbonneau_implicit_2020,

title = {Implicit race attitudes modulate visual information extraction for trustworthiness judgments},

author = {I. Charbonneau and K. Robinson and C. Blais and D. Fiset},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85091622106&doi=10.1371%2fjournal.pone.0239305&partnerID=40&md5=18ca2332affc9cb41d17afc8c450b0b4},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0239305},

issn = {19326203},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {15},

number = {9 September},

abstract = {Black people are still considered to be one of the most stigmatized groups and have to face multiple prejudices that undermine their well-being. Assumptions and beliefs about other racial groups are quite pervasive and have been shown to impact basic social tasks such as face processing. For example, individuals with high racial prejudice conceptualize other-race faces as less trustworthy and more criminal. However, it is unknown if implicit racial bias could modulate even low-level perceptual mechanisms such as spatial frequency (SF) extraction when judging the level of trustworthiness of other-race faces. The present study showed that although similar facial features are used to judge the trustworthiness of White and Black faces, own-race faces are processed in lower SF (i.e. coarse information such as the contour of the face and blurred shapes as opposed to high SF representing fine-grained information such as eyelashes or fine wrinkles). This pattern was modulated by implicit race biases: higher implicit biases are associated with a significantly higher reliance on low SF with White than with Black faces. Copyright: © 2020 Charbonneau et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.},

note = {Publisher: Public Library of Science},

keywords = {adult, African American, African Americans, article, Attitude, Caucasian, decision making, Ethics, European Continental Ancestry Group, extraction, eyelash, Facial Expression, facies, female, human, Humans, Judgment, male, perception, physiology, psychology, Racism, Social Perception, Stereotyping, visual information, wrinkle, Young Adult},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{turgeon_recognition_2020,

title = {Recognition of children's emotional facial expressions among mothers reporting a history of childhood maltreatment},

author = {J. Turgeon and A. Berube and C. Blais and A. Lemieux and A. Fournier},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85098916379&doi=10.1371%2fjournal.pone.0243083&partnerID=40&md5=2ef477465c0ad75d67b7f13d05f783b2},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0243083},

issn = {19326203},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-01-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {15},

number = {12 December},

abstract = {Several studies have shown that child maltreatment is associated with both positive and negative effects on the recognition of facial emotions. Research has provided little evidence of a relation between maltreatment during childhood and young adults' ability to recognize facial displays of emotion in children, an essential skill for a sensitive parental response. In this study, we examined the consequences of different forms of maltreatment experienced in childhood on emotion recognition during parenthood. Participants included sixty-three mothers of children aged 2 to 5 years. Retrospective self-reports of childhood maltreatment were assessed using the short form of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Emotion recognition was measured using a morphed facial emotion identification task of all six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). A Path Analysis via Structural Equation Model revealed that a history of physical abuse is related to a decreased ability to recognize both fear and sadness in children, whereas emotional abuse and sexual abuse are related to a decreased ability to recognize anger in children. In addition, emotional neglect is associated with an increased ability to recognize anger, whereas physical neglect is associated with less accuracy in recognizing happiness in children's facial emotional expressions. These findings have important clinical implications and expand current understanding of the consequences of childhood maltreatment on parents' ability to detect children's needs. © 2020 Turgeon et al.},

note = {Publisher: Public Library of Science},

keywords = {adult, Adverse Childhood Experiences, anger, article, Child, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, disgust, emotion, emotional neglect, Emotions, Facial Expression, Facial Recognition, Fear, female, happiness, human, Humans, major clinical study, male, mother, Mothers, parenthood, path analysis, physical abuse, Preschool, preschool child, psychology, recognition, Retrospective Studies, retrospective study, sadness, self report, sexual abuse, structural equation modeling, Young Adult},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{blais_facial_2019,

title = {Facial Features Underlying the Decoding of Pain Expressions},

author = {C. Blais and D. Fiset and H. Furumoto-Deshaies and M. Kunz and D. Seuss and S. Cormier},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85060707205&doi=10.1016%2fj.jpain.2019.01.002&partnerID=40&md5=2d2dd305de430a7ce8973644f57a4996},

doi = {10.1016/j.jpain.2019.01.002},

issn = {15265900 (ISSN)},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Pain},

volume = {20},

number = {6},

pages = {728–738},

abstract = {Previous research has revealed that the face is a finely tuned medium for pain communication. Studies assessing the decoding of facial expressions of pain have revealed an interesting discrepancy, namely that, despite eyes narrowing being the most frequent facial expression accompanying pain, individuals mostly rely on brow lowering and nose wrinkling/upper lip raising to evaluate pain. The present study verifies if this discrepancy may reflect an interaction between the features coding pain expressions and the features used by observers and stored in their mental representations. Experiment 1 shows that more weight is allocated to the brow lowering and nose wrinkling/upper lip raising, supporting the idea that these features are allocated more importance when mental representations of pain expressions are stored in memory. These 2 features have been associated with negative valence and with the affective dimension of pain, whereas the eyes narrowing feature has been associated more closely with the sensory dimension of pain. However, experiment 2 shows that these 2 features remain more salient than eyes narrowing, even when attention is specifically directed toward the sensory dimension of pain. Together, these results suggest that the features most saliently coded in the mental representation of facial expressions of pain may reflect a bias toward allocating more weight to the affective information encoded in the face. Perspective: This work reveals the relative importance of 3 facial features representing the core of pain expressions during pain decoding. The results show that 2 features are over-represented; this finding may potentially be linked with the estimation biases occurring when clinicians and lay persons evaluate pain based on facial appearance. © 2019 the American Pain Society},

note = {Publisher: Churchill Livingstone Inc.},

keywords = {adult, article, attention, decoding, Eye, Facial Expression, facies, female, human, human experiment, Humans, lip, male, Memory, Nose, Pain, pain assessment, pain dimensions, pain measurement, sensory analysis, wrinkle, Young Adult},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}