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Iconic faces are not real faces: enhanced emotion detection and altered neural processing as faces become more iconic

Overview of attention for article published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, December 2016
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (79th percentile)
  • Average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source

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12 X users

Citations

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27 Dimensions

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57 Mendeley
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Title
Iconic faces are not real faces: enhanced emotion detection and altered neural processing as faces become more iconic
Published in
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, December 2016
DOI 10.1186/s41235-016-0021-8
Pubmed ID
Authors

L. N. Kendall, Quentin Raffaelli, Alan Kingstone, Rebecca M. Todd

Abstract

Iconic representations are ubiquitous; they fill children's cartoons, add humor to newspapers, and bring emotional tone to online communication. Yet, the communicative function they serve remains unaddressed by cognitive psychology. Here, we examined the hypothesis that iconic representations communicate emotional information more efficiently than their realistic counterparts. In Experiment 1, we manipulated low-level features of emotional faces to create five sets of stimuli that ranged from photorealistic to fully iconic. Participants identified emotions on briefly presented faces. Results showed that, at short presentation times, accuracy for identifying emotion on more "cartoonized" images was enhanced. In addition, increasing contrast and decreasing featural complexity benefited accuracy. In Experiment 2, we examined an event-related potential component, the P1, which is sensitive to low-level visual stimulus features. Lower levels of contrast and complexity within schematic stimuli were also associated with lower P1 amplitudes. These findings support the hypothesis that iconic representations differ from realistic images in their ability to communicate specific information, including emotion, quickly and efficiently, and that this effect is driven by changes in low-level visual features in the stimuli.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 12 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 57 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 57 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 12 21%
Student > Ph. D. Student 10 18%
Student > Bachelor 6 11%
Lecturer 4 7%
Student > Postgraduate 3 5%
Other 10 18%
Unknown 12 21%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 22 39%
Computer Science 6 11%
Neuroscience 5 9%
Social Sciences 2 4%
Arts and Humanities 2 4%
Other 7 12%
Unknown 13 23%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 October 2020.
All research outputs
#4,833,258
of 25,377,790 outputs
Outputs from Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
#162
of 365 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#85,679
of 419,629 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
#10
of 15 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,377,790 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 80th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 365 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 43.7. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 55% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 419,629 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 15 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.