engleski

Specificity of processing of facial emotional expressions as a component of face cognition in women

The contemporary models of face cognition differentiate processing invariant facial aspects, pertaining to a person’s facial identity, and changeable facial aspects, such as emotional expressions. These aspects are partly processed together and partly independently, although the stage at which the processing separates is not well established. In our research we wanted to add to the knowledge about the degree of their (in)dependence by exploring individual differences in the abilities to accurately perceive and memorize both faces and facial expressions. We collected data on face cognition of both emotional expressions and invariant facial aspects, general cognitive ability, and emotional intelligence for 301 Croatian female students (Mage = 21.2) on two occasions approximately five months apart. We explored different ways of creating latent variable as to reflect the component specific to emotion expression separable from face cognition of invariant aspects and other cognitive abilities measures. We also explored the relations with emotional intelligence since the processing of emotion expressions is considered as one of the basic branches of emotional intelligence. The measures of cognition of invariant face aspects almost completely explained the common variance of the emotion expression measures. We will discuss if this low specificity of the measures of emotion expressions processing informs us more on the validity of the measures used or on the construct-related issues. Special attention should be given to further development of these measures, boosting thus an evaluation of theoretical as well as practical utility of this specific ability.

face cognition, invariant face aspects, emotion expressions, specific variance

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