New：Facial Expression Recognition of Portuguese using American Data as a Reference
To test this hypothesis the performance of Portuguese in the recognition of Happiness, Surprise, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger NimStim facial expressions was compared with the Americans, but no significant differences were found. However, with exception for Surprise, Portuguese tend to show a lower accuracy rate for all the emotions studied. Results highlighted some cultural differences.
Catarina Iria (University of Coimbra)
Rui Paixão (University of Coimbra)
Fernando Barbosa (University of Porto)
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A shortened version of the original NimStim study [18], comprising 515 photographs which achieved more than 50% of correct answers in the original study of 672 images used by Tottenham et al. (2009), was used. These pictures such as in the original study are of professional actors (14 men and 18 women), of various ethnic groups (10 African, 6 Asian, 25 European, 2 Latin-American), facially expressing the six basic emotions (happiness, disgust, fear, anger, sadness and surprise) and also calm and neutral faces. The colour photographs were mounted on a white background.
The selected set of photographs was beforehand shown to a heterogeneous group of 20 participants as a way of checking the clarity, meaning and accuracy of the words referring to the emotions that were chosen for the Portuguese answering system. The participants suggested some changes in the answering method and in the specification of some emotions. Thus, it was decided to name the emotions, instead of using the adjectives referring to those who feel them. Therefore, the Portuguese names given to the emotions were tristeza (sadness), raiva (anger), medo (fear), felicidade (happiness), surpresa (surprise), nojo(disgust), neutro (neutral), calmo (calm) and outro (other).
Table 1
Accuracy rates of correct answers for happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger in Portuguese and Americans using NimStim.
Table 1
Accuracy rates of correct answers for happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger in Portuguese and Americans using NimStim.
| EMOTION |
Portuguese M(SD) |
American M(SD) |
Chi-square | p value |
| HAPPINESS | 83.64 (16.91) | 92 (7.33) | 0.40 | 0.53 |
| SURPRISE | 78.91 (2.78) | 71 (11.50) | 0.42 | 0.52 |
| SADNESS | 59.08 (21.17) | 71.50 (18.50) | 1.18 | 0.28 |
| FEAR | 42.14 (19.23) | 60.00 (16.50) | 3.12 | 0.08 |
| DISGUST | 68.14 (28.71) | 89.50 (22) | 2.89 | 0.09 |
| ANGER | 73.73 (16.40) | 87 (24.50) | 1.10 | 0.30 |
Author：
Rui Paixão (University of Coimbra)
Fernando Barbosa (University of Porto)
