Computer-enhanced emotion in facial expressions.
(1/2)
Benson & Perrett's (1991 b) computer-based caricature procedure was used to alter the positions of anatomical landmarks in photographs of emotional facial expressions with respect to their locations in a reference norm face (e.g. a neutral expression). Exaggerating the differences between an expression and its norm produces caricatured images, whereas reducing the differences produces 'anti-caricatures'. Experiment 1 showed that caricatured (+50% different from neutral) expressions were recognized significantly faster than the veridical (0%, undistorted) expressions. This held for all six basic emotions from the Ekman & Friesen (1976) series, and the effect generalized across different posers. For experiment 2, caricatured (+50%) and anti-caricatured (-50%) images were prepared using two types of reference norm; a neutral-expression norm, which would be optimal if facial expression recognition involves monitoring changes in the positioning of underlying facial muscles, and a perceptually-based norm involving an average of the expressions of six basic emotions (excluding neutral) in the Ekman & Friesen (1976) series. The results showed that the caricatured images were identified significantly faster, and the anti-caricatured images significantly slower, than the veridical expressions. Furthermore, the neutral-expression and average-expression norm caricatures produced the same pattern of results. (+info)
The image and advocacy of public health in American caricature and cartoons from 1860 to 1900.
(2/2)
The decades just before and after the founding of the American Public Health Association in 1872 saw an efflorescence of political cartooning and caricature in national-circulation weeklies. Part of the political and social critique that cartoonists and their editors provided the public focused on needs or opportunities for preventing illness and accidents. This paper presents a small selection of editorial cartoons that agitated in support of public health activities over 4 decades. The goals are to illustrate several concerns that rose to national prominence in that era, to examine the kinds of imagery that newspapers and magazine editors offered their readers, and to observe how frequently the public was encouraged to see politicians and commercial interests as responsible for preventable health problems. This discussion focuses exclusively on propagandistic images, leaving aside the reportorial depictions of events in the news and the neutral illustrations of methods and machines in scientific and technical publications. (+info)