Emotion from a different angle: facial threat signals affect female spatial processing

Shea O'Bertos, Laurie Sykes Tottenham, Galilee Thompson, Bianca Hatin

Research output: Contribution to conferencePoster

Abstract

Making use of facial threat signals requires both emotion and spatial processing – both the emotion and the gaze-target must be identified. Females typically outperform males on emotion recognition tasks, whereas males typically outperform females on spatial processing (SP) tasks. Evolutionary theories suggest that females’ advantage in recognition of threat emotions, in particular, developed due to survival demands; we extend this theory, suggesting that threat localization via SP of gaze direction also promoted survival. Using a novel measure, we tested and found support for the hypothesis that gaze localization would be preferentially enhanced in females for threat compared to nonthreat expressions.
Original languageEnglish
Pages17-17
Number of pages1
Publication statusPublished - 3 Jul 2014
EventCanadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science 24th Annual Meeting - Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
Duration: 3 Jul 20145 Jul 2014
https://www.csbbcs.org/fileadmin/csbbcs/storage/CSBBCS_2014_Program.pdf

Conference

ConferenceCanadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science 24th Annual Meeting
Abbreviated titleCSBBCS 2014
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto
Period3/07/145/07/14
Internet address

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