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Emotional and cognitive processes in communication in humans and other primates
Emotional and cognitive processes in communication in humans and other primates
This symposium aims to bring together contributions from several fields on verbal and non-verbal signals and features of their production and processing in the overall experience of human communication. From a phylogenetic and ontogenetic overview of the function of the so-called facial expressions, we go through the perception of emotion in nonverbal features of speech and other human vocalizations, we navigate the neural architecture of language and its relation to other cognitive functions, we are transported to the report of emerging sign languages, and we wonder on the function of literature in emotional expression and elicitation. The questions these different lines of research raise and the discussions they fuel, will hopefully shed some light on ancient systems of expression on which verbal communication is deeply nested.
Cross-species facial expression – What’s in an expression after all?
Augusta Gaspar, Catolica Research Center for Psychological, Family and Social Wellbeing (CRC-W), Faculty of Human Sciences, Catholic University of Portugal
Facial behavior has been widely portrayed as a “window to the mind”, a reliable external expression of inner emotions. This popular view dominated Psychology for over four decades, but recent advances on facial behavior research, resorting to accurate descriptors of facial muscle actions and their spontaneous emotional contexts, as well as laboratorial experiments on face perception, have been challenging that view and produce quite a different portrayal of what the face conveys. I will review some of these findings, including, cross-species commonalities in a few emotional contexts, but mostly other types of information that human and non-human primate facial expression convey, highlighting individual, contextual and cultural differences and the unexpected overlapping of expressive elements during quite different emotional experiences.
Neuro-cognitive mechanisms for vocal emotional processing in humans
César Lima, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Portugal
The voice is a primary tool for human communication. In addition to being the carrier of speech, it conveys socially relevant information, such as information about the sex, identity, and emotions of the speaker. I will discuss how we perceive emotions in voices, based on modulations of the tone of voice while speaking and nonverbal vocalizations such as laughter. Behavioural and neuroimaging experiments will be presented, combining evidence from typical and specialized samples, including ageing adults, musicians, and children at risk for psychopathy. I will argue that an individual-differences-approach is key to advance neurobiological models of vocal emotional communication.
Factors affecting the perception of facial expression
Francisco Esteves, Department of Psychology and Social Work, Mid Sweden University, Sweden & Centro de Investigação e de Intervenção Social, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
Our perceptual apparatus has evolved to deal with the challenges and threats our ancestors had to face in order to survive. A crucial source of information in social contexts, revealing something about the intentions of others (e.g. being threatening or friendly), is the facial expression. It is therefore reasonable that we have developed a great facility in perceiving emotional expressions, in order to be able to react quickly when facing social threats. This ability is reflected in the time needed to differentiate different emotional expressions. In this talk, evidence about fast detection and processing of threatening facial expressions will be presented.
On the language-cognition conundrum: What can brain-damage patients tell us?
Carolina Maruta, Catolica Research Centre for Psychological, Family and Social Wellbeing Faculty of Human Sciences (CRC-W), Catholic University of Portugal, and Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon
The detailed study of patients with acquired aphasia following focal brain damage to the language-dominant hemisphere has provided extensive evidence regarding the neural basis of language. Interest has shifted recently to encompass progressive language disorders emerging in the context of pathological ageing: they represent not only an opportunity to study the neural components of the asymmetrically distributed large scale network for language but also patterns of distorted connectivity associated with neurodegeneration that leads to a more generalized cognitive disruption. This talk tackles evidence within these conditions to further contribute to the understanding of the highly interactive relationship between language and cognition.
The emergent signs of Sao Tome and Principe Sign Language: Some keys for language evolution
Ana Mineiro, Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Health (CIIS), Catholic University of Portugal
In Sao Tome and Principe (STP), there are approximately five thousand deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. Until recently, these people had no language to use between them other than basic home signs used only to communicate with their families. With this communication gap in mind, a project was set up to help them come together in a common space in order to create a dedicated environment for a common sign language to emerge. In less than two years, the first cohort began to sign and to develop a newly emerging sign language – the Sao Tome and Principe Sign Language (LGSTP). Signs were elicited by means of drawings and pictures and recorded from the beginning of the project. The emergent structures of signs in this new language were compared with those reported for other emergent sign languages such as the Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) and the Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), and several similarities were found at the first stage. In this talk we will discuss how those “young signs” are or can be related with the evolutionary perspective of language as human skill for communication.
Emotions and knowledge in literature: An evolutionary perspective
Ana Margarida Abrantes, Research Center for Communication and Culture (CECH), Faculty of Human Sciences, Catholic University of Portugal
Thinking of literature in evolutionary terms involves the confluence of two different time scales: how can a relatively recent cultural phenomenon be accounted for in the temporal scale of human evolution? An evolutionary perspective over literature raises the question of its adaptive potential and of its role and purpose in human cognition. Literature as an aesthetic form of linguistic expression and communication is also a form of knowledge, on a par with science and the humanities, and as such part and parcel of what E.O. Wilson termed “consilience” or the unity of knowledge. Literature allows for the representation of cognitive processes and emotional states, but it further triggers the experience of those processes and states. If humans have by nature a literary mind (Turner 1996), the cultural product of literature is framed by the cognitive conditions of the species. This presentation addresses literature as a cultural phenomenon constrained by human biology, and it discusses how literature can inform and enhance the cognitive system and processes of the species as Animal Poeta (Eibl 2004).
References
Eibl, Karl (2004). Animal Poeta: Bausteine der biologischen Kultur- und Literaturtheorie. Paderborn: Mentis.
Turner, Mark (2013). The literary mind. New York: Oxford.
Wilson, Edward O. (1998). Consilience: the unity of knowledge. New York: Knopf.
Augusta Gaspar is Professor of Psychology at the School of Human Sciences, chair of the Scientific Area of Psychology, researcher and member of the directorial board of the Catolica Research Center for Psychological, Family and Social Well-being at the Portuguese Catholic University. She is also a visiting Professor at Mid-Sweden University. Her research is cross-disciplinary, bridging Psychology, Biology and Anthropology to approach the expression and perception of emotions and emotional reactions, as well as the development and promotion of empathy in various contexts, and the ethical treatment of animals.
Ana Margarida Abrantes is Professor at the Research Center for Communication and Culture (CECH) at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Catholic University of Portugal. She holds a PhD in German language and Literature from the Catholic University of Portugal, where she currently teaches German language, translation and narrative, and culture. She was visiting scholar at the universities of Aarhus, Denmark and Case Western Reserve, USA. Her research interests include cognitive stylistics, cognitive literary studies and German studies.
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