Comparing static and dynamic emotion recognition tests: performance of healthy participants

Facial expressions have a communicatory function and the ability to read them is a prerequisite for understanding feelings and thoughts of other individuals. Impairments in recognition of facial emotional expressions are frequently found in patients with neurological conditions (e.g. stroke, traumatic brain injury, frontotemporal dementia).

Hence, a standard neuropsychological assessment should include measurement of emotion recognition. However, there is debate regarding which tests are most suitable. Our study evaluated and compared three different emotion recognition tests.

84 healthy participants were included and assessed with three tests, in varying order:
a. Ekman 60 Faces Test (FEEST), b. Emotion Recognition Task (ERT), c. Emotion Evaluation Test (EET). The tests differ in type of stimuli from static photographs (FEEST) to more dynamic stimuli in the form of morphed photographs (ERT) to videos (EET).

面部表情具有交际功能，而解读面部表情的能力是理解他人感受与想法的先决条件。神经系统疾病（如中风、创伤性脑损伤、额颞叶痴呆）患者常存在面部情绪表情识别障碍。因此，标准的神经心理学评估应包含情绪识别能力的测量。然而，关于哪种测试最适合，目前仍存在争议。本研究对三种不同的情绪识别测试进行了评估与比较。研究纳入84名健康参与者，并以不同顺序采用三种测试对其进行评估：a. Ekman 60 Faces Test（FEEST）；b. Emotion Recognition Task（ERT）；c. Emotion Evaluation Test（EET）。这些测试的刺激类型各异，从静态照片（FEEST）到变形照片形式的动态刺激（ERT），再到视频（EET）。