Differential Spatial Frequency Modulations on Facial Emotion Detection and Perception

The recognition of facial affect is a core component of social cognition and is influenced by bottom-up and topdown processes. Spatial frequency-specific processing is a fundamental mechanism underpinning visual perception that also contributes to emotion processing. Yet, it remains relatively unclear how this bottom-up process modulates analysis of affect signals. In this study, face images were manipulated via high-pass and low-pass spatial frequency filtering, and the effects of these manipulations were measured on two tasks: emotion detection and emotion perception. The detection task measured individuals’ ability to detect the presence of happiness or fear when relying only upon high spatial frequency (HSF), low spatial frequency (LSF) or unfiltered (BSF) images. The perception task evaluated individuals’ tendency to perceive one type of images (e.g. LSF) as happier or more fearful than another (e.g. HSF). On the detection task, individuals were better at detecting happiness in LSF images as compared to HSF images, a result not found in the fear detection condition. On the perception task, images with HSFs were perceived as significantly happier than images without HSFs, but only at low emotional salience levels. No significant effect for spatial frequency manipulation was found in the fear perception condition. Together, these results highlight the significant bottom-up role of spatial frequency content in perceiving happiness as opposed to fear and indicates the unique roles of bottom-up visual mechanisms when processing these two emotions.