‘Caricaturization’ (the act of making a caricature of someone/something) can now be performed automatically – and not only that, it can be set to music. Matan Sela and colleagues at Prof. Ron Kimmel’s Geometric Image Processing Lab, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, have developed ‘A novel caricature generation framework for surfaces’. Computer Vision […]
Tag: face
Highly Technical Explication of a Simple Surprise About Surprise
Three researchers put into words their simple surprise about surprise. They published a study that goes into considerable detail. It has to do with the facial appearance of people who are surprised by something. Here, for context, is a random selection of photos turned up by a google search for the phrase “surprised faces”: The […]
Is the face a window to the soul? (study)
‘Is the face a window to the soul?’ – asks Professor Stephen B. Porter, Ph.D. (University of British Columbia-Okanagan) and colleagues, in a 2008 paper for the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science. To find out, they devised an experiment in which undergraduate students were shown photos of both Nobel Peace Prize winners and criminals from […]
Nose-Raising, Nose-Lengthening and Grimacing (facial actions study)
Researcher Paul Zeichner (artist, illustrator and educator) adds to the literature regarding the documented lists of human facial actions, with the observation that “Seldom-mentioned facial movements referred to here as nose-lengthening and grimacing should also be recognized in related patterns of expression.” See: Nose-Raising, Nose-Lengthening and Grimacing : Expressions of Arousal, Vigilance, Confusion, Aversion and […]
A Yawn Detector, Networked
The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) as depicted above, was chosen as a reference for the ‘Networked Yawn Detector’ (a car-driver safety-monitor) developed by Zhengrong Yao and Haibo Li of the Department of Applied Physics and Electronics, Umeå University, Sweden. “We test our system publicly, 26 students from the Applied Physics and Electronic Engineering Department […]
Jocular mockery (and mock impoliteness)
If someone Tweeted that you had a “face like monkfish genitalia” would you phone your legal team? Or LOL and tell everyone about it? [* see note below] That could depend on your enthusiasm (or otherwise) for ‘Jocular Mockery’. Which, along with its close cousin ‘Mock Impoliteness’ is examined by Professor Michael Haugh (of the […]
fMRI and meaningless lower-face acts
Improbable can find but one formal scientific study which features investigations of fMRI monitored responses to meaningless lower-face acts (a.k.a. ‘gurns’). Experiments carried out in year 2000, under the protocols of the UK’s Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital Research Ethics Committee, were designed to answer the question: ‘Can the cortical substrates for speechreading be distinguished […]
Identical twins’ failings at discriminating each other’s faces
Identical twins are no better than outsiders at recognizing photos of each other’s faces when the photographs are upside down, and sometimes when the photos are rightside-up, says this new study: “Is That Me or My Twin? Lack of Self-Face Recognition Advantage in Identical Twins,” Matteo Martini, Ilaria Bufalari, Maria Antonietta Stazi, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, […]
Terrier’s new door-in-the-face technique
Every once in a long while, someone devises a new door-in-the-face technique. It has happened again: “Door-in-the-Face: Is It Really Necessary That Both Requests Be Made by the Same Requester?” Lohyd Terrier [pictured here], Bénédicte Marfaing, and Marc-Olivier Boldi, Psychological Reports, Volume 113, 2013, pp. 675-682. The authrs, at Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne and Université de […]
Guilt and expected guilt in the door-in-the-face technique
Read about guilt and expected guilt in the door-in-the-face technique, if that’s what you want to read: “Guilt and expected guilt in the door-in-the-face technique,” Daniel J. O’Keefe, & Marianne Figgé, Communication Monographs, 66 (4), 1999, 312-324. BONUS: The two co-authors have an earlier take on the topic: O’Keefe, D. J. & Figgé, M. (1997). “A guilt-based explanation […]