The Humintell Blog, Author at Social Engineering Blogs

The Humintell Blog October 14, 2022

Babies Smile in Utero When Mom Eats Carrots But Frown When it’s Kale

A study led by Durham University’s Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab and published in the journal Psychological Science provides the first direct evidence that babies react to taste and smell in the womb.

The researchers took 4D ultrasound scans of 100 pregnant women to see how their unborn babies responded after being exposed to flavors from foods eaten by their mothers.

Thirty-five of the women took a capsule containing powdered carrot and 34 took a kale capsule. After 20 minutes researchers looked at each fetus using a 4D ultrasound. The mothers also did not eat or drink anything containing carrot or kale on the day of their scans to control for factors that could affect fetal reactions.

The results?

Evidence shows that facial expressions begin in utero; data shows that laughing and smiling begin in the womb as early as 24 weeks and are very prevalent by week 32.

Fetuses exposed to carrot showed more “laughter-face” responses while those exposed to kale showed more “cry-face” responses. Their findings could further our understanding of the development of human taste and smell receptors.

Facial reactions seen in both flavor groups, compared with fetuses in a control group who were not exposed to either flavor, showed that exposure to just a small amount of carrot or kale flavor was enough to stimulate a reaction.

Babies in utero — Fig. 1. Example of cry-face gestalt of a kale-exposed fetus: (a) baseline, (b) cry-face gestalt (apex). FM11 = nasolabial furrow; FM16 = lower-lip depressor.

Fig. 2. Example of laughter-face gestalt of a carrot-exposed fetus: (a) baseline, (b) laughter-face gestalt (apex). FM6 = cheek raiser; FM12 = lip-corner puller.

The researchers also believe that what pregnant women eat might influence babies’ taste preferences after birth and potentially have implications for establishing healthy eating habits.

Humans experience flavor through a combination of taste and smell. In fetuses it is thought that this might happen through inhaling and swallowing the amniotic fluid in the womb.

Lead researcher Beyza Ustun, a postgraduate researcher in the Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab, Department of Psychology, Durham University, said:

“A number of studies have suggested that babies can taste and smell in the womb, but they are based on post-birth outcomes while our study is the first to see these reactions prior to birth. As a result, we think that this repeated exposure to flavors before birth could help to establish food preferences post-birth, which could be important when thinking about messaging around healthy eating and the potential for avoiding ‘food-fussiness’ when weaning. It was really amazing to see unborn babies’ reaction to kale or carrot flavors during the scans and share those moments with their parents.”

The researchers say their findings might also help with information given to mothers about the importance of taste and healthy diets during pregnancy. They have now begun a follow-up study with the same babies post-birth to see if the influence of flavors they experienced in the womb affects their acceptance of different foods.

Research co-author Professor Jackie Blissett, of Aston University, said: “It could be argued that repeated prenatal flavor exposures may lead to preferences for those flavors experienced postnatally. In other words, exposing the fetus to less ‘liked’ flavors, such as kale, might mean they get used to those flavors in utero.

“The next step is to examine whether fetuses show less ‘negative’ responses to these flavors over time, resulting in greater acceptance of those flavors when babies first taste them outside of the womb.”

The post Babies Smile in Utero When Mom Eats Carrots But Frown When it’s Kale first appeared on Humintell.

The Humintell Blog September 30, 2022

Adults Don’t Get Better at Recognizing Masked Faces

When you recognize a friend’s face, how do you know? Do you make a careful study of their nose and cheekbones? Are you thrown off if they don’t wear the usual expression?

The vast majority of people probably scoffed at those questions. Facial recognition usually isn’t a matter of careful study, but instead it is an instantaneous process. Your brain just knows whose face you are seeing.

However, more than two years after the start of the pandemic, a new study out of York University has found that adults still have difficulty recognizing people when their face is obscured by a mask.

Many people might have assumed their ability to recognize people’s faces despite their mask would improve over time, but not according to the latest research by scientists from York and Ben-Gurion University in Israel. The research entitled Recognition of masked faces in the era of the pandemic: No improvement, despite extensive, natural exposure was published today in the journal Psychological Science.

Researchers found repeated exposure of masked faces throughout the pandemic has made zero difference in adults’ ability to recognize these half-hidden faces.

“Neither time nor experience with masked faces changed or improved the face mask effect,” says York University Assistant Professor Erez Freud of Faculty of Health, the study’s senior author. “This tells us that the adult brain doesn’t not seem to have the ability to change how it processes faces, even when presented with masked faces over an extended period of time.”

The ongoing pandemic provided an unprecedented opportunity for the researchers to examine the plasticity of the mature face processing system.

What is Facial Recognition?

many-faces-facial-recognition Facial recognition is a key part of understanding emotional expressions. Humans use facial recognition skills to detect deviations from normal or prototypical expressions. This process involves noticing when brows are furrowed or eyes are squinted, instantly comparing those expressions with what is expected upon seeing a face.

Because the recognition of a face is instantaneous, it is only a small cognitive step towards noticing when the face appears differently than expected, and this difference is then analyzed as displaying a certain emotion.

The ability to perceive emotions in this fashion appears to be a basic human feature. The same sort of basic human expressions, such as anger, revulsion, and sadness are found across the world, from Japan to Borneo to the United States. Even emotions displayed in ancient cave paintings show similar expressions!

The Study

The researchers repeatedly tested more than 2,000 adults by show them a series of faces, upright and inverted, with and without masks. Different groups of adults were tested at six different points in time during the pandemic. In addition, the researchers tested the same group near the start of the pandemic and 12-months later. In both the cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, adults showed absolutely no increase in their ability to recognize masked faces.

Previous research showed that adults’ facial recognition abilities decreased by about 15% when the person wore a mask using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT), which as considered as the standard to tap face recognition abilities.

Face masks also interfere with how unmasked faces are processed — which is normally made in a holistic manner, rather than by the individual parts of the face. This new study not only used the CFMT, but also the Glasgow Face Match Test, an additional measure of face perception, to determine if anything changed since the last study.

“This shows that face processing in humans, at least in adults, is rigid even after prolonged real-life exposure to partially covered faces,” says Freud.

Face sensitivity first shows up in newborns who exhibit a preference for faces or things that look similar to a face, and especially to familiar faces. In contrast to the mature face processing system, repeated exposure to faces as a child plays an important role in refining the face processing system, which continues to develop until the end of puberty.

Freud says it would be interesting to see if children’s ability to recognize masked faces changes over time with exposure, and whether the pandemic has interfered with their normal ability to recognize faces.

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The post Adults Don’t Get Better at Recognizing Masked Faces first appeared on Humintell.

The Humintell Blog September 13, 2022

How Good Is Your Cat at Emotion Recognition?

cat emotions Historically cats have received less research attention than their canine counterparts and their cognitive abilities were less recognized. However, in the last 10 years, research focusing on trying to better understand our feline companions has grown.

Emotion Recognition in Cats

A recent 2020 study entitled “Emotion Recognition in Cats” published in the journal Animals demonstrated that cats are able to recognize conspecific as well as human emotions through auditory and visual observations.

In the study, the authors recorded sounds of one male and female cat, each of them in two situations. In the first situation they would hiss and in the second they would purr. Also, a man and a woman were recorded laughing and growling. Finally, a neutral sound was downloaded from the internet. Authors then took photographs of the same cats hissing and purring and of the same people demonstrating a ‘human angry face’ and a ‘human happy face’.

Emotion Recognition in Cats

Ten cats were tested in their own homes, in a quiet room, where a projector and screen were installed, and a

speaker was placed behind the screen. Cats were facing the screen, sitting on their owner’s lap.

Each trial consisted of a recorded sound (angry, neutral or happy) emitted by the speaker while two faces were simultaneously projected on the bottom corners of the screen. If the sound was hissing or purring, the ‘hissing cat face’ and ‘purring cat face’ would be projected, and if the sound was laughing or human growling, the ‘human happy face’ and ‘human angry face’ would be projected.

The researchers wanted to know if the cats be able to match sound and face. To answer that question, the duration that the cats spent looking at each face was recorded as well as a whole range of behaviors that could be considered expressions of stress or discomfort. Every trial was filmed by two camcorders. Researchers looked at what face the cat would look at the longest.

The results?

Researchers found that cats looked significantly longer at the face whose expression matched the sound they heard, for ‘cat hiss’, ‘human anger’ and ‘human happiness’, but interestingly, not for ‘cat purr’, maybe because there is not an easy distinguishable face for purring in cats.

They also found that younger cats (three to four years) were better at this task than older cats (five to nine years). Regarding the ‘stress behaviors’, they found that cats displayed significantly more ‘stress behavior’ to ‘cat hiss’ and ‘human anger’ then for any other stimuli.

These results demonstrate that cats integrate visual and auditory signals to recognize human and conspecific emotions. They also appear to modulate their behavior according to the valence of the emotion perceived.

Cats Recognize Facial Expressions?

Another study by Oakland University researchers Jennifer Vonk and Moriah Galvan in Rochester, Michigan, suggests that cats are more receptive to human emotions than we’ve previously surmised.

Their study involved 12 cats and their owners which showed that felines behave differently based on whether their owners are smiling or frowning. While similar behaviors have previously been documented in domestic dogs, researchers were interested to see if domestic cats – who mostly appear uninterested in their human owners – possess similar abilities.

During their study, researchers observed that cats exhibited more frequent “positive” behaviors – purring, rubbing or sitting on their owner’s lap and spending more time with them – when their owner was smiling. Frowns seemed to produce the opposite effect in the cats.

Researchers also noticed that these cats exhibited similar “positive” behaviors when placed with strangers, regardless of whether the strangers were smiling – as if they were giving the strangers the benefit of the doubt or were trying to put their best foot forward.

All of this suggests that cats can learn how to read owner specific facial expressions over time.

Researchers were careful to note, however, that their findings do not mean cats are capable of feeling empathy. Instead, it seems to indicate that cats have learned to associate their owners’ smiles with rewards and positive attention.

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