Researchers involved: Tatjana Scheffler and Lea Fricke (EmDiCom, University of Bochum), Patrick Georg Grosz (EmDiCom, University of Oslo), Thomas Finkbeiner and Nina-Kristin Meister (Parts of Speech and Iconicity in German Sign Language (DGS), University of Göttingen) and Constant Bonard (external partner, University of Bern)
The aim of the short term collaboration is to experimentally investigate the interpretation of the features of face emojis by both hearing (German) and Deaf persons (DGS). To this end, we plan to conduct two experiments.
In experiment 1, we ask participants which facial actions they associate with the individual features of a face emoji. The results of this study will provide insights regarding the question whether hearing and Deaf persons perceive emoji faces differently. – To illustrate, non-manual markers such as eyebrow movements encode grammatical information in DGS. Thus, signers might be more susceptible for fine differences in this facial region than hearing participants. – The results also serve as a substantial empirical basis to revise the FACS (Facial Action Coding System by Ekman, Friesen and Hager 2002) coding for face emojis (Fugate and Franco 2021), which in its current version is only based on the judgment of two FACS coders and has been called into question by some of our own research.
In experiment 2, we will test which emotions participants associate with the features of face emojis. More particularly, we will investigate their associations with a range of emotion kinds, using the Geneva Emotion Wheel (Sacharin, Schlegel, & Scherer, 2012), as well as with emotional appraisal dimensions, since specific appraisals are hypothesized to produce predicted patterns of facial muscle expressions (Scherer, et al. Dieckmann, Unfried, Ellgring, & Mortillaro, 2021). Again, we will compare the interpretations of Deaf and hearing participants. In both experiments, we present participants either with parts of a face emoji or with whole face emojis and compare the judgements in these two modes of presentation to investigate the question whether the individual features of an emoji are associated with certain emotional meanings or whether emoji faces are interpreted holistically. It will also be interesting to compare the new results on facial features within emojis with the results of the previous Meaning Attribution Study on facial features in real faces carried out with hearing and Deaf people (Pendzich 2020).