Download Facial Expressions, Human-Robot Interaction, and Portraits: An Analysis of Three Papers and more Papers Computer Science in PDF only on Docsity! Dave Alongi (dalongi2) CS 598kgk Should We Call it Expression or Communication? By: Paul Ekman Before reading this paper, I was completely unaware that there was any dispute over how to classify facial expressions – as expressions or as communication. I think that a lot of the things that the author uses as “evidence” for his points are obvious. Yes, the impulse to show an emotion is involuntary. Yes, these impulses can sometimes be dampened or hidden if we really want to hide them. Yes, we can fake emotion if we want to, although it is almost always subtlety apparent that it is a fake. The goal of his points seems to be that emotions can be involuntary, at which point they are “expressions” and they can also be voluntary, making them “communication.” I think that the whole argument is kind of silly. Does it really matter which one it is? If emotional expressions are just “expressing” internal state, it is still a form of communication… You are communicating your internal state to someone else, who is then interpreting it. If it is voluntary, then you are communicating either what you want someone to think your internal state is, or it is just being used as a communication aide. In my opinion, this whole argument is just a case of people being overly picky and not getting down to the points that really matter. I don’t know the field, so I don’t know what those points are – but I’m sure they exist. One thing that the paper brought up that I hadn’t though too much about was how different cultures express and hide emotion differently. It is interesting how something that starts out as involuntary can be learned to be controlled so well. For instance, the examples of Japanese people using smiles to cover up disagreement and other emotions, and people trying to not show certain emotions in public but still showing them in private. It is interesting that it can get to the point where this involuntary emotion can be involuntarily concealed. Crazy. Dave Alongi (dalongi2) CS 598kgk Using a Human Face in an Interface By: Janet H. Walker, Lee Sproull, R. Subramani I guess for a paper written in 1994, this is pretty progressive. At that time, the graphics were still primitive so having a photo-realistic face is pretty cool. However, now when I think of faces on my computer, all I can think of are those annoying ads where the lady is walking around the screen telling me to buy some miracle something-or-other and I can’t find her close button. I personally really don’t like seeing a human face on my computer telling me what to do. I don’t mind making objects more human like (I am always struck by how automobiles have similar features to human faces (or at least to dog-faces). However, placing a human into a computer interface, to me, seems very misleading. The people who use the machine know that it is not an actual person, so it just feels wrong that it is faking human faces, speech, and emotion. I think that it makes me less trusting of the machine: is what it is doing behind the scenes so unsavory that if I knew about it I wouldn’t like it, so they are trying to soften it with a human face? It just makes me very skeptical. I also think that this study may have been biased by the fact that many of the participants were experiences with computers. I find that a lot of times, people who know about the underlying technology are more likely to like something just because they think it is cool, novel, and that the technology behind it is cool. However, if the average person was just looking at this as a face on the screen, they may be more creeped out by it than thinking it is new and cool. Look at Magic shows for an example of this, people are so interested in how it’s done and trying to figure it out that they forget to be upset about doves being crammed in pockets (and then thrown when they are revealed.) I think once the novelty wears off, the human faces would be rated even lower.
