Individual differences in the recognition of enjoyment smiles: No role for perceptual-attentional factors and autistic-like traits

Abstract

Adults show remarkable individual variation in the ability to detect felt enjoyment in smiles based on the Duchenne marker (Action Unit 6). It has been hypothesized that perceptual and attentional factors (possibly correlated to autistic-like personality traits in the normative range) play a major role in determining individual differences in recognition performance. Here, this hypothesis was tested in a sample of 100 young adults. Eye-tracking methodology was employed to assess patterns of visual attention during a smile recognition task. Results indicate that neither perceptual-attentional factors nor autistic-like personality traits contribute appreciably to individual differences in smile recognition. © 2011 Manera, Del Giudice, Grandi and Colle.