Is the Faster Processing of Expressions of Happiness Modality-Specific?

Abstract

Like the comprehension of verbal, written, or pictorial material, the processing of facial expressions of emotions involves several cognitive operations (Frijda, 1969). This behavior may be disrupted by brain lesions in association with various disorders and, accordingly, diverse interpretations have been given to the impairments of facial expression comprehension (Feyereisen, in press): for example, the deficit could be related to other perceptual disorders in the visual modality or to amodal disorders of emotional processing.