Tanja Bänziger

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate if sustained periods of oculomotor load impacts on neck/scapular area muscle activity. The static trapezius muscle activity was assessed from bipolar surface electromyography, normalized to a submaximal contraction. Twenty-eight subjects with a mean age of 29 (range 19–42, SD 8) viewed a high-contrast fixation target for two 5-min periods through: (1) −3.5 dioptre (D) lenses; and (2) 0 D lenses. The target was placed 5 D away from the individual’s near point of accommodation. Each subject’s ability to compensate for the added blur was extracted via infrared photorefraction measurements. Subjects whose accommodative response was higher in the −D blur condition (1) showed relatively more static bilateral trapezius muscle activity level. During no blur (2) there were no signs of relationships. The results indicate that sustained eye-lens accommodation at near, during ergonomically unfavourable viewing conditions, could possibly represent a risk factor for trapezius muscle myalgia.

In an experimental study four levels of oculomotor load were induced binocularly. Trapezius muscle activity was measured with bipolar surface electromyography and normalized to a submaximal contraction. Twenty-eight subjects with a mean age of 29 (range 19–42, std 8) viewed a high-contrast fixation target for four 5-min periods through: (i) −3.5 dioptre (D) lenses; (ii) 0 D lenses; (iii) individually adjusted prism D lenses (1–2 D base out); and (iv) +3.5 D lenses. The target was placed close to the individual’s age-appropriate near point of accommodation in conditions (i–iii) and at 3 m in condition (iv). Each subject’s ability to compensate for the added blur was extracted via infrared photorefraction measurements. A bitwise linear regression model was fitted on group level with eye-lens refraction on the x-axis and normalized trapezius muscle EMG (%RVE) on the y-axis. The model had a constant level of trapezius muscle activity – where subjects had not compensated for the incurred defocus by a change in eye-lens accommodation – and a slope, where the subjects had compensated. The slope coefficient was significantly positive in the −D (i) and the +D blur conditions (iv). During no blur (ii) and prism blur (iii) there were no signs of relationships. Nor was there any sign of relationship between the convergence response and trapezius muscle EMG in any of the experimental conditions. The results appear directly attributable to an engagement of the eye-lens accommodative system and most likely reflect sensorimotor processing along its reflex arc for the purpose of achieving stabilization of gaze.► This experimental study shows relations between the indirectly measured load on the ciliary muscle and static trapezius muscle activity. ► Through an eye–neck/scapular area functional linkage, sustained eye-lens accommodation may increase muscle activity levels in order to stabilize gaze. ► Ciliary muscle load represent a risk factor for trapezius muscle myalgia.

This paper examines how users negotiate their self-presentation via an avatar used in social media. Twenty participants customised an avatar while thinking aloud. An analysis of this verbal data revealed three motivating factors that drive self-presentation: (1) avatars were used to accurately reflect their owners’ offline self; participants chose to display stable self-attributes or idealised their avatar by concealing or emphasising attributes aligned to imagined social roles, (2) the diversity of customisation options was exploited by some participants who broke free from the social rules governing self-presentation offline; others used the avatar's appearance to emotionally provoke and engage the avatar viewer and finally, (3) avatars were used as proxies; participants designed their online self in order to convey a message to a significant other.

... by a particular affect-arousing event and that show at least some degree of direct physiological effect, but ... Another obvious candidate for pull ... Identification of speech segments relying, implicitly or explicitly, on syntactic or semantic aspects was therefore impossible, and linguistic ...

The vocal expression of human emotions is embedded within language and the study of intonation has to take into account two interacting levels of information — emotional and semantic meaning. In addition to the discussion of this dual coding system, an extension of Brunswik's lens model is proposed. This model includes the influences of conventions, norms, and display rules (pull effects) and psychobiological mechanisms (push effects) on emotional vocalizations produced by the speaker (encoding) and the reciprocal influences of these two aspects on attributions made by the listener (decoding), allowing the dissociation and systematic study of the production and perception of intonation. Three empirical studies are described as examples of possibilities of dissociating these different phenomena at the behavioral and neurological levels in the study of intonation.

Prosodie de l'émotion: étude de l'encodage et du décodage T. Bànziger, D. Grandjean, PJ Bernard, G. Klasmeyer & KR Scherer FAPSE, Université de Genève < Tanja. Banziger@ pse. unige. ch> 1. lntroduction L'importance de la communication non-verbale des ...

... concerned with the vocal communication of emotion, 77 studies reported acoustic descriptions for ... quantitative approach to the description of F0 fluctuations in emotional speech including a ... for a number of emotions, using a large corpus of vocal emotion expressions that has ...

Emotion research is intrinsically confronted with a serious difficulty to access pertinent data. For both practical and ethical reasons, genuine and intense emotions are problematic to induce in the laboratory; and sampling sufficient data to capture an adequate variety of emotional episodes requires extensive resources. For researchers interested in emotional expressivity and nonverbal communication of emotion, this situation is further complicated by the pervasiveness of expressive regulations. Given that emotional expressions are likely to be regulated in most situations of our daily lives, spontaneous emotional expressions are especially difficult to access. We argue in this paper that, in view of the needs of current research programs in this field, well-designed corpora of acted emotion portrayals can play a useful role. We present some of the arguments motivating the creation of a multimodal corpus of emotion portrayals (Geneva Multimodal Emotion Portrayal, GEMEP) and discuss its overall benefits and limitations for emotion research.

... irrit') and hot anger ('rage'), anxiety ('anx') and panic fear ('paniq'), sadness ('sad') and despair ('desp'), happiness ('joy') and elation ... articulation', mal ↔ bien articulée] • 'instability' (steady ↔ shaky) ['stabilité', ferme ↔ tremblante] • 'roughness' (not rough ↔ rough) [qualité 'rauque'] ...

Page 1. Is there an emotion signature in intonational patterns? ... (b) Alternatively, different voice features and also linguistic features (semantic, syntactic or pragmatic) can be seen as combining in configurations (configuration model) to express emotions. ...

Despite extensive research activity on the recognition of emotional expression, there are only few validated tests of individual differences in this competence (generally considered as part of nonverbal sensitivity and emotional intelligence). This paper reports the development of a short, multichannel, version (MiniPONS) of the established Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS) test. The full test has been extensively validated in many different cultures, showing substantial correlations with a large range of outcome variables. The short multichannel version (64 items) described here correlates very highly with the full version and shows reasonable construct validity through significant correlations with other tests of emotion recognition ability. Based on these results, the role of nonverbal sensitivity as part of a latent trait of emotional competence is discussed and the MiniPONS is suggested as a convenient method to perform a rapid screening of this central socioemotional competence.