SNG Conference - Dr Anne-Raphaëlle Richoz

Anne-Raphaëlle Richoz is currently Lecturer in the Visual and Social Neurosciences Unit of the Department of Psychology at the University of Friborg in Switzerland. She works in the Eye and Brain Mapping Laboratory (iBMLab) in collaboration with Professor Roberto Caldara. She obtained a master's degree in clinical psychology and health psychology in 2012, as well as a double doctorate in psychology in 2018, awarded by the University of Friborg and the University of Grenoble-Alpes, France. His main research interests focus on affective processes and in particular the recognition of emotional expressions through development, in young children, adults and the elderly, as well as in clinical populations. More specifically, she is interested in this topic in brain injury patients (prosopagnosia, hypothalamic syndrome) and patients at an early stage of Alzheimer's disease (MCI - mild cognitive impairment). Summary: In everyday life, we are faced with dynamic faces transmitting crucial signals to us for decoding the emotional expressions of others, the direction of attention or gaze, which are determining information for interactions social adapted. From the start of empirical studies of emotional facial expressions to date, static faces have been used in the majority of cases to answer a multitude of empirical questions in this area. This is in stark contrast to our natural environment, which is overwhelmed with faces conveying dynamic emotional expressions. In the field of facial expressions, a functional equivalence between static and dynamic signals has therefore been assumed. My work is based on questioning this assumption. Dynamic faces are not only more realistic, but they convey the feelings, emotions and intentions of others more finely and naturally. Could this daily and repeated exposure to moving faces have an effect on our visual system, favoring the processing of dynamic stimuli to the detriment of static ones? This presentation will attempt to provide answers to this question, by presenting several studies investigating the recognition of static and dynamic facial expressions in different populations.