Page 158 - Demo

Chapter 5156intensity of some expressions. Interoceptive signals might thus rather alter the representation of experienced and/or observed emotional states, than indicate their qualia. Surprisingly, however, both higher interoceptive accuracy as well as higher autistic trait levels were specifically associated with a higher perceived emotional intensity of neutral expressions in Experiment 2. From an embodied perspective, there could be two potential explanations why observed neutral expressions might be perceived as emotional: either physiological feedback which typically indicates (the lack of ) emotionality might not be integrated in the representation of an expression or physiological signals unrelated to the observed expression might be misinterpreted. While, based on previous literature (Garfinkel et al., 2016; Quattrocki & Friston, 2014), the first explanation seems more plausible for the results regarding autistic traits, the second might explain higher perceived emotional intensity of neutral expressions with higher trait interoceptive accuracy (Dunn et al., 2010). To explore this idea further, we fitted one large model in which we examined whether facial muscle activations would be linked more strongly to perceived emotional intensity with (a) higher trait interoceptive accuracy and (b) lower autistic trait levels. More specifically, we extended the model predicting Perceived emotional intensity by adding four three-way interactions, all including Emotion category as well as either one of the two facial muscle activations (baseline-corrected, z-scored Corrugator activity or baseline-corrected, z-scored Zygomaticus activity) and either one of two self-report measures (Autistic traitsor Trait interoceptive accuracy). Next to these predictors of interest, the model still included a two-way interaction between Emotion category and Interoceptive Sensibility, a two-way interaction between Emotion category and Social anxiety traits, and Alexithymia as control predictors. As in all previous models, random intercepts for each stimulus and each participant were added. The results of this extended intensity model indeed suggest that the directionality of the effect of facial muscle activation on intensity ratings might depend on the trait dimension. More specifically, while both Corrugator activity and Zygomaticus activity seem to be less predictive of Perceived emotional intensity across emotions with higher Autistic traits, %u03b2 = -0.03, 95% CI[-0.06, -0.01] and %u03b2 = -0.02, 95% CI [-0.05,-0.00] (see Figure 6A+B), there was a trend of Zygomaticus activity being more predictive of Perceived emotional intensity with higher Trait interoceptive accuracy, %u03b2 = 0.02, 95% CI [-0.00,0.05] (see Figure 6C, and Table S24 in the Supplemental Materials for the full model fit).