User:Mktprof/Facial Electromyography

Facial Electromyography (fEMG) refers to an electromyography (EMG) technique that measures muscle activity by detecting and amplifying the tiny electrical impulses that are generated by muscle fibers when they contract. It primarily focuses on two major muscle groups in the face, the corrugator supercilli and zygomaticus major muscle groups.

Facial EMG has been widely studied to assess its utility as a tool for measuring emotional reaction. Studies have found that activity of the corrugator muscle, which lowers the eyebrow and is involved in producing frowns, varies inversely with the emotional valence of presented stimuli and reports of mood state. Activity of the zygomatic muscle, which controls smiling, is said to be positively associated with positive emotional stimuli and positive mood state.

Facial EMG has been used as a technique to distinguish and track positive and negative emotional reactions to a stimulus as they occur. A large number of those experiments have been conducted in controlled laboratory environments using a range of stimuli, e.g., still pictures, movie clips and music pieces.

Facial EMG and Market Research

Two areas where facial EMG techniques have been used are in Advertising Research and in Gaming.

1. Advertising Research - Of late, facial EMG has been used to test audience response to commercial advertising. Facial EMG activity measures during a viewing of commercials embedded in TV program clips have been used to describe a commercial's level of emotional activation and engagement. Measurement of the corrugator and zygomatic muscles, yield an overall positive and negative emotional activation score. The moment to moment activation that are recorded are said to measure the dynamic emotional response to a commercial and yield useful insights about the elements of the commercials.
2. Gaming and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) - Hazlett (2006) used facial EMG techniques to demonstrate that positive and negative emotions can be measured in real time during video game play. The emotional profiling of games give a useful evaluation of a game's impact on a player, how compelling they find the game, how the game measures up to other games in its genre, and how the different elements of the game enhance or detract from the game's approach to engaging the player.

Advantages

Proponents of Facial EMG point to the following advantages:

1. Facial Electromyography (or fEMG) is a precise and sensitive method to measure emotional expression.
2. Unlike self-reports, fEMG does not depend upon language and does not require cognitive effort or memory.
3. fEMG is capable of registering the response even when subjects were instructed to inhibit their emotional expression.
4. Yields a lot of data and is continuous and scalar (hence more credible.)
5. It is able to measure facial muscle activities to even weakly evocative emotional stimuli.
6. Less intrusive than other physiological measures like fMRI and EEG.
7. Like other physiological measures, facial EMG measurement technique is often the only useful approach when movement is not visible.

Criticisms

1. The technique is intrusive and may alter natural expression.
2. Number of muscles it can work with is limited by how many electrodes can be attached to face.
3. Certain medicines that act on the nervous system (such as muscle relaxants and anticholinergics) can change electromyography (EMG) results.
4. Quantity of validity work with facial EMG is much less.

References

• Wataru, S., Fujimura, T., Suzuki, N. Enhanced Facial EMG Activity in Repsponse to Dynamic Facial Expressions. International Journal of Psychophysiology, Vol. 70(1).
• Ravaja, Niklas, Turpeinen, M., Saari, T. Puttonen, S., Keltikangas-Jarvinen, L. The Psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violnet Video Gam Events. Emotion, Vol. 8(1) (February 2008).
• Wolf, K., Mass, R. Ingenbleek, T., Kiefer, F., Naber, D., Wiedemann, K. The Facial Pattern of Disgust, Appetence, Excited Joy and Relaxed Joy: An Improved Facial EMG Study. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Vol. 46 (2005).
• Larsen, J.T., Norris, C.J., Cacioppo, J.T. Effects of Positive and Negative Affect on Electromyographic Activity over Zygomaticus Major and Corrugator Supercilli. Psychophysiology, Vol. 40 (2003).
• Boll, P.D., Lang, A., Potter, R.F., The Effects of Message Valence and Listener Arousal on Attention, Memory and Facial Muscular Responses to Radio Advertisements. Communication Research, Vol. 28 (2001).
• Hazlett, R.L., Hazlett, S.Y., Emotional Response to Television Commercials: Facial EMG vs. Self Report. Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 28 (1999).
• Dimberg, U., Facial Electromyography and Emotional Reactions. Psychophysiology, Vol. 27 (1990).