Discovering Gender Differences in Facial Emotion Recognition via Implicit Behavioral Cues

TL;DR

This study explores how EEG and eye movement cues can be used to recognize gender and emotions from faces, revealing cognitive differences between males and females, even with partial face occlusion.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of low-cost EEG and eye-tracking sensors for gender and emotion recognition, highlighting gender-specific cognitive processing patterns.

Findings

Reliable gender and emotion recognition using EEG and eye features.

Gender differences in processing negative emotions.

Cognitive differences persist under face occlusion conditions.

Abstract

We examine the utility of implicit behavioral cues in the form of EEG brain signals and eye movements for gender recognition (GR) and emotion recognition (ER). Specifically, the examined cues are acquired via low-cost, off-the-shelf sensors. We asked 28 viewers (14 female) to recognize emotions from unoccluded (no mask) as well as partially occluded (eye and mouth masked) emotive faces. Obtained experimental results reveal that (a) reliable GR and ER is achievable with EEG and eye features, (b) differential cognitive processing especially for negative emotions is observed for males and females and (c) some of these cognitive differences manifest under partial face occlusion, as typified by the eye and mouth mask conditions.