Gender and Emotion Recognition with Implicit User Signals

Bilalpur, M., Kia, S. M., Chawla, M., Chua, T.-S. and Subramanian, R. (2017) Gender and Emotion Recognition with Implicit User Signals. In: 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2017), Glasgow, Scotland, 13-17 Nov 2017, pp. 379-387. ISBN 9781450355438 (doi: 10.1145/3136755.3136790)

Abstract

We examine the utility of implicit user behavioral signals captured using low-cost, off-the-shelf devices for anonymous gender and emotion recognition. A user study designed to examine male and female sensitivity to facial emotions confirms that females recognize (especially negative) emotions quicker and more accurately than men, mirroring prior findings. Implicit viewer responses in the form of EEG brain signals and eye movements are then examined for existence of (a) emotion and gender-specific patterns from event-related potentials (ERPs) and fixation distributions and (b) emotion and gender discriminability. Experiments reveal that (i) Gender and emotion-specific differences are observable from ERPs, (ii) multiple similarities exist between explicit responses gathered from users and their implicit behavioral signals, and (iii) Significantly above-chance (≈70%) gender recognition is achievable on comparing emotion-specific EEG responses– gender differences are encoded best for anger and disgust. Also, fairly modest valence (positive vs negative emotion) recognition is achieved with EEG and eye-based features.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Subramanian, Dr Ramanathan
• Authors: Bilalpur, M., Kia, S. M., Chawla, M., Chua, T.-S., and Subramanian, R.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Journal Name: Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction - ICMI 2017
• Publisher: ACM Press
• ISBN: 9781450355438
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2017 Association for Computing Machinery
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher