Emotions vs.

Feelings:
The role of faces, voices, language

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, Ph.D.

tracey.tokuhama@gmail.com
www.thelearningsciences.com
 Emotions vs. Feelings

5 December 2018 Tokuhama-Espinosa 2

Advice on emotions (IV c. BC)

• “Anyone can get mad, this is simple. But

getting made at the right person, in the
right degree at the most opportune
moment with the correct goal in mind,
that, certainly, is not easy.”
-Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), Ética a Nicómaco

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“Emotions”

• The term emoción comes from the

Latin emotĭo, -ōnis que which
means the impulse that induces
action.

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5 December 2018 Tokuhama-Espinosa 5
“Emotions” vs. “Feelings”

Damasio (2003) makes a clear distinction between emotions and feelings.

• Emotions are of the body, while feelings are of the mind.
• A feeling is a mental representation of the state of the body.
• Emotions are automatic. Feelings are conditioned.
• Emotions are reactions to external stimuli or to feelings themselves.

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Anotnio Damasio (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow and the feeling brain
“Affective Neuroscience”
• The study of the neural mechanisms of emotion
• Neural structures related to emotional processing:
• Amygdalae
• Anterior prefrontal cortex
• Cingulate gyrus
• Fornix
• Hippocampus
• Hypothalamus
• Insula
• Lateral occipital cortex
• Medial prefrontal cortex
• Middle temporal gyrus
• Postcentral gyrus
• Posterior cingulate cortex
• Precentral gyrus
• Precuneus
• Thalamus
Hamann, S. (2012). Mapping discrete and dimensional emotions onto the brain: controversies
and consensus. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(9), 458-466.

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Phineas Gage

• Phineas P. Gage (1823 –1860) was a

railroad worker who accidently suffered
damage to his frontal lobes.
• Gage suffered a significant change in
personality and emotional stability and
was not longer able to make decisions.

Barker, F.G. II (1995) Phineas Among the phrenologists: The American crowbar
case and nineteenth-century theories of cerebral localization. Journal
of Neurosurgery, 82,672-682.

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Evidence for Overlap Hubs of Negative Emotions

Note: The conjunction map (N = 89) for meta-analytic anger, disgust, fear, and sadness discovery maps. Yellow indicates
spatial overlap for all negative emotion maps. Light orange indicates spatial overlap for three of the four maps. Orange
indicates spatial overlap for two of the maps. Red indicates no spatial overlap.

Barrett, L. F., & Satpute, A. B. (2013). Large-scale brain networks in affective and social neuroscience: towards an integrative functional architecture of the brain. Current opinion in neurobiology, 23(3), 361-372.
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Theories of Emotional Processing

Davidson, R. J., Jackson, D. C., & Kalin, N. H. (2000). Emotion, plasticity, context, and regulation: perspectives from affective neuroscience. Psychological bulletin, 126(6), 890.; Tull,
M. T., & Aldao, A. (2015). Editorial overview: New directions in the science of emotion regulation.
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Categories of emotions

Plutchik, R.
(1980;
2002),
Wikimedia
Commons

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www.takanishi.mech.waseda.ac.jp/.../index.htm 13
Brain Research, Learning and Emotions

• “Scientific evidence that emotion is

fundamental to learning … If schools are
involved in intellectual development,
they are inherently involved in
emotional development,” (Hinton,
Miyamoto & Della Chiesa, 2008, p.9)
Emotions are Vital to Learning

“…the neurobiological evidence suggests that

the aspects of cognition that we recruit most
heavily in schools, namely learning, attention,
memory, decision making, and social
functioning, are both profoundly affected by and
subsumed within the processes of emotion…”
(Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007, p.3).
Emotions Drive Actions

• While negative emotions, such as fear and

stress, can disrupt learning, positive
emotions drive learning. The brain uses
emotion to direct action — approaching
positive situations and avoiding negative
ones Accordingly, motivation is
emotionally-based (Fischer & Bidell, 2005).
More Literature on Negative Emotions
than Positive Emotions
• Learning is likely to be more effective if
educators help to minimise stress and fear at
school.
• Brain research suggests that it would be best
to have schools provide a positive learning
environment that is motivating to students,
and teachers trained to teach children
emotional regulation skills,” (Hinton,
Miyamoto & Della Chiesa, 2008, p.9).
 Faces and Voices

5 December 2018 Tokuhama-Espinosa 18

Faces and Voices
• The human brain judges others’ faces and
tones of voices for threat levels in a rapid and
often unconscious way, influencing the way
information from these sources is perceived
(i.e., valid, invalid, trustworthy,
untrustworthy, etc.)
• Even if the student misinterprets facial
expressions, what students think their
teacher thinks about her influences her
performance.
Faces and Voices

• According to researchers, when a student feels that her

teacher doesn’t believe in her abilities to learn—because the
teacher “looked at her funny” or his voice seemed
condescending—then the student’s actual performance is
impaired.
• Even if the student misinterprets facial expressions, what
students think their teacher thinks about her influences her
performance.

Spring 2018
Paul Ekman:
Six Universally Perceived Emotions

Spring 2018 Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition & emotion, 6(3-4), 169-200.
 Facial recognition in the brain

National Institute for Physiological Sciences https://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Study-gives-insight-into-facial-recognition-3976248.php ; https://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-

04-neural-network-recognition.html http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/perception/lecturenotes/recognition/recognition.html

Spring 2018
 Universal vs. Culture-Specific Emotions

Spring 2018
Emotional face processing

• Seven-month olds pay more

attention to fearful faces than to
happy faces.
• Fear appears to be the most
easily perceived emotion. Why?

Peltola, M.J., Leppanen, J.M., Maki, S. & Hietanen, J.K. (2009 June ). Emergence of enhanced attention to fearful faces between 5 and 7
Spring 2018 months of age. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 4 (2), 134–142.
 Mirror neurons
• A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an
animal acts and when the animal observes the same
action performed by another.
• Neuroscientists such as Marco Iacoboni (UCLA) have
argued that mirror neuron systems in the human brain
help us understand the actions and intentions of other
people.
• Human self-awareness (theory of mind), empathy,
autism….?

Rizzolatti, G. & Craighero, L.(2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27 169–192.
Summary of the controversy: see Christian Keysers (2009), Current Biology, 19(2), R971-R973.
Spring 2018
How faces are processed

• Before they are able to speak, infants can

communicate by reading faces.
• This skill is useful not only to distinguish
familiar faces with strangers, but also to
recognize universally perceived emotions
such as anger, fear, disgust and pleasure.
• Evidence indicates that emotional
processing via facial expressions is
developed in utero and active at birth as the
amygdala functions from birth.

Spring 2018
Social Contagion Occurs Face-To-Face as well
as on the Internet
• “We show, via a massive (N =
689,003) experiment on Facebook,
that emotional states can be
transferred to others via emotional
contagion, leading people to
experience the same emotions
without their awareness,” (Kramer,
Guillory & Hancock, 2014, p.8788)
 Language

5 December 2018 Tokuhama-Espinosa 28

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What is the Relationship?

• Language-Thought-Learning

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http://www.throughthetollbooth.com/tag/black-box/
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
• “A theory developed by Edward Sapir a
nd Benjamin Lee Whorf that
states that the structure of a language
determines or greatly
influences the modes of thought and b
ehavior characteristic of the https://learn.canvas.net/courses/191/files/192400

culture in which it is spoken.”

• “Linguistic relativity”
• “Linguistic determinism”

Kay & Kempton, 1984; Perlovsky, 2009 ; http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sapir-whorf-hypothesis 31

Do your words limit your thinking?

Is your intelligence limited by your

vocabulary?

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From thinking about words
to thinking in word

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Language Drives Thought (Vygotsky) OR
Thought Drives Language (Piaget)

Otis, 1920.

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Dewey, 1997
 K.I.S.S. models of EI

Spring 2018
Emotions and Language

• “The ability to regulate emotions is a predictor of academic outcomes

(OECD, 2007).
• “A key aspect of this is to teach students how to use language to
communicate difficulties (Noddings, 1992)” (Hinton, Miyamoto & Della
Chiesa, 2008, p.9)
• What does this mean for foreign language classrooms where language skills
are often limited?
Helping small children develop emotional
intelligence

• Children 2-4 years old

• “I am special because…”
• Breath: When I feel mad…
• Articulate emotions

Spring 2018
Activities to cultivate
emotional intelligence

• Children 5-7 years old

• “How would you feel
if…”
• Write to another
person: “You are a
good friend
because…”

Spring 2018
3-2-1

• 3: Three things you didn’t know before

• 2: Two things you will continue to research or talk about
• 1: One thing you will change in your personal or professional life based
on the information that was shared

5 December 2018 Tokuhama-Espinosa 39

Contact:

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, Ph.D.

www.thelearningsciences.com
tracey.tokuhama@gmail.com

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