Towards the development of facial and vocal expression database in east Asian and Western cultures

The purpose of this study is to develop a stimulus set, in which facial and vocal expressions by East Asian and Western speakers are recorded. In the recording session, facial and vocal expressions, in which the six basic emotions were expressed, were recorded from Japanese and Dutch models, using equivalent linguistic phrases and identical recording settings and procedures. After selection, facial and vocal expressions from eight Japanese and eight Dutch models were evaluated by Japanese and Dutch students, respectively. Results showed that accuracies for facial expressions were above 60% except for fear in both Japanese and Dutch groups. Although the facial and vocal expressions were recorded simultaneously, accuracies for vocal expressions were not so high as facial expressions. This study is the first step towards the development of a new stimulus set of facial and vocal expressions from East Asian and Western models. We expect our stimulus set to be used in future studies comparing between facial and vocal emotion perception, and those comparing unisensory and/or multisensory emotion perception between cultures.