About 2,000 years ago, Aristotle thought the face was a window onto a person’s mind. Now facial expressions are still commonly thought to be a universally valid way to judge other people’s feelings. A raised eyebrow suggests confusion. A smile indicates happiness.
Recently an analysis of hundreds of research papers has uncovered a surprising conclusion: there is no good scientific evidence to suggest that there are such things as recognizable facial expressions for basic emotions. Just because a person is not smiling, the researchers found, we can’t say that person must be unhappy.
Information-technology companies have developed an artificial-intelligence algorithms (算法) which can recognize facial expressions and judge a person’s emotional state. Microsoft, for example, claims they’re able to detect what people are feeling. However, Aleix Martinez, a computer engineer at Ohio State University, expressed scepticism. Saying those companies have failed to understand the importance of context.
Firstly, facial expression is but one of some non-verbal ways, such as body posture, that people use to communicate with each other. Machine recognition of emotion needs to take account of these too. But context can reach further than that. Dr. Martinez showed some participants a close-up picture of a man’s face, which was bright red with his mouth open in a scream. Based on this alone, most participants said the man was extremely angry. Then the whole picture was shown. It was a football player with his arms outstretched, celebrating a goal. His angry-looking face was, in fact, a show of pure joy.
Considering that people cannot guess each other’s emotional states most of the time, Dr. Martinez sees no reason computers would be able to. “But some companies now claim to be able to do that and apply this when hiring people. Depending on your facial expressions, they hire you or not, which I find really shocking.”
【小题1】We can learn from the second paragraph that ________.| A．facial expressions are universal across cultures |
| B．it is hard to recognize some facial expressions |
| C．emotions and facial expressions may not be related |
| D．common facial expressions convey similar meanings |
| A．similar interest | B．fierce anger | C．strong support | D．great doubt |
| A．facial expression is an important way to communicate |
| B．machine recognition of emotion is not reliable at all |
| C．facial expression is not the only way to detect feelings |
| D．people may misread facial expressions for lack of context |
| A．Facial expressions are among the most universal forms of body language. |
| B．Computers can detect people’s mind by analyzing their facial expressions. |
| C．Facial expressions may not be the reliable reflection of a person’s emotions. |
| D．Companies can depend on machine recognition of emotion to hire people. |
