Perception and Expression of Facial Expressions in Animals
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Human-Animal Interactions, Animal Behaviour and Emotion".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2021) | Viewed by 10211
Special Issue Editors
Interests: animal cognition; animal communication; humans, non-human primates; domestic animals; facial expressions; human–animal interactions; comparative psychology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are delighted to invite you to collaborate on a Special Edition of the journal Animals, aiming at gathering the latest developments in the area of facial expression perception and expression, as communicative and/or emotional cues in animals. The comparative study of facial expressions in animals has been of scientific interest since Darwin, where different mammal species, including humans, were suggested to form a continuum of emotional displays. However, more recently, researchers have argued that facial expressions might not be purely emotional automatic reflexes but might also be part of elaborate social repertoires, varying by species, where continuity is not as smooth as Darwin proposed. While in humans, facial expressions have been intensively studied more objectively since the 70s, in animals either this component of behavioural repertoires was ignored or it was studied in a more gross and subjective way. In the last decade or so, researchers have started to approach the study of facial expressions with a more objective stance, ranging from developing objective tools (such as DogFACS, etc.) to measuring facial movements, to using non-invasive systems (such as eye-tracking) to record individuals' perceptions of facial expressions.
Facial displays are complex and subtle behaviours, central to social interactions, both in intra- and interspecific contexts, and can represent a social communicative signal and/or an emotional response that might convey an individual’s intentions and motivations and/or reflect a subject’s internal state. In humans, this can be illustrated by the classical example of the Duchenne (emotional cue) and non-Duchenne (communicative cue) smile.
We welcome submissions focusing on any species’ facial expressions, including wild and domestic animals, and humans (if in a comparative perspective with another non-human species); intra- and inter-specific interactions; comparative works between different species; tools/methods to objectively measure facial expressions; and theoretical and practical challenges that need to overcome in this area. We are particularly interested in work that tries to understand facial expressions’ origin, evolution, and/or functionality, or that attempt to disentangle emotional and/or communicative aspects of facial expressions. We will consider articles, reviews, and commentaries on the topic, particularly well-argued and/or methodologically sound manuscripts. If you have pre-submission enquiries, please feel free to contact Dr. Catia Caeiro.
Dr. Cátia C. Caeiro
Prof. Kun Guo
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- facial expressions
- perception
- expression
- communication
- evolution
- objective tools
- comparative views
