Face is not only one of the most cogent, naturally pre-eminent means used by human beings for the recognition of a person, but also for communicating emotions and intentions and in regulating interactions with the environment and other persons in the vicinity. It has been estimated that facial non-verbal behavior of the speaker, manifested by expressions, contributes more than half to the effect of the spoken message which is more than the verbal part and the vocal part. Hence, facial expressions have a key role in verbal and non-verbal communication. Furthermore, according to Psychological studies important cues for certain behaviors, such as deception and stress, are micro-expressions, since they often represent leakage to behavior control.
Micro-expressions which are very rapid and subtle involuntary facial expressions, occur when an emotion is of lower intensity, and are much more difficult to read and fake. Moreover, changing facial expressions is not only a natural and powerful way of conveying personal intention, expressing emotion and regulating interpersonal communication but an important cue of personality. Automatic recognition of expressions and estimation of their intensity is an important step in enhancing the capability of human-machine/robot interfaces. The goal of this workshop is to provide an interdisciplinary forum and foster discussion of psychological and computer vision up-to-date approaches to spontaneous expression and micro-expression analysis in a more focused manner, to provide a forum for the dissemination of significant research work and innovative practice, and to encourage exchanges, interactions and possible collaboration between participants. |