Skip Navigation


Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on October 20, 2006
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2006 1(3):221-228; doi:10.1093/scan/nsl031
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
1/3/221    most recent
nsl031v1
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Parr, L. A.
Right arrow Articles by Waller, B. M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Parr, L. A.
Right arrow Articles by Waller, B. M.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Understanding chimpanzee facial expression: insights into the evolution of communication

Lisa A. Parr1 and Bridget M. Waller2

1Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences & Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA and 2Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth UK

To understand the evolution of emotional communication, comparative research on facial expression similarities between humans and related species is essential. Chimpanzees display a complex, flexible facial expression repertoire with many physical and functional similarities to humans. This paper reviews what is known about these facial expression repertoires, discusses the importance of social organization in understanding the meaning of different expressions, and introduces a new coding system, the ChimpFACS, and describes how it can be used to determine homologies between human and chimpanzee facial expressions. Finally, it reviews previous studies on the categorization of facial expressions by chimpanzees using computerized tasks, and discusses the importance of configural processing for this skill in both humans and chimpanzees. Future directions for understanding the evolution of emotional communication will include studies on the social function of facial expressions in ongoing social interactions, the development of facial expression communication and more studies that examine the perception of these important social signals.

Keywords: facial communication; primates; face processing; comparative research

Correspondence should be addressed to Lisa A. Parr, Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences & Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA. E-mail: parr{at}rmy.emory.edu.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.