Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) Read Animal Emotions?

As technology advances, scientists from around the globe have been investigating the use of AI to help recognize animal pain signals.

Through computerized facial expression analysis, this AI technology can quickly and accurately recognize pain signals in animals. In some cases, AI is better at this task than some humans!

This AI technology has been used in animals from sheep to horses to cats.

An example includes the Intellipig System developed by scientists at the University of the West of England Bristol (UWE) and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC).

Intellipig examines photos of pigs’ faces and notifies farmers if there are signs of pain, sickness, or emotional distress.

Facial Expressions in Animals

Scientists assess an animal’s level of pain by looking for telltale muscle movements around the eyes, ears, and other facial features. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems make similar judgments by measuring the distance between “landmarks” on the face (orange and teal dots).

Like humans, animals convey how they’re feeling through their facial expressions. In fact, humans share 38% of our facial movements with dogs, 34% with cats and 47% with primates and horses.

But, as an article in Science points out, “the anatomical similarities don’t mean we can read animals’ faces like those of fellow humans. So, researchers studying animal communication often infer what an animal is experiencing through context”.

An example of this is pain; researchers studying animals can induce mild discomfort or be cognizant of pain signals after an invasive procedure such as castration.

After spending countless hours observing the faces of animals in painful or stressful situations, scientists can then compare them against animals who are pain or stress-free.

As a result, scientists developed “grimace scales” which provide a measure of how much pain or stress an animal is experiencing based on movement of its facial muscles.

In addition, like the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) used on humans, experts have also become skilled at coding facial movements in animals (AnimalFACS).

Amazingly at present, the FACS system has been adapted into 8 different species and their manuals are freely accessible through the animalfacs.com website:

  • ChimpFACS: common chimpanzees
  • MaqFACE: rhesus macaques
  • GibbonFACS: hylobatid species
  • OrangFACS: orangutans
  • DogFACS: domestic dogs
  • CatFACS: cats
  • EquiFACS: domestic horses
  • CalliFACS: marmoset species

However, coding work is incredibly tedious, and human coders need 2 to 3 hours to code 30 seconds of video.

This is where AI comes in.

AI can do the same task almost instantaneously, but first it must be taught.

Teaching AI to Read Animal Faces

AI systems are becoming faster and more accurate than humans at determining whether an animal is in pain. That’s partly because they can identify the tiniest muscle movements and find new indicators of pain that humans are not even aware of.

At the University of Haifa, scientists Anna Zamansky and her team have been using AI to pinpoint the subtle signs of discomfort in animals’ faces.

There are many steps in teaching AI to read animal faces.

These steps include:

  1. AI learning to ID parts of the face crucial to creating expressions (this is done by manually flagging important parts of the face associated with specific muscle movements).
  2. Feeding AI a plethora of landmarked photos to teach it to find landmarks on its own.
  3. AI identifying specific facial expressions by analyzing distances between landmarks.
  4. Cross referencing expressions against grimace scales to determine signs of pain or distress.

Zamansky’s team trained their AI on photos of Labrador retrievers who were either eagerly anticipating a treat or were able to see the treat but were prevented from reaching it.

Their AI was able to successfully detect whether the dog was happy or frustrated 89% of the time.

The AI also successfully differentiated happy and frustrated horses in the same experiment.

Despite some limitations to their technology, Zamansky’s team is about to release an AI based app that will allow cat owners to scan their pets’ faces for 30 seconds and get easy to read messages.

The technology also extends to horses- researchers in the Netherlands have developed a similar app that scans resting horses’ faces and bodies to estimate their pain levels.

This app could potentially be used in equestrian competitions to improve animal welfare and fairness in the sport.

The post Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) Read Animal Emotions? first appeared on Humintell | Master the Art of Reading Body Language.

A Pocketbook Guide to the Basics of Emotion

We’re excited to announce the launch of The Humintell Emotion Primer – a pocketbook guide to the basics of emotion.

It’s a little book that we put together that summarizes and describes some of the major points about emotions, especially about the basic emotions that we talk about in our work and that we’ve studied and written about for decades.

This Emotion Primer starts with a little introduction and it has 7 sections– each dealing with an important aspect about what makes emotion special.

1. The first section defines an emotion from our perspective. This is so important because in our experience, most debates and arguments about emotion occur because of differences in people‘s definitions of emotion and we think it’s always important to let people know what our definition of emotion is.

2. The second section describes the various types of emotions that exist and focuses on basic emotions. Research over the past half century plus has shown that basic emotions have features that other emotions don’t have. Now, humans have a lot of different emotions and some people have suggested that we don’t believe that other emotions are emotions. Of course we do! It’s just that basic emotions are a special class or category of emotion.

3. The third section talks about those features of basic emotions that distinguish them from other types of emotion. Remember, these features have been demonstrated in decades of research.

4. The fourth section talks about the differences between emotions and feelings. This is important because many people confuse them and use those terms interchangeably in our everyday lives.

5. The fifth section is on our affective world and distinguishes emotions from other phenomena that are emotional, like moods, personalities, and psychopathologies. This is also important because many of us don’t distinguish between emotion and other affective phenomena.

6. The sixth section lists the elicitors and functions of each of the seven basic emotions. This section is really important to understand the differences among them and to gain an appreciation of why emotions were important in the history of humans and in our every day lives today.

7. The seventh section has examples of each of the seven universal facial expressions along with a summary listing of the points that are mentioned in the other sections.

8. At the end, there’s a QR code that you can also scan and that leads you to a place on our website where we have all kinds of additional readings, blogs, and videos about emotions that we’ve done in the past. This section should round out this program well with additional insights and examples.

If you put it all together, there’s a lot of information about emotions that start with this little primer and then point us in different directions.

In the end, this primer is not a novel or a long and boring scientific treatise, but it does have very quick descriptions of the most important aspects of emotions.

This is exactly the same kind of information that anyone who wants to improve their knowledge and understanding of emotion should access.

We really hope you enjoy it. Get a Humintell Emotion Primer for yourself!

The post A Pocketbook Guide to the Basics of Emotion first appeared on Humintell | Master the Art of Reading Body Language.

The Link Between Children’s Bedtime and Emotion Regulation

A resent study from Pennsylvania State University suggests that a consistent bedtime for children leads to better emotion regulation while under stress or working with others.

Children Sleep Study

Researchers analyzed sleep and behavior data of 143 six-year-olds, mothers of whom were trained about responsive parenting in the first 2.5 years following birth.

The children wore sleep-monitoring devices on their wrists for a week. The devices kept track of when the children went to sleep, the quality of their sleep, and how long they slept.

The behaviors and emotions of the children were then tested in person in a clinic where they participated in various tasks that were intended to evoke frustration.

One task involved each child selecting a toy that they wanted to play with from a large selection. The chosen toy was placed in a clear box and locked.  The child was then given a set of keys, none of which unlocked the box.

The team then observed the child for self-regulated behavior, including self-talk and trying each key, and a lack of self-regulation — which included throwing the keys without trying them all.

After four minutes, the children were handed the correct key to the box and allowed to play with the toy.

Another task involved in the study was collaborative, which tested the children for their ability to cooperate.

Sleep and Emotion Regulation

The results showed that the more a child’s bedtime changed each night, the worse they regulated their behavior and emotions.

Findings from the study suggest that the regularity of the children’s sleep schedules—whether they went to sleep and woke up at approximately the same time each day over the course of a week—exhibited a greater influence over their emotional control and behavior than the duration or quality of sleep.

Children with more consistent, regular sleep schedules showed greater control over their emotions and behaviors.

This research sheds light on the nuanced nature of developmental sleep research, especially regarding the relationship between consistent sleep and emotional regulation.

Though duration of sleep is important, regular and consistent sleeping and waking times may be more instrumental in supporting children’s emotional control.

Bedtime Routines

Research has also shown that regular bedtime routines are vital to getting adequate sleep, yet only about 65% of families in the US report engaging in a routine 5 or more times a week.

Certain activities might help children with sleep. These include:

  • Providing a healthy snack
  • Hygiene (bathing or brushing teeth)
  • Reading
  • Singing
  • Physical contact (massage or cuddling)

Studies also show kids who don’t get enough sleep may be more likely to develop high blood pressure, obesity, even depression.

Finally, think again before you reach for that smartphone or tablet to soothe your child before bedtime- research has also shown that doing so may also affect a child’s emotion regulation ability.

References

Dadzie, A., Master, L., Hohman, E. E., Acton, E. H., Tauriello, S., Paul, I. M., … & Buxton, O. M. (2022). Associations Between Sleep Health and Child Behavior at Age 6 Years in the INSIGHT Study. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 10-1097.

The post The Link Between Children’s Bedtime and Emotion Regulation first appeared on Humintell | Master the Art of Reading Body Language.