A microexpression is a very brief facial movement which usually lasts for from 1/25 to 1/5 second. It might reveal the human’s real intent. One's ability to recognize microexpression is closely related to his/her capacity for deception detection. As its potential for being a clue to deception detection, microexpression has been employed in many fields, such as national security and criminal interrogation.

In the two psychological experiments, Fu‘s group (Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences) found that there were different temporal characteristics in recognition between microexpressions and macroexpression (with duration longer than 200ms). By employing two classical paradigms which were BART (Brief Affect Recognition Test) and METT (MicroExpression Training Tool), Fu and her students have found that, 1) the recognition accuracy of microexpressions is a function of the duration of the expressions and reaches the highest point at 200 ms and then turns down; and 2) a short training course in facial expression recognition can improve individuals’ ability to recognize microexpressions. These new findings will deepen our knowledge of the differences between microexpression and macroexpressions and will provide some principles for the training of microexpression recognition. 

The work is published in Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE B, which have been received many concerns from the broader academic community. Recently, the paper got included on the list of Top 10 DOIs Monthly CrossRef Report for Publisher and has already been downloaded 674 times.

This project partially supported by the National Basic Research Program (973) of China (No. 2011CB302201) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61075042).

Shen, X., Wu, Q., & Fu, X.* (2012). Effects of duration of expressions on the recognition of microexpressions. Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE B, 13(3): 221-230, doi=10.1631/jzus.B1100063.