The Role of Visual Angle in Spatially Attended Emotion Recognition for Early Affective Disorder Prediction

Emotion recognition plays an important role in both computer science and medical field, while emotion perception serves as a source of key input features for emotion recognition models. Previous studies on basic emotions have highlighted the roles of attention and low-level visual features in the process of emotion perception. However, these factors during the perception of complex emotions remain less understood. Cute-emotion is a form of complex positive emotion elicited by infantile facial features, which are particularly effective in capturing attention and thus provide an ideal framework for investigating this question. In this study, a spatial cueing paradigm with one-way arrows as cues (80% valid, 20% invalid) was employed to examine how varying visual angles (1° , 3° , 5° , 7° ) influence the efficiency of perceiving cute-emotion. Behavioral results showed valid cues shortened reaction times, infant faces were recognized faster than adult ones, and reaction times lengthened with wider visual angles. These confirm spatial attention and visual angle jointly modulate cute-emotion perception-filling gaps in complex emotion processing research, advancing understanding of attention and complex emotions, and providing behavioral indicators for early affective disorder detection and theoretical support for optimizing emotion recognition models.