Recognition of emotional expressions is affected by inversion and presentation time.

It has been repeatedly shown that face inversion affects the recognition of emotional faces. However, previous results are heterogeneous concerning the affected emotions and the influence of presentation time is unclear. We examined the impact of limited presentation time (200 ms) on the face-inversion effect during recognition of basic emotions in 128 healthy young adults. Data analysis revealed differential inversion effects for emotional expressions, further modified by limitation of presentation time: when presentation was limited, we observed inversion effects for angry and neutral faces which were absent in the unlimited trials. In the unlimited condition, inversion particularly affected recognition of disgust and sadness. No general inversion effect occurred for neutral expressions. Error analysis highlighted specific confusions for the inverted condition, except for happy and neutral expressions. Hence, emotion recognition is affected by inversion--an indicator for configural processing, and presentation time--an indicator for cognitive effort of processing.