Faces Test (FT-36)

Overview

The Faces Test–36 (FT-36) is a standardized psychometric instrument designed to assess an individual’s ability to recognize, interpret, and discriminate emotional facial expressions. The test consists of 36 photographs depicting faces expressing a variety of basic emotions, including happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. By evaluating facial emotion recognition, the FT-36 provides an objective measure of a core component of social cognition, which is essential for effective interpersonal communication, emotional understanding, and adaptive social functioning.

Objective

The primary objective of the FT-36 is to evaluate the accuracy with which individuals identify emotions conveyed through facial expressions. The instrument is widely used to investigate emotional processing abilities in both clinical and non-clinical populations, contributing to the assessment of social cognition, emotional competence, and interpersonal functioning.

The FT-36 can be used to:

  • Assess facial emotion recognition abilities.
  • Investigate emotional intelligence and empathy.
  • Detect impairments in social cognition.
  • Compare emotional recognition performance across different populations.
  • Support research on emotional processing and neuropsychological functioning.

Test Structure

The FT-36 comprises 36 facial images, each portraying a distinct emotional expression. Participants are required to identify the emotion represented in each photograph. Performance is evaluated primarily through the number of correctly identified emotions, while additional analyses may include the types of recognition errors and the response time required for each judgment. These measures provide a comprehensive evaluation of an individual’s efficiency and accuracy in processing emotional facial cues.

Applications

The FT-36 is extensively employed in clinical psychology, psychiatry, neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental research. It is particularly valuable for assessing individuals with conditions associated with impaired emotion recognition, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, mood disorders, traumatic brain injury, dementia, and social anxiety disorder. In addition, the instrument is widely used in research examining empathy, emotional intelligence, social communication, and the neural mechanisms underlying facial emotion processing.

Scoring and Interpretation

Participants receive one point for each correctly identified emotional expression, with the total score typically expressed as the percentage of correct responses. Higher scores indicate superior facial emotion recognition abilities and more effective social-emotional processing. Lower scores may suggest difficulties in interpreting emotional cues, potentially reflecting impairments in social cognition or broader neuropsychological dysfunction. When available, response time may also be analyzed to provide additional information regarding processing efficiency and cognitive performance.

Psychometric Considerations

The FT-36 provides a standardized approach to evaluating facial emotion recognition and has become a widely used instrument in both experimental and clinical settings. Its structured administration and objective scoring facilitate reliable comparisons across individuals and populations, making it an effective tool for investigating emotional perception, monitoring intervention outcomes, and advancing research on social cognition and affective neuroscience.

References

Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1976). Pictures of Facial Affect. Consulting Psychologists Press.

Ekman, P. (1999). Basic Emotions. In T. Dalgleish & M. J. Power (Eds.), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion (pp. 45–60). Wiley.

Tottenham, N., & Sheridan, M. (2009). A review of emotion perception and its development in children. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(1), 74–95.

Young, A. W., & Calder, A. J. (2000). Specificity of Emotion Recognition in the Human Visual System. In The Human Amygdala (pp. 253–277). Elsevier.

Barrett, L. F., & Barrett, D. J. (2001). The Structure of Emotion: A Developmental Perspective. In The Handbook of Emotions (pp. 357–371). Guilford Press.