full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Sophie Zadeh: Are there universal expressions of emotion?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


In the 1960s, psychologist Paul Ekman set about testing this throey by examining hundreds of hours of film footage of remote tribes isolated from the mderon world. Ekman found the native peoples’ expressions to be not only familiar, but occurring in precisely the situations he would expect. Conversely, he ran ttses with tribes who had no prior exposure to Western cturule. They were able to clroecrty match photos of different facial expressions with stories dignseed to trigger particular feelings. Over the next few daeecds, further research has coeorarbtrod Darwin’s idea that some of our most important emotional expressions are in fact universal. The degrees of expression appropriate to a given situation can, however, vary greatly across cultures.

Open Cloze


In the 1960s, psychologist Paul Ekman set about testing this ______ by examining hundreds of hours of film footage of remote tribes isolated from the ______ world. Ekman found the native peoples’ expressions to be not only familiar, but occurring in precisely the situations he would expect. Conversely, he ran _____ with tribes who had no prior exposure to Western _______. They were able to _________ match photos of different facial expressions with stories ________ to trigger particular feelings. Over the next few _______, further research has ____________ Darwin’s idea that some of our most important emotional expressions are in fact universal. The degrees of expression appropriate to a given situation can, however, vary greatly across cultures.

Solution


  1. culture
  2. correctly
  3. decades
  4. corroborated
  5. modern
  6. theory
  7. designed
  8. tests

Original Text


In the 1960s, psychologist Paul Ekman set about testing this theory by examining hundreds of hours of film footage of remote tribes isolated from the modern world. Ekman found the native peoples’ expressions to be not only familiar, but occurring in precisely the situations he would expect. Conversely, he ran tests with tribes who had no prior exposure to Western culture. They were able to correctly match photos of different facial expressions with stories designed to trigger particular feelings. Over the next few decades, further research has corroborated Darwin’s idea that some of our most important emotional expressions are in fact universal. The degrees of expression appropriate to a given situation can, however, vary greatly across cultures.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
facial expression 2


Important Words


  1. conversely
  2. correctly
  3. corroborated
  4. culture
  5. cultures
  6. decades
  7. degrees
  8. designed
  9. ekman
  10. emotional
  11. examining
  12. expect
  13. exposure
  14. expression
  15. expressions
  16. facial
  17. fact
  18. familiar
  19. feelings
  20. film
  21. footage
  22. greatly
  23. hours
  24. hundreds
  25. idea
  26. important
  27. isolated
  28. match
  29. modern
  30. native
  31. occurring
  32. paul
  33. photos
  34. precisely
  35. prior
  36. psychologist
  37. ran
  38. remote
  39. research
  40. set
  41. situation
  42. situations
  43. stories
  44. testing
  45. tests
  46. theory
  47. tribes
  48. trigger
  49. universal
  50. vary
  51. western
  52. world