Perceptual, categorical, and affective processing of ambiguous smiling facial expressions

► A smile is highly visually salient in a face regardless of the eye expression. ► Feature analysis of a salient smile precedes configural integration of the eyes. ► A perceptual representation of the smile is active by 170 ms from stimulus onset. ► Positive affect is extracted only from genuine happy faces ∼550 ms post-stimulus. ► Discrimination between smiling faces is delayed until after affect has been extracted.