Fig. 2: Paired comparisons between chosen and unchosen synopses across 16 facial clusters.

A Mimicry scores and B activation scores. Bars display the paired Cohen’s d, calculated from the within-subject differences for each cluster, and are ordered by effect size; whiskers show the 95% CI of Cohen’s d. Asterisks flag clusters whose paired t-test p-value < 0.05. Positive Cohen’s d values indicate greater mimicry (A) or activation (B) values in the chosen synopses. C A standardized facial muscle atlas was developed using an algorithm by Man et al.⁷⁸ based on EMG data collected during the reading phase from all participants. Independent Component Analysis (ICA) was applied separately to each participant’s EMG recordings, and the resulting unmixing matrix (W) was used to generate spatial heatmaps of muscle activation per IC. Each subfigure displays the average of these IC heatmaps across participants, grouped into “muscle clusters” based on distinct and consistent spatial activation patterns. Muscle clusters are sorted and numbered from 1 (near the mouth) to 16 (at the forehead), according to the vertical arrangement of the electrode array. The variable N indicates the number of participants contributing an IC heatmap to each cluster. If a participant’s IC did not sufficiently match any cluster, it was considered noise and excluded from analysis, with an NA recorded in the corresponding cluster position for that participant. Consequently, N varies across subfigures and is lower than the total number of participants. See the Methods section for the full association between muscle clusters and facial muscles. Consent was obtained for the publication of the image in (C).