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Impaired Recognition of Basic Emotions from Facial Expressions in Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Assessing the Importance of Expression Intensity

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Jarrold, C 
Penton-Voak, IS 
Woods, AT 
Skinner, AL 

Abstract

It has been proposed that impairments in emotion recognition in ASD are greater for more subtle expressions of emotion. We measured recognition of 6 basic facial expressions at 8 intensity levels in young people (6–16 years) with ASD (N = 63) and controls (N = 64) via an Internet platform. Participants with ASD were less accurate than controls at labelling expressions across intensity levels, although differences at very low levels were not detected due to floor effects. Recognition accuracy did not correlate with parent-reported social functioning in either group. These findings provide further evidence for an impairment in recognition of basic emotion in ASD and do not support the idea that this impairment is limited solely to low intensity expressions.

Description

Keywords

emotion recognition, intensity, perception, bias, facial expression, online testing

Journal Title

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0162-3257
1573-3432

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer
Sponsorship
Sarah Griffiths was supported by a University of Bristol Science PhD Scholarship. This study was supported in part by the Medical Research Council and the University of Bristol (MC_UU_12013/6).
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