title: Deficits in facial, body movement and vocal emotional processing in autism spectrum disorders.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Previous behavioural and neuroimaging studies of emotion processing in autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) have focused on the use of facial stimuli. To date, however, no studies have examined emotion processing in autism across a broad range of social signals.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study addressed this issue by investigating emotion processing in a group of 23 adults with ASD and 23 age- and gender-matched controls. Recognition of basic emotions ('happiness', 'sadness', 'anger', disgust' and 'fear') was assessed from facial, body movement and vocal stimuli. The ability to make social judgements (such as approachability) from facial stimuli was also investigated.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Significant deficits in emotion recognition were found in the ASD group relative to the control group across all stimulus domains (faces, body movements and voices). These deficits were seen across a range of emotions. The ASD group were also impaired in making social judgements compared to the control group and this correlated with impairments in basic emotion recognition.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study demonstrates that there are significant and broad-ranging deficits in emotion processing in ASD present across a range of stimulus domains and in the auditory and visual modality; they cannot therefore be accounted for simply in terms of impairments in face processing or in the visual modality alone. These results identify a core deficit affecting the processing of a wide range of emotional information in ASD, which contributes to the impairments in social function seen in people with this condition.
authors.affiliation: Division of Psychiatry, University of Edinburgh, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh, UK. r.c.m.philip@ed.ac.uk
authors.forename: R C M
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Philip
authors.forename: H C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Whalley
authors.forename: A C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Stanfield
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sprengelmeyer
authors.forename: I M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.forename: A W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: A P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Atkinson
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Calder
authors.forename: E C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Johnstone
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Lawrie
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hall
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition; D056348:Emotional Intelligence; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement; D013060:Speech; D014888:Wechsler Scales