title: Reduced recognition of dynamic facial emotional expressions and emotion-specific response bias in children with an autism spectrum disorder.
abstract: Emotion labelling was evaluated in two matched samples of 6-14-year old children with and without an autism spectrum disorder (ASD; N = 45 and N = 50, resp.), using six dynamic facial expressions. The Emotion Recognition Task proved to be valuable demonstrating subtle emotion recognition difficulties in ASD, as we showed a general poorer emotion recognition performance, in addition to some emotion-specific impairments in the ASD group. Participants' preference for selecting a certain emotion label, irrespective of the stimulus presented, played an important role in our results: response bias-corrected data still showed an overall decreased emotion recognition performance in ASD, but no emotion-specific impairments anymore. Moreover, ASD traits and empathy were correlated with emotion recognition performance.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, Box 3711, 3000, Leuven, Belgium, kris.evers@ppw.kuleuven.be.
authors.forename: Kris
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Evers
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Steyaert
authors.forename: Ilse
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Noens
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wagemans
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010641:Phenotype; D012938:Social Perception