title: Age-Related Differences in Response to Music-Evoked Emotion Among Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
abstract: While research regarding emotion recognition in ASD has focused primarily on social cues, musical stimuli also elicit strong emotional responses. This study extends and expands the few previous studies of response to music in ASD, measuring both psychophysiological and behavioral responses in younger children (ages 8-11) as well as older adolescents (ages 16-18). Compared to controls, the ASD group demonstrated reduced skin conductance response to music-evoked emotion. Younger groups, regardless of diagnosis, showed greater physiological reactivity to scary stimuli than to other emotions. There was a significant interaction of age group and diagnostic group in identifying scary music stimuli, possibly evidencing disrupted developmental trajectories in ASD for integrating physiological and cognitive cues that may underlie symptoms of anxiety.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, 245 TLRB, Provo, UT, 84602, USA. kevingstephenson@gmail.com.
authors.forename: K G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Stephenson
authors.affiliation: Educational and Counselling Psychology Department, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada.
authors.forename: E M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Quintin
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Neuroscience Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: South
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music
keywords: Anxiety; Autism spectrum disorder; Development; Emotion; Music; Skin conductance response