title: Shared mechanism for emotion processing in adolescents with and without autism.
abstract: Although, the quest to understand emotional processing in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has led to an impressive number of studies, the picture that emerges from this research remains inconsistent. Some studies find that Typically Developing (TD) individuals outperform those with ASD in emotion recognition tasks, others find no such difference. In this paper, we move beyond focusing on potential group differences in behaviour to answer what we believe is a more pressing question: do individuals with ASD use the same mechanisms to process emotional cues? To this end, we rely on model-based analyses of participants' accuracy during an emotion categorisation task in which displays of anger and fear are paired with direct vs. averted gaze. Behavioural data of 20 ASD and 20 TD adolescents revealed that the ASD group displayed lower overall performance. Yet, gaze direction had a similar impact on emotion categorisation in both groups, i.e. improved accuracy for salient combinations (anger-direct, fear-averted). Critically, computational modelling of participants' behaviour reveals that the same mechanism, i.e. increased perceptual sensitivity, underlies the contextual impact of gaze in both groups. We discuss the specific experimental conditions that may favour emotion processing and the automatic integration of contextual information in ASD.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, Inserm unit 960, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, 75005, France.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ioannou
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, Inserm unit 960, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, 75005, France.
authors.forename: Marwa El
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Zein
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, Inserm unit 960, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, 75005, France.
authors.forename: Valentin
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Wyart
authors.affiliation: Centre Expert Asperger, Fondation Fondamental, Paris, 75019, France.|Service de Psychiatrie de l'Enfant et de l'Adolescent, Hôpital Universitaire Robert Debré, Paris, 75019, France.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Scheid
authors.affiliation: Service de Psychiatrie de l'Enfant et de l'Adolescent, Hôpital Universitaire Robert Debré, Paris, 75019, France.|Génétique Humaine et Fonction Cognitive, Institut Pasteur, Paris, 75015, France.
authors.forename: Frédérique
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Amsellem
authors.affiliation: Service de Psychiatrie de l'Enfant et de l'Adolescent, Hôpital Universitaire Robert Debré, Paris, 75019, France.|Génétique Humaine et Fonction Cognitive, Institut Pasteur, Paris, 75015, France.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Delorme
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, Inserm unit 960, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, 75005, France.
authors.forename: Coralie
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chevallier
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, Inserm unit 960, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, 75005, France.
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Grèzes
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000786:Anger; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology