title: Impaired Recognition of Basic Emotions from Facial Expressions in Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Assessing the Importance of Expression Intensity.
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.
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. slg68@medschl.cam.ac.uk.|MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. slg68@medschl.cam.ac.uk.|Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. slg68@medschl.cam.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Griffiths
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jarrold
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Ian S
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Penton-Voak
authors.affiliation: Xperiment, Surrey, UK.
authors.forename: Andy T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Woods
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.|MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Andy L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Skinner
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.|MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.|UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Marcus R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Munafò
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Bias; Emotion recognition; Facial expression; Intensity; Online testing; Perception