Poster #50 - The Nature of Facial Emotion Recognition Impairments in Children on the Autism Spectrum

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Developmental Disabilities

Integrative Statement

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and autism are both general terms for a group of complex disorders characterized by impaired social interactions, in which children are hindered by a lack of interest in initiating conversation, atypical eye-contact, and especially struggles in recognizing the emotions of others (Aldred, Green, & Adams, 2004). While social and emotional impairments have been frequently observed in case studies on individuals with ASD (Lombardo, Chakrabarti, Bullmore, & Baron-Cohen, 2011), the literature regarding FER ability in both children and adults with ASD has yielded surprisingly inconsistent results. Some studies have highlighted significant impairments in emotion recognition accuracy among clinically-diagnosed individuals with ASD (Dawson et al., 2002; Lahaie et al., 2006; Celani, Battacchi, & Arcidiacono, 1999), yet other studies have reported either marginal differences or no differences in performance between ASD and TD groups (Capps, Yirmiya, & Sigman, 1992; Leppänen & Nelson, 2006) One aim of this paper was to examine group differences (ASD, TD) in the recognition ability of both familiar and unfamiliar emotional expressions in 4-8-year-old children, with a second aim designed to assess the variation in recognition ability for positive and negative expression types between groups. Notably, there is evidence that negative emotions (fear, anger, sadness, disgust) are more challenging for children to recognize in faces than positive emotions (happy, excitement, etc.) (Gagnon, Gosselin, & Maassarani 2014). A third goal of the study was to further examine differences in brain activity measures (EEG) between TD children and those on the ASD spectrum. Results showed that the TD children were more proficient on the FER overall whereas ASD children recognized familiar expressions more precisely than unfamiliar ones. Further, ASD children didn’t differ from TD children in recognizing happy expressions but ASD children were less skilled with recognizing negative expressions. Findings suggest that ASD children possess more adept FER abilities than previously thought especially for important social others. Ultimately, a task featuring an array of positive and negative familiar and unfamiliar expressions may provide a more comprehensive assessment of socio-emotional abilities in ASD children. Finally, the groups did not demonstrate significant differences in low range (delta, theta), mid-range (alpha 1, alpha 2) or high-range (beta) EEG power values. These preliminary EEG results did suggest that the TD group had enhanced power in the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes for all of the frequency bands. This is slightly in contrast with the U-shaped power distribution often found in children and adults with autism, characterized by excessive low and high frequency power but depleted mid frequency power. Further evidence is needed to examine the group differences in brain activity as well as the progression of these differences throughout development.

Group Authors

Florida Atlantic University

Authors

• Nathaniel A. Shanok, Florida Atlantic University
  Presenting Author

• Nancy Aaron Jones, Florida Atlantic University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nikola N. Lucas, Florida Atlantic University
  Non-Presenting Author