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Published in

De Gruyter Open, Translational Neuroscience, 3(1), 2010

DOI: 10.2478/v10134-010-0033-8

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Perception of dynamic facial emotional expressions in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)

Journal article published in 2010 by Roy Kessels ORCID, Pieter Spee, Angelique Hendriks
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

AbstractPrevious studies have shown deficits in the perception of static emotional facial expressions in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but results are inconclusive. Possibly, using dynamic facial stimuli expressing emotions at different levels of intensities may produce more robust results, since these resemble the expression of emotions in daily life to a greater extent. 30 Young adolescents with high-functioning ASD (IQ>85) and 30 age- and intelligence-matched controls (ages between 12 and 15) performed the Emotion Recognition Task, in which morphs were presented on a computer screen, depicting facial expressions of the six basic emotions (happiness, disgust, fear, anger, surprise and sadness) at nine levels of emotional intensity (20–100%). The results showed no overall group difference on the ERT, apart from a slightly worse performance on the perception of the emotions fear (p<0.03) and disgust (p<0.05). No interaction was found between intensity level of the emotions and group. High-functioning individuals with ASD perform similar to matched controls on the perception of dynamic facial emotional expressions, even at low intensities of emotional expression. These findings are in agreement with other recent studies showing that emotion perception deficits in high-functioning ASD may be less pronounced than previously thought.