Perception of Emotions from Facial Expressions in High-functioning Adults with Autism

Overview

Journal Neuropsychologia

Specialties Neurology
Psychology

Date 2012 Oct 2

PMID 23022433

Citations 49

Authors

Daniel P Kennedy

Ralph Adolphs

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Impairment in social communication is one of the diagnostic hallmarks of autism spectrum disorders, and a large body of research has documented aspects of impaired social cognition in autism, both at the level of the processes and the neural structures involved. Yet one of the most common social communicative abilities in everyday life, the ability to judge somebody's emotion from their facial expression, has yielded conflicting findings. To investigate this issue, we used a sensitive task that has been used to assess facial emotion perception in a number of neurological and psychiatric populations. Fifteen high-functioning adults with autism and 19 control participants rated the emotional intensity of 36 faces displaying basic emotions. Every face was rated 6 times-once for each emotion category. The autism group gave ratings that were significantly less sensitive to a given emotion, and less reliable across repeated testing, resulting in overall decreased specificity in emotion perception. We thus demonstrate a subtle but specific pattern of impairments in facial emotion perception in people with autism.

Citing Articles

Trajectories of behavior and social cognition in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and primary psychiatric disorders: A call for better operationalization of socioemotional changes.

Fieldhouse J, van Engelen M, Handgraaf D, de Boer S, van t Hooft J, Schouws S Eur J Neurol. 2024; 31(12):e16426.

PMID: 39171655 PMC: 11555130. DOI: 10.1111/ene.16426.

Associations of polygenic risk scores differentiating attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder from autism spectrum disorder with cognitive and cortical alterations in Schizophrenia patients.

Kuramitsu A, Ohi K, Shioiri T Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2024; 34(3):1149-1159.

PMID: 39110189 DOI: 10.1007/s00787-024-02549-w.

Bilingualism Predicts Affective Theory of Mind in Autistic Adults.

Cummings K, Greene R, Cernasov P, Kan D, Parish-Morris J, Dichter G J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2024; 67(6):1785-1802.

PMID: 38701392 PMC: 11192560. DOI: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00431.

Atypical neural encoding of faces in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Wang Y, Cao R, Chakravarthula P, Yu H, Wang S Cereb Cortex. 2024; 34(13):172-186.

PMID: 38696606 PMC: 11065108. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae060.

Differences in the link between social trait judgment and socio-emotional experience in neurotypical and autistic individuals.

Zhao S, Cao R, Lin C, Wang S, Yu H Sci Rep. 2024; 14(1):5400.

PMID: 38443486 PMC: 10915137. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-56005-5.

References

Sprengelmeyer R, Young A, Mahn K, Schroeder U, Woitalla D, Buttner T . Facial expression recognition in people with medicated and unmedicated Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychologia. 2003; 41(8):1047-57. DOI: 10.1016/s0028-3932(02)00295-6. View

Humphreys K, Minshew N, Leonard G, Behrmann M . A fine-grained analysis of facial expression processing in high-functioning adults with autism. Neuropsychologia. 2006; 45(4):685-95. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.08.003. View

Dziobek I, Bahnemann M, Convit A, Heekeren H . The role of the fusiform-amygdala system in the pathophysiology of autism. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010; 67(4):397-405. DOI: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2010.31. View

Langdell T . Recognition of faces: an approach to the study of autism. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1978; 19(3):255-68. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1978.tb00468.x. View

Adolphs R, Damasio H, Tranel D, Cooper G, Damasio A . A role for somatosensory cortices in the visual recognition of emotion as revealed by three-dimensional lesion mapping. J Neurosci. 2000; 20(7):2683-90. PMC: 6772225. View

Smith M, Cottrell G, Gosselin F, Schyns P . Transmitting and decoding facial expressions. Psychol Sci. 2005; 16(3):184-9. DOI: 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00801.x. View

Corden B, Chilvers R, Skuse D . Avoidance of emotionally arousing stimuli predicts social-perceptual impairment in Asperger's syndrome. Neuropsychologia. 2007; 46(1):137-47. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.08.005. View

Schmitz N, Daly E, Murphy D . Frontal anatomy and reaction time in Autism. Neurosci Lett. 2007; 412(1):12-7. DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2006.07.077. View

Pelphrey K, Sasson N, Reznick J, Paul G, Goldman B, Piven J . Visual scanning of faces in autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2002; 32(4):249-61. DOI: 10.1023/a:1016374617369. View

10.

Wallace G, Case L, Harms M, Silvers J, Kenworthy L, Martin A . Diminished sensitivity to sad facial expressions in high functioning autism spectrum disorders is associated with symptomatology and adaptive functioning. J Autism Dev Disord. 2011; 41(11):1475-86. PMC: 3448486. DOI: 10.1007/s10803-010-1170-0. View

11.

Spezio M, Adolphs R, Hurley R, Piven J . Abnormal use of facial information in high-functioning autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2006; 37(5):929-39. DOI: 10.1007/s10803-006-0232-9. View

12.

Tager-Flusberg H . On the nature of linguistic functioning in early infantile autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 1981; 11(1):45-56. DOI: 10.1007/BF01531340. View

13.

Klin A, Jones W, Schultz R, Volkmar F, Cohen D . Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2002; 59(9):809-16. DOI: 10.1001/archpsyc.59.9.809. View

14.

Spezio M, Adolphs R, Hurley R, Piven J . Analysis of face gaze in autism using "Bubbles". Neuropsychologia. 2006; 45(1):144-51. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.04.027. View

15.

Adolphs R, Tranel D, Damasio H, Damasio A . Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. Nature. 1994; 372(6507):669-72. DOI: 10.1038/372669a0. View

16.

Paul R, Augustyn A, Klin A, Volkmar F . Perception and production of prosody by speakers with autism spectrum disorders. J Autism Dev Disord. 2005; 35(2):205-20. DOI: 10.1007/s10803-004-1999-1. View

17.

Ashwin C, Wheelwright S, Baron-Cohen S . Attention bias to faces in Asperger Syndrome: a pictorial emotion Stroop study. Psychol Med. 2006; 36(6):835-43. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291706007203. View

18.

Harms M, Martin A, Wallace G . Facial emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychol Rev. 2010; 20(3):290-322. DOI: 10.1007/s11065-010-9138-6. View

19.

Neumann D, Spezio M, Piven J, Adolphs R . Looking you in the mouth: abnormal gaze in autism resulting from impaired top-down modulation of visual attention. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2008; 1(3):194-202. PMC: 2555425. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsl030. View

20.

Diehl-Schmid J, Pohl C, Ruprecht C, Wagenpfeil S, Foerstl H, Kurz A . The Ekman 60 Faces Test as a diagnostic instrument in frontotemporal dementia. Arch Clin Neuropsychol. 2007; 22(4):459-64. DOI: 10.1016/j.acn.2007.01.024. View