Priming Facial Gender and Emotional Valence: The Influence of Spatial Frequency on Face Perception in ASD

Reduced spatial frequency differentiation and sex-related specificities in fearful face detection in autism: Insights from EEG and the predictive brain model

Face processing relies on predictive processes driven by low spatial frequencies (LSF) that convey coarse information prior to fine information conveyed by high spatial frequencies. However, autistic individuals might have atypical predictive processes, contributing to facial processing difficulties. This may be more normalized in autistic females, who often exhibit better socio-communicational abilities than males. We hypothesized that autistic females would display a more typical coarse-to-fine processing for socio-emotional stimuli compared to autistic males. To test this hypothesis, we asked adult participants (44 autistic, 51 non-autistic) to detect fearful faces among neutral faces, filtered in two orders: from coarse-to-fine (CtF) and from fine-to-coarse (FtC). Results show lower d' values and longer reaction times for fearful detection in autism compared to non-autistic (NA) individuals, regardless of the filtering order. Both groups presented shorter P100 latency after CtF compared to FtC, and larger amplitude for N170 after FtC compared to CtF. However, autistic participants presented a reduced difference in source activity between CtF and FtC in the fusiform. There was also a more spatially spread activation pattern in autistic females compared to NA females. Finally, females had faster P100 and N170 latencies, as well as larger occipital activation for FtC sequences than males, irrespective of the group. Overall, the results do not suggest impaired predictive processes from LSF in autism despite behavioral differences in fear detection. However, they do indicate reduced brain modulation by spatial frequency in autism. In addition, the findings highlight sex differences that warrant consideration in understanding autistic females.

Investigating implicit emotion processing in autism spectrum disorder across age groups: A cross-modal emotional priming study

Cumulating evidence suggests that atypical emotion processing in autism may generalize across different stimulus domains. However, this evidence comes from studies examining explicit emotion recognition. It remains unclear whether domain-general atypicality also applies to implicit emotion processing in autism and its implication for real-world social communication. To investigate this, we employed a novel cross-modal emotional priming task to assess implicit emotion processing of spoken/sung words (primes) through their influence on subsequent emotional judgment of faces/face-like objects (targets). We assessed whether implicit emotional priming differed between 38 autistic and 38 neurotypical individuals across age groups as a function of prime and target type. Results indicated no overall group differences across age groups, prime types, and target types. However, differential, domain-specific developmental patterns emerged for the autism and neurotypical groups. For neurotypical individuals, speech but not song primed the emotional judgment of faces across ages. This speech-orienting tendency was not observed across ages in the autism group, as priming of speech on faces was not seen in autistic adults. These results outline the importance of the delicate weighting between speech- versus song-orientation in implicit emotion processing throughout development, providing more nuanced insights into the emotion processing profile of autistic individuals.

High spatial frequency filtered primes hastens happy faces categorization in autistic adults

Coarse information of a visual stimulus is conveyed by Low Spatial Frequencies (LSF) and is thought to be rapidly extracted to generate predictions. This may guide fast recognition with the subsequent integration of fine information, conveyed by High Spatial Frequencies (HSF). In autism, emotional face recognition is challenging, and might be related to alterations in LSF predictive processes. We analyzed the data of 27 autistic and 34 non autistic (NA) adults on an emotional Stroop task (i.e., emotional face with congruent or incongruent emotional word) with spatially filtered primes (HSF vs.LSF). We hypothesized that LSF primes would generate predictions leading to faster categorization of the target face compared to HSF primes, in the NA group but not in autism. Surprisingly, HSF primes led to faster categorization than LSF primes in both groups. Moreover, the advantage of HSF vs.LSF primes was stronger for angry than happy faces in NA, but was stronger for happy than angry faces in autistic participants. Drift diffusion modelling confirmed HSF advantage and showed a longer non-decision time (e.g., encoding) in autism. Despite LSF predictive impairments in autism was not corroborated, our analyses suggest low level processing specificities in autism.

The Effect of Comorbid Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms on Face Memory in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Insights from Transdiagnostic Profiles

Face memory impairments are common but heterogeneous in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which may be influenced by co-occurrence with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Here, we aimed to investigate the phenotype change of face memory in children with ASD comorbid ADHD symptoms, and discuss the potential role of executive function (EF). Ninety-eight children were analyzed in the present study, including ASD- (ASD-only, n = 24), ADHD (n = 23), ASD+ (with ADHD symptoms, n = 23) and neurotypical controls (NTC, n = 28). All participants completed two tests: face encoding and retrieving task and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) for measuring face memory and EF, respectively. Results revealed that: compared with the NTC group, children with ASD- exhibited lower accuracy in both face encoding and retrieving, and participants with ASD+ showed lower accuracy only in the retrieving, whereas no differences were found among participants with ADHD. Moreover, in the ASD+ group, face encoding performance was correlated with response perseverative errors (RPE) and failure to maintain sets (FMS) of WCST; significantly, there were no group differences between ASD+ and NTC in these two indices. The transdiagnostic profiles indicated that comorbid ADHD symptoms could modulate the face encoding deficiency of ASD, which may be partially compensated by EF. Shared and distinct intervention strategies to improve social cognition are recommended for children undergoing treatment for each condition.