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.

Music-Enhanced Emotion Identification of Facial Emotions in Autistic Spectrum Disorder Children: A Pilot EEG Study

The Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by a difficulty in expressing and interpreting others' emotions. In particular, people with ASD have difficulties when interpreting emotions encoded in facial expressions. In the past, music interventions have been shown to improve autistic individuals' emotional and social skills. The present study describes a pilot study to explore the usefulness of music as a tool for improving autistic children's emotion recognition in facial expressions. Twenty-five children (mean age = 8.8 y, SD = 1.24) with high-functioning ASD and normal hearing participated in the study consisting of four weekly sessions of 15 min each. Twenty-five participants were randomly divided into an experimental group (N = 14) and a control group (N = 11). During each session, participants in the experimental group were exposed to images of facial expressions for four emotions (happy, sad, angry, and fear). Images were shown in three conditions, with the second condition consisting of music of congruent emotion with the shown images. Participants in the control group were shown only images in all three conditions. For six participants in each group, EEG data were acquired during the sessions, and instantaneous emotional responses (arousal and valence values) were extracted from the EEG data. Inter- and intra-session emotion identification improvement was measured in terms of verbal response accuracy, and EEG response differences were analyzed. A comparison of the verbal responses of the experimental group pre- and post-intervention showed a significant (p = 0.001) average improvement in emotion identification accuracy responses of 26% (SD = 3.4). Furthermore, emotional responses of the experimental group at the end of the study showed a higher correlation with the emotional stimuli being presented, compared with their emotional responses at the beginning of the study. No similar verbal responses improvement or EEG-stimuli correlation was found in the control group. These results seem to indicate that music can be used to improve both emotion identification in facial expressions and emotion induction through facial stimuli in children with high-functioning ASD.

A Systematic Review of Scientific Studies on the Effects of Music in People with or at Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

The prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is globally increasing, and the current available interventions show variable success. Thus, there is a growing interest in additional interventions such as music therapy (MT). Therefore, we aimed to provide a comprehensive and systematic review of music and people with, or at risk of, ASD. We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines and used PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science as databases, with “music”, “music therapy”, “autism spectrum disorder”, and “ASD” as search terms. Among the identified and screened articles, 81 out of 621 qualified as scientific studies involving a total of 43,353 participants. These studies investigated the peculiarities of music perception in people with ASD, as well as the effects of music and MT in this patient group. Most of the music-based interventions were beneficial in improving social, emotional, and behavioural problems. However, the availability of studies utilizing a rigorous randomized controlled trial (RCT) design was scarce. Most of the studies had a small sample size, and the applied therapeutic and scientific research methods were heterogeneous.

The autistic brain can process local but not global emotion regularities in facial and musical sequences

Whether autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with a global processing deficit remains controversial. Global integration requires extraction of regularity across various timescales, yet little is known about how individuals with ASD process regularity at local (short timescale) versus global (long timescale) levels. To this end, we used event-related potentials to investigate whether individuals with ASD would show different neural responses to local (within trial) versus global (across trials) emotion regularities extracted from sequential facial expressions; and if so, whether this visual abnormality would generalize to the music (auditory) domain. Twenty individuals with ASD and 21 age- and IQ-matched individuals with typical development participated in this study. At an early processing stage, ASD participants exhibited preserved neural responses to violations of local emotion regularity for both faces and music. At a later stage, however, there was an absence of neural responses in ASD to violations of global emotion regularity for both faces and music. These findings suggest that the autistic brain responses to emotion regularity are modulated by the timescale of sequential stimuli, and provide insight into the neural mechanisms underlying emotional processing in ASD.

Effects of Emotional Music on Facial Emotion Recognition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Impaired facial emotion recognition in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is in contrast to their intact emotional music recognition. This study tested whether emotion congruent music enhances facial emotion recognition. Accuracy and reaction times were assessed for 19 children with ASD and 31 controls in a recognition task with angry, happy, or sad faces. Stimuli were shown with either emotionally congruent or incongruent music or no music. Although children with ASD had higher reaction times than controls, accuracy only differed when incongruent or no music was played, indicating that congruent emotional music can boost facial emotion recognition in children with ASD. Emotion congruent music may support emotion recognition in children with ASD, and thus may improve their social skills.

The effectiveness of music therapy for individuals with Rett syndrome and their families

BACKGROUND

Patients with Rett syndrome (RTT) present characteristic regression in communication and hand skills, which eventually leads to intellectual and physical disability. Moreover, caregivers of patients with RTT face stressors related to patients' medical and developmental concerns. Given the indications from case reports, this pilot study investigated the effectiveness of music therapy on RTT patients, as well as on parental stress for families of children with RTT.

METHODS

Families in the study group were enrolled in a twice-weekly 120-minute music therapy program for 24 weeks (n = 11), whereas families in the control group did not receive music therapy (n = 12). Participants were administered the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Rett Syndrome Clinical Severity Scale, Rett Syndrome Motor Behavioral Assessment, and Parenting Stress Index for caregivers of RTT children before and after the music therapy program.

RESULTS

Music therapy improved receptive language, verbal and non-verbal communication skills, and social interaction for RTT patients. In addition, purposeful hand function, breathing patterns, and eye contact were significantly improved. Of note, music therapy also decreased the frequency of epileptic seizures. Lastly, caregivers in the study group exhibited significantly lower stress following the program.

CONCLUSION

The 24-week music therapy program was effective in improving social interaction, communication skills, eye contact, hand function, and reducing seizure frequency among RTT patients. Additionally, music therapy was effective in relieving parenting stress, which may help healthcare providers initiate early intervention strategies that can prevent parenting stress and reduce the risk of depression.