Facial expression recognition as a candidate marker for autism spectrum disorder: how frequent and severe are deficits?

Altered processing of consecutive changeable emotional voices in individuals with autistic traits: behavioral and ERP studies

BACKGROUND

Similar to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), individuals with autistic traits are expected to exhibit alterations in emotion recognition. However, many previous studies using single emotional stimuli did not observe these alterations in such individuals. Given that consecutive changeable emotional stimuli are more common in social interactions than single emotional stimuli, impaired mental processing of consecutive changeable emotions may be a key factor underlying the social interaction challenges faced by these individuals.

METHODS

The present research aimed to investigate the behavioral and neural responses to consecutive changeable emotional voices in individuals with autistic traits through two studies (Study 1 and Study 2). Based on the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) scores, participants were categorized into two groups: the High-AQ and the Low-AQ groups. In Study 1, both groups were asked to judge a single emotional voice (positive, negative, or neutral; S1) presented in each trial in Task 1, or the last presented emotional voice (S3) in a triplet of stimuli (S1-S2-S3, trains of three consecutive changeable emotional voices) in Task 2. In Study 2, both groups were instructed to passively listen to the stimulus triplet (S1-S2-S3), and event-related potential (ERP) technology was used to investigate their neural responses to each stimulus.

RESULTS

No significant group difference was found in response to S1 voices in either Study 1 or Study 2. However, the High-AQ group elicited higher arousal levels (Study 1) and larger P2 amplitudes (Study 2) in response to S3 emotional voices (positive and negative) compared to the Low-AQ group.

CONCLUSION

These findings reveal that individuals with autistic traits may exhibit alterations in their processing of consecutive changeable emotions in the auditory modality.

EEG during dynamic facial emotion processing reveals neural activity patterns associated with autistic traits in children

Altered brain connectivity and atypical neural oscillations have been observed in autism, yet their relationship with autistic traits in nonclinical populations remains underexplored. Here, we employ electroencephalography to examine functional connectivity, oscillatory power, and broadband aperiodic activity during a dynamic facial emotion processing task in 101 typically developing children aged 4 to 12 years. We investigate associations between these electrophysiological measures of brain dynamics and autistic traits as assessed by the Social Responsiveness Scale, 2nd Edition (SRS-2). Our results revealed that increased facial emotion processing-related connectivity across theta (4 to 7 Hz) and beta (13 to 30 Hz) frequencies correlated positively with higher SRS-2 scores, predominantly in right-lateralized (theta) and bilateral (beta) cortical networks. Additionally, a steeper 1/f-like aperiodic slope (spectral exponent) across fronto-central electrodes was associated with higher SRS-2 scores. Greater aperiodic-adjusted theta and alpha oscillatory power further correlated with both higher SRS-2 scores and steeper aperiodic slopes. These findings underscore important links between facial emotion processing-related brain dynamics and autistic traits in typically developing children. Future work could extend these findings to assess these electroencephalography-derived markers as potential mechanisms underlying behavioral difficulties in autism.

Facial signals shape predictions about the nature of upcoming conversational responses

Increasing evidence suggests that interlocutors use visual communicative signals to form predictions about unfolding utterances, but there is little data on the predictive potential of facial signals in conversation. In an online experiment with virtual agents, we examine whether facial signals produced by an addressee may allow speakers to anticipate the response to a question before it is given. Participants (n = 80) viewed videos of short conversation fragments between two virtual humans. Each fragment ended with the Questioner asking a question, followed by a pause during which the Responder looked either straight at the Questioner (baseline), or averted their gaze, or accompanied the straight gaze with one of the following facial signals: brow raise, brow frown, nose wrinkle, smile, squint, mouth corner pulled back (dimpler). Participants then indicated on a 6-point scale whether they expected a "yes" or "no" response. Analyses revealed that all signals received different ratings relative to the baseline: brow raises, dimplers, and smiles were associated with more positive responses, gaze aversions, brow frowns, nose wrinkles, and squints with more negative responses. Qur findings show that interlocutors may form strong associations between facial signals and upcoming responses to questions, highlighting their predictive potential in face-to-face conversation.

AI technology to support adaptive functioning in neurodevelopmental conditions in everyday environments: a systematic review

Supports for adaptive functioning in individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) is of umost importance to long-term outcomes. Artificial intelligence (AI)-assistive technologies has enormous potential to offer efficient, cost-effective, and personalized solutions to address these challenges, particularly in everday environments. This systematic review examines the existing evidence for using AI-assistive technologies to support adaptive functioning in people with NDCs in everyday settings. Searches across six databases yielded 15 studies meeting inclusion criteria, focusing on robotics, phones/computers and virtual reality. Studies most frequently recruited children diagnosed with autism and targeted social skills (47%), daily living skills (26%), and communication (16%). Despite promising results, studies addressing broader transdiagnostic needs across different NDC populations are needed. There is also an urgent need to improve the quality of evidence-based research practices. This review concludes that AI holds enormous potential to support adaptive functioning for people with NDCs and for personalized health support. This review underscores the need for further research studies to advance AI technologies in this field.

Autism Identification Based on the Intelligent Analysis of Facial Behaviors: An Approach Combining Coarse- and Fine-Grained Analysis

BACKGROUND

Facial behavior has emerged as a crucial biomarker for autism identification. However, heterogeneity among individuals with autism poses a significant obstacle to traditional feature extraction methods, which often lack the necessary discriminative power. While deep-learning methods hold promise, they are often criticized for their lack of interpretability.

METHODS

To address these challenges, we developed an innovative facial behavior characterization model that integrates coarse- and fine-grained analyses for intelligent autism identification. The coarse-grained analysis provides a holistic view by computing statistical measures related to facial behavior characteristics. In contrast, the fine-grained component uncovers subtle temporal fluctuations by employing a long short-term memory (LSTM) model to capture the temporal dynamics of head pose, facial expression intensity, and expression types. To fully harness the strengths of both analyses, we implemented a feature-level attention mechanism. This not only enhances the model's interpretability but also provides valuable insights by highlighting the most influential features through attention weights.

RESULTS

Upon evaluation using three-fold cross-validation on a self-constructed autism dataset, our integrated approach achieved an average recognition accuracy of 88.74%, surpassing the standalone coarse-grained analysis by 8.49%.

CONCLUSIONS

This experimental result underscores the improved generalizability of facial behavior features and effectively mitigates the complexities stemming from the pronounced intragroup variability of those with autism, thereby contributing to more accurate and interpretable autism identification.

Paul L, Wang S, Li X. Can micro-expressions be used as a biomarker for autism spectrum disorder?

Introduction

Early and accurate diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is crucial for effective intervention, yet it remains a significant challenge due to its complexity and variability. Micro-expressions are rapid, involuntary facial movements indicative of underlying emotional states. It is unknown whether micro-expression can serve as a valid bio-marker for ASD diagnosis.

Methods

This study introduces a novel machine-learning (ML) framework that advances ASD diagnostics by focusing on facial micro-expressions. We applied cutting-edge algorithms to detect and analyze these micro-expressions from video data, aiming to identify distinctive patterns that could differentiate individuals with ASD from typically developing peers. Our computational approach included three key components: (1) micro-expression spotting using Shallow Optical Flow Three-stream CNN (SOFTNet), (2) feature extraction via Micron-BERT, and (3) classification with majority voting of three competing models (MLP, SVM, and ResNet).

Results

Despite the sophisticated methodology, the ML framework's ability to reliably identify ASD-specific patterns was limited by the quality of video data. This limitation raised concerns about the efficacy of using micro-expressions for ASD diagnostics and pointed to the necessity for enhanced video data quality.

Discussion

Our research has provided a cautious evaluation of micro-expression diagnostic value, underscoring the need for advancements in behavioral imaging and multimodal AI technology to leverage the full capabilities of ML in an ASD-specific clinical context.

Atypical daily visual exposure to faces in adults with autism spectrum disorder

Expert face processes are refined and tuned through a protracted development. Exposure statistics of the daily visual experience of neurotypical adults (the face diet) show substantial exposure to familiar faces. People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) do not show the same expertise with faces as their non-autistic counterparts. This may be due to an impoverished visual experience with faces, according to experiential models of autism. Here, we present the first empirical report on the day-to-day visual experience of the faces of adults with ASD. Our results, based on over 360 h of first-person perspective footage of daily exposure, show striking qualitative and quantitative differences in the ASD face diet compared with those of neurotypical observers, which is best characterized by a pattern of reduced and atypical exposure to familiar faces in ASD. Specifically, duration of exposure to familiar faces was lower in ASD, and faces were viewed from farther distances and from viewpoints that were biased toward profile pose. Our results provide strong evidence that individuals with ASD may not be getting the experience needed for the typical development of expert face processes.

Roles of empathy in altruistic cooperation in adults with and without autism spectrum disorder

Background

Altruistic cooperation (AC) is essential in human social interactions. Previous studies have investigated AC-related behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), revealing that there is considerable individual variability in the behavior. However, this issue is still largely unexplored especially in the adult population.

Aims

To investigate individual differences in AC-related behavior, we conducted the resource allocation task (RAT) and modified version of the ultimatum game (mUG) among adults with and without ASD.

Methods and procedures

The study employed a cross-sectional design, involving 27 adults with ASD (mean age 29.1 ± 4.3 years; three females) and 27 adults with typical development (TD) (mean age 25.8 ± 6.7 years; two females), who completed the RAT and mUG tasks. Beyond clinical characteristics, we assessed three primary psychological metrics: the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI), Barratt impulsiveness scale, and the behavioral inhibition and activation systems.

Outcomes and results

No significant differences were observed in the proportions of participants with high AC when assessed by RAT (p = 0.15) and mUG (p = 0.59) between the TD and ASD groups. Participants with high AC from the RAT demonstrated higher perspective-taking scores on the IRI than those with low AC within both the TD (p = 0.04) and ASD groups (p = 0.03). In the TD group, high AC individuals also scored higher on the IRI's fantasy subscale as per the mUG (p = 0.03); however, this trend was not present in the ASD group.

Conclusions and implications

The present findings indicate that empathy plays an important role in individual differences in AC-related behavior among adults with and without ASD, although the role could be different depending on the types of AC-related behavior between TD and ASD populations.

EEG During Dynamic Facial Emotion Processing Reveals Neural Activity Patterns Associated with Autistic Traits in Children

Altered brain connectivity and atypical neural oscillations have been observed in autism, yet their relationship with autistic traits in non-clinical populations remains underexplored. Here, we employ electroencephalography (EEG) to examine functional connectivity, oscillatory power, and broadband aperiodic activity during a dynamic facial emotion processing (FEP) task in 101 typically developing children aged 4-12 years. We investigate associations between these electrophysiological measures of brain dynamics and autistic traits as assessed by the Social Responsiveness Scale, 2nd Edition (SRS-2). Our results revealed that increased FEP-related connectivity across theta (4-7 Hz) and beta (13-30 Hz) frequencies correlated positively with higher SRS-2 scores, predominantly in right-lateralized (theta) and bilateral (beta) cortical networks. Additionally, a steeper 1/f-like aperiodic slope (spectral exponent) across fronto-central electrodes was associated with higher SRS-2 scores. Greater aperiodic-adjusted theta and alpha oscillatory power further correlated with both higher SRS-2 scores and steeper aperiodic slopes. These findings underscore important links between FEP-related brain dynamics and autistic traits in typically developing children. Future work could extend these findings to assess these EEG-derived markers as potential mechanisms underlying behavioural difficulties in autism.

Herpertz S, Fuchs T. Emotion recognition in autism spectrum condition during the COVID-19 pandemic

LAY ABSTRACT

In the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing face masks became mandatory to prevent the spread of the virus. However, they restrict the ability to recognize emotions to the upper part of the face. Since individuals with autism spectrum condition often tend to look at the lower half of the face, they may be particularly restricted in emotion recognition by people wearing masks, since they are now forced to look at the upper half of the face. The current study compared the recognition of facially expressed emotions between individuals with and without autism spectrum condition. Each photo was shown in three types, once uncovered, once with face mask, and once with sunglasses. Our results revealed a reduction in accuracy of individuals with autism spectrum condition at recognizing emotions in all three stimulus types and exhibited more difficulties distinguishing anger, fear, pride, and embarrassment. During the emotion recognition task, there was no difference in which facial areas the groups looked at. We did not find evidence that the disadvantages of individuals with autism spectrum condition in emotion recognition were due to looking at different areas of the face.

Humanoid facial expressions as a tool to study human behaviour

Besides action vitality forms, facial expressions represent another fundamental social cue which enables to infer the affective state of others. In the present study, we proposed the iCub robot as an interactive and controllable agent to investigate whether and how different facial expressions, associated to different action vitality forms, could modulate the motor behaviour of participants. To this purpose, we carried out a kinematic experiment in which 18 healthy participants observed video-clips of the iCub robot performing a rude or gentle request with a happy or angry facial expression. After this request, they were asked to grasp an object and pass it towards the iCub robot. Results showed that the iCub facial expressions significantly modulated participants motor response. Particularly, the observation of a happy facial expression, associated to a rude action, decreased specific kinematic parameters such as velocity, acceleration and maximum height of movement. In contrast, the observation of an angry facial expression, associated to a gentle action, increased the same kinematic parameters. Moreover, a behavioural study corroborated these findings, showing that the perception of the same action vitality form was modified when associated to a positive or negative facial expression.

Recognition of facial expressions in autism: Effects of face masks and alexithymia

It is often assumed that the recognition of facial expressions is impaired in autism. However, recent evidence suggests that reports of expression recognition difficulties in autistic participants may be attributable to co-occurring alexithymia-a trait associated with difficulties interpreting interoceptive and emotional states-not autism per se. Due to problems fixating on the eye-region, autistic individuals may be more reliant on information from the mouth region when judging facial expressions. As such, it may be easier to detect expression recognition deficits attributable to autism, not alexithymia, when participants are forced to base expression judgements on the eye-region alone. To test this possibility, we compared the ability of autistic participants (with and without high levels of alexithymia) and non-autistic controls to categorise facial expressions (a) when the whole face was visible, and (b) when the lower portion of the face was covered with a surgical mask. High-alexithymic autistic participants showed clear evidence of expression recognition difficulties: they correctly categorised fewer expressions than non-autistic controls. In contrast, low-alexithymic autistic participants were unimpaired relative to non-autistic controls. The same pattern of results was seen when judging masked and unmasked expression stimuli. In sum, we find no evidence for an expression recognition deficit attributable to autism, in the absence of high levels of co-occurring alexithymia, either when participants judge whole-face stimuli or just the eye-region. These findings underscore the influence of co-occurring alexithymia on expression recognition in autism.

A Passing Problem: Evaluating Harm and Benefit in Autism Research

Autism research frequently seeks to evaluate interventions or inform their development. Unfortunately, researchers often assume that autism intervention should reduce autistic traits, effectively setting as a goal of treatment that autistic people attempt to "pass" as nonautistic. A growing body of evidence highlights serious potential harms from passing demands. We discuss why it is important for institutional review boards (IRBs) to scrutinize autism research for clinical passing demands, and we document the existence of such demands in outcome measures commonly employed in autism research. We propose an ethical framework for IRBs and others to make use of in evaluating the ethical appropriateness of particular treatment goals in autism intervention or intervention-adjacent research, emphasizing that treatment goals should be in pursuit of a beneficial nonpassing purpose and be the least burdensome means of accomplishing such a purpose. We also highlight potential promising practices for IRBs, investigators, and other stakeholders seeking to address these issues in autism research.

Dissociations between face identity and face expression processing in developmental prosopagnosia

Individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DPs) experience severe and lifelong deficits recognising faces, but whether their deficits are selective to the processing of face identity or extend to the processing of face expression remains unclear. Clarifying this issue is important for understanding DP impairments and advancing theories of face processing. We compared identity and expression processing in a large sample of DPs (N = 124) using three different matching tasks that each assessed identity and expression processing with identical experimental formats. We ran each task in upright and inverted orientations and we measured inversion effects to assess the integrity of upright-specific face processes. We report three main results. First, DPs showed large deficits at discriminating identity but only subtle deficits at discriminating expression. Second, DPs showed a reduced inversion effect for identity but a normal inversion effect for expression. Third, DPs' performance on the expression tasks were linked to autism traits, but their performance on the identity tasks were not. These results constitute several dissociations between identity and expression processing in DP, and they are consistent with the view that the core impairment in DP is highly selective to identity.

Autistic adults exhibit highly precise representations of others' emotions but a reduced influence of emotion representations on emotion recognition accuracy

To date, studies have not yet established the mechanisms underpinning differences in autistic and non-autistic emotion recognition. The current study first investigated whether autistic and non-autistic adults differed in terms of the precision and/or differentiation of their visual emotion representations and their general matching abilities, and second, explored whether differences therein were related to challenges in accurately recognizing emotional expressions. To fulfil these aims, 45 autistic and 45 non-autistic individuals completed three tasks employing dynamic point light displays of emotional facial expressions. We identified that autistic individuals had more precise visual emotion representations than their non-autistic counterparts, however, this did not confer any benefit for their emotion recognition. Whilst for non-autistic people, non-verbal reasoning and the interaction between precision of emotion representations and matching ability predicted emotion recognition, no variables contributed to autistic emotion recognition. These findings raise the possibility that autistic individuals are less guided by their emotion representations, thus lending support to Bayesian accounts of autism.

Oral Healthcare Practices and Awareness among the Parents of Autism Spectrum Disorder Children: A Multi-Center Study

This study aimed to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of the parents of autistic children toward oral health and the practice of oral hygiene habits. A questionnaire was constructed, validated, and distributed to the parents of autistic children at different autistic centers. The questionnaire was divided into three parts: demographic information on the parents of autistic children, the knowledge and attitudes of parents toward oral health, and the practice of oral hygiene habits in the current population. A total of 206 responses were collected. Irrespective of the parents' educational and employment statuses, most second children were diagnosed with autism, and most of the parents have four or more children. In terms of knowledge and attitudes toward oral health, a total of 90.30% of the patients were aware of the oral healthcare of their child, and 55.80% of parents take them to the dentist for checkups. Moreover, the response to the practice of oral hygiene habits from the parents was positive, and most of the parents assist in the oral hygiene practices of their autistic children. This study showed that most of the parents appeared to have satisfactory knowledge about oral health practices for autistic children. However, additional studies should also be conducted.

Contextualising facial expressions: The effect of temporal context and individual differences on classification

The influence of context on facial expression classification is most often investigated using simple cues in static faces portraying basic expressions with a fixed emotional intensity. We examined (1) whether a perceptually rich, dynamic audiovisual context, presented in the form of movie clips (to achieve closer resemblance to real life), affected the subsequent classification of dynamic basic (happy) and non-basic (sarcastic) facial expressions and (2) whether people's susceptibility to contextual cues was related to their ability to classify facial expressions viewed in isolation. Participants classified facial expressions-gradually progressing from neutral to happy/sarcastic in increasing intensity-that followed movie clips. Classification was relatively more accurate and faster when the preceding context predicted the upcoming expression, compared with when the context did not. Speeded classifications suggested that predictive contexts reduced the emotional intensity required to be accurately classified. More importantly, we show for the first time that participants' accuracy in classifying expressions without an informative context correlated with the magnitude of the contextual effects experienced by them-poor classifiers of isolated expressions were more susceptible to a predictive context. Our findings support the emerging view that contextual cues and individual differences must be considered when explaining mechanisms underlying facial expression classification.

Facial expression recognition is linked to clinical and neurofunctional differences in autism

BACKGROUND

Difficulties in social communication are a defining clinical feature of autism. However, the underlying neurobiological heterogeneity has impeded targeted therapies and requires new approaches to identifying clinically relevant bio-behavioural subgroups. In the largest autism cohort to date, we comprehensively examined difficulties in facial expression recognition, a key process in social communication, as a bio-behavioural stratification biomarker, and validated them against clinical features and neurofunctional responses.

METHODS

Between 255 and 488 participants aged 6-30 years with autism, typical development and/or mild intellectual disability completed the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces task, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task and/or the Films Expression Task. We first examined mean-group differences on each test. Then, we used a novel intersection approach that compares two centroid and connectivity-based clustering methods to derive subgroups based on the combined performance across the three tasks. Measures and subgroups were then related to clinical features and neurofunctional differences measured using fMRI during a fearful face-matching task.

RESULTS

We found significant mean-group differences on each expression recognition test. However, cluster analyses showed that these were driven by a low-performing autistic subgroup (~ 30% of autistic individuals who performed below 2SDs of the neurotypical mean on at least one test), while a larger subgroup (~ 70%) performed within 1SD on at least 2 tests. The low-performing subgroup also had on average significantly more social communication difficulties and lower activation in the amygdala and fusiform gyrus than the high-performing subgroup.

LIMITATIONS

Findings of autism expression recognition subgroups and their characteristics require independent replication. This is currently not possible, as there is no other existing dataset that includes all relevant measures. However, we demonstrated high internal robustness (91.6%) of findings between two clustering methods with fundamentally different assumptions, which is a critical pre-condition for independent replication.

CONCLUSIONS

We identified a subgroup of autistic individuals with expression recognition difficulties and showed that this related to clinical and neurobiological characteristics. If replicated, expression recognition may serve as bio-behavioural stratification biomarker and aid in the development of targeted interventions for a subgroup of autistic individuals.

Diminished ability to integrate target stimuli with context during emotional recognition in individuals with broad autism phenotype

Individuals with broad autism phenotype (BAP) have a tendency not to integrate emotional stimuli with the surrounding context. They have also shown different patterns and abilities in processing positive and negative emotions. This study aimed to examine whether the effect of context on target stimuli could vary depending on the type of target emotion in individuals with BAP. Based on the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ) and Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), 36 individuals with BAP and 33 healthy controls were selected. All the participants performed an overlap-emotional task consisting of six conditions: 2 (congruence: congruent and incongruent) × 3 (emotion: fearful, sad, and happy). Reaction time and accuracy were measured as dependent variables. The results revealed that the individuals with BAP showed no difference in reaction time between the condition of congruence and incongruence, but that the control group was faster to categorize facial expression on the condition of congruence than that of incongruence regardless of the type of target emotion. There were no differences between the two groups in any of the conditions with regard to accuracy. These findings indicate that individuals with BAP tend not to integrate target emotions with contextual information, a feature that could worsen the speed of emotional recognition in individuals with BAP. This study confirmed that the individuals with BAP have different cognition patterns in emotional recognition than the control group.

Moral Agency, Rules, and Temporality in People Who Are Diagnosed With Mild Forms of Autism: In Defense of a Sentimentalist View

The origin of moral agency is a much-debated issue. While rationalists or Kantians have argued that moral agency is rooted in reason, sentimentalists or Humeans have ascribed its origin to empathic feelings. This debate between rationalists and sentimentalists still stands with respect to persons with mental disorders, such as individuals diagnosed with mild forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), without intellectual impairment. Individuals with ASD are typically regarded as moral agents, however their ability for empathy remains debated. The goal of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms of moral actions in people with ASD, by finding arguments for the origin of their moral actions, supporting either the sentimentalist or the rationalist view of the dispute. We propose to revisit the debate using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to study the autobiographies of individuals with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) and Asperger Syndrome (AS). While conducting the systematic analysis of 10 autobiographies, we re-examined both the rationalist and the sentimentalist positions, considering the links between empathic feelings and moral agency. The investigation of the temporal dimensions of emotional experiences, an aspect overlooked by previous research, indicated that individuals with ASD empathize with others, but in different ways as compared to neurotypicals. A relationship between emotional experience and the type of moral agency exhibited by individuals with forms of ASD was established. As a consequence, our analyses support the sentimentalist stance on moral action.

Alexithymia in autism: cross-sectional and longitudinal associations with social-communication difficulties, anxiety and depression symptoms

BACKGROUND

Alexithymia (difficulties in identifying and describing emotion) is a transdiagnostic trait implicated in social-emotional and mental health problems in the general population. Many autistic individuals experience significant social-communication difficulties and elevated anxiety/depression and alexithymia. Nevertheless, the role of alexithymia in explaining individual variability in the quality/severity of social-communication difficulties and/or anxiety and depression symptoms in autism remains poorly understood.

METHODS

In total, 337 adolescents and adults (autism N = 179) were assessed for alexithymia on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and for social-communication difficulties, anxiety and depression symptoms. A total of 135 individuals (autism N = 76) were followed up 12-24 months later. We used regression models to establish cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between alexithymia, social-communication difficulties, anxiety and depression symptoms.

RESULTS

Autistic individuals reported significantly higher alexithymia than comparison individuals (p < 0.001, r effect size = 0.48), with 47.3% of autistic females and 21.0% of autistic males meeting cut-off for clinically relevant alexithymia (score ⩾61). Difficulties in describing feelings were particularly associated with current self-reported social-communication difficulties [p < 0.001, β = 0.57, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.44-0.67] and predicted later social-communication difficulties (p = 0.02, β = 0.43, 95% CI 0.07-0.82). Difficulties in identifying feelings were particularly associated with current anxiety symptom severity (p < 0.001, β = 0.54, 95% CI 0.41-0.77) and predicted later anxiety (p = 0.01; β = 0.31, 95% CI 0.08-0.62).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that difficulties in identifying v. describing emotion are associated with differential clinical outcomes in autism. Psychological therapies targeting emotional awareness may improve social-communication and anxiety symptoms in autism, potentially conferring long-term benefits.

Emotion Facial Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study of the Impact of Service Dogs

Processing and recognizing facial expressions are key factors in human social interaction. Past research suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present difficulties to decode facial expressions. Those difficulties are notably attributed to altered strategies in the visual scanning of expressive faces. Numerous studies have demonstrated the multiple benefits of exposure to pet dogs and service dogs on the interaction skills and psychosocial development of children with ASD. However, no study has investigated if those benefits also extend to the processing of facial expressions. The aim of this study was to investigate if having a service dog had an influence on facial expression processing skills of children with ASD. Two groups of 15 children with ASD, with and without a service dog, were compared using a facial expression recognition computer task while their ocular movements were measured using an eye-tracker. While the two groups did not differ in their accuracy and reaction time, results highlighted that children with ASD owning a service dog directed less attention toward areas that were not relevant to facial expression processing. They also displayed a more differentiated scanning of relevant facial features according to the displayed emotion (i.e., they spent more time on the mouth for joy than for anger, and vice versa for the eyes area). Results from the present study suggest that having a service dog and interacting with it on a daily basis may promote the development of specific visual exploration strategies for the processing of human faces.

Neural Mechanisms of Facial Emotion Recognition in Autism: Distinct Roles for Anterior Cingulate and dlPFC

OBJECTIVE

The present study sought to measure and internally validate neural markers of facial emotion recognition (FER) in adolescents and young adults with ASD to inform targeted intervention.

METHOD

We utilized fMRI to measure patterns of brain activity among individuals with ASD (N = 21) and matched controls (CON; N = 20) 2 s prior to judgments about the identity of six distinct facial emotions (happy, sad, angry, surprised, fearful, disgust).

RESULTS

Predictive modeling of fMRI data (support vector classification; SVC) identified mechanistic roles for brain regions that forecasted correct and incorrect identification of facial emotion as well as sources of errors over these decisions. BOLD signal activation in bilateral insula, anterior cingulate (ACC) and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) preceded accurate FER in both controls and ASD. Predictive modeling utilizing SVC confirmed the utility of ACC in forecasting correct decisions in controls but not ASD, and further indicated that a region within the right dlPFC was the source of a type 1 error signal in ASD (i.e. neural marker reflecting an impending correct judgment followed by an incorrect behavioral response) approximately two seconds prior to emotion judgments during fMRI.

CONCLUSIONS

ACC forecasted correct decisions only among control participants. Right dlPFC was the source of a false-positive signal immediately prior to an error about the nature of a facial emotion in adolescents and young adults with ASD, potentially consistent with prior work indicating that dlPFC may play a role in attention to and regulation of emotional experience.

Effectiveness of virtual reality and computerized training programs for enhancing emotion recognition in people with autism spectrum disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties recognizing emotions. Studies showed that virtual reality (VR) and computerized training programs might be used as potential tools for enhancing emotion recognition in such people. However, some inconsistencies were observed between the studies. Objective: In the current systematic review and meta-analysis, the potential of computerized and VR training programs were evaluated for enhancing emotion recognition in people with ASD. Method: Using PRISMA guidelines and a PICO model, eligible studies were retrieved and the pooled effect size was calculated. Results: This meta-analysis obtained the pooled effect of Cohen's d = 0.69 (95% CI: [0.49, 0.89]) that showed the positive effect of VR and computerized training on emotion recognition in people with ASD. The effectiveness was confirmed for different types of study design, and for both children and adults, while it was larger for non-VR computerized programs compared with VR counterparts. Conclusion-Due to the small sample size of this study and the substantial heterogeneity between studies, the outcomes should be considered with caution in practice. However, these outcomes can be considered for optimizing suitable computerized applications or as the hypothesis for future studies.

Speed and accuracy of emotion recognition in autistic adults: The role of stimulus type, response format, and emotion

Emotion recognition difficulties are considered to contribute to social-communicative problems for autistic individuals. Prior research has been dominated by a focus on forced-choice recognition response accuracy for static face presentations of basic emotions, often involving small samples. Using free-report and multiple-choice response formats, we compared emotion recognition in IQ-matched autistic (N = 63) and nonautistic (N = 67) adult samples using 12 face emotion stimuli presented in three different stimulus formats (static, dynamic, social) that varied the degree of accompanying contextual information. Percent agreement with normative recognition responses (usually labeled "recognition accuracy") was slightly lower for autistic adults. Both groups displayed marked inter-individual variability and, although there was considerable overlap between groups, a very small subset of autistic individuals recorded lower percent agreement than any of the nonautistic sample. Overall, autistic individuals were significantly slower to respond and less confident. Although stimulus type, response format, and emotion affected percent agreement, latency and confidence, their interactions with group were nonsignificant and the associated effect sizes extremely small. The findings challenge notions that autistic adults have core deficits in emotion recognition and are more likely than nonautistic adults to be overwhelmed by increasingly dynamic or complex emotion stimuli and to experience difficulties recognizing specific emotions. Suggested research priorities include clarifying whether longer recognition latencies reflect fundamental processing limitations or adjustable strategic influences, probing age-related changes in emotion recognition across adulthood, and identifying the links between difficulties highlighted by traditional emotion recognition paradigms and real-world social functioning. LAY SUMMARY: It is generally considered that autistic individuals are less accurate than nonautistic individuals at recognizing other people's facial emotions. Using a wide array of emotions presented in various contexts, this study suggests that autistic individuals are, on average, only slightly less accurate but at the same time somewhat slower when classifying others' emotions. However, there was considerable overlap between the two groups, and great variability between individuals. The differences between groups prevailed regardless of how stimuli were presented, the response required or the particular emotion.

The Effect of Surgical Masks on the Featural and Configural Processing of Emotions

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of surgical masks became widespread. However, they occlude an important part of the face and make it difficult to decode and interpret other people's emotions. To clarify the effect of surgical masks on configural and featural processing, participants completed a facial emotion recognition task to discriminate between happy, sad, angry, and neutral faces. Stimuli included fully visible faces, masked faces, and a cropped photo of the eyes or mouth region. Occlusion due to the surgical mask affects emotion recognition for sadness, anger, and neutral faces, although no significative differences were found in happiness recognition. Our findings suggest that happiness is recognized predominantly via featural processing.

Reduced Pupil Oscillation During Facial Emotion Judgment in People with Autism Spectrum Disorder

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show abnormal face perception and emotion recognition. However, it remains largely unknown whether these differences are associated with abnormal physiological responses when viewing faces. In this study, we employed a sensitive emotion judgment task and conducted a detailed investigation of pupil dilation/constriction and oscillation in high-functioning adult participants with ASD and matched controls. We found that participants with ASD showed normal pupil constriction to faces; however, they demonstrated reduced pupil oscillation, which was independent of stimulus properties and participants' perception of the emotion. Together, our results have revealed an abnormal physiological response to faces in people with ASD, which may in turn be associated with impaired face perception previously found in many studies.

Eye Gaze in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review of Neural Evidence for the Eye Avoidance Hypothesis

Reduced eye contact early in life may play a role in the developmental pathways that culminate in a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. However, there are contradictory theories regarding the neural mechanisms involved. According to the amygdala theory of autism, reduced eye contact results from a hypoactive amygdala that fails to flag eyes as salient. However, the eye avoidance hypothesis proposes the opposite-that amygdala hyperactivity causes eye avoidance. This review evaluated studies that measured the relationship between eye gaze and activity in the 'social brain' when viewing facial stimuli. Of the reviewed studies, eight of eleven supported the eye avoidance hypothesis. These results suggest eye avoidance may be used to reduce amygdala-related hyperarousal among people on the autism spectrum.

Cerebellar Structure and Function in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition characterized by early-onset repetitive behaviors, restricted interests, sensory and motor difficulties, and impaired social interactions. Converging evidence from neuroimaging, lesion and postmortem studies, and rodent models suggests cerebellar involvement in ASD and points to promising targets for therapeutic interventions for the disorder. This review elucidates understanding of cerebellar mechanisms in ASD by integrating and contextualizing recent structural and functional cerebellar research.

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.

Examining the bidirectional association between emotion recognition and social autistic traits using observational and genetic analyses

BACKGROUND

There is mixed evidence for an association between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and emotion recognition deficits. We sought to assess the bidirectionality of this association using phenotypic and genetic data in a large community sample.

METHODS

Analyses were conducted in three stages. First, we examined the bidirectional association between social autistic traits at age 8 years and emotion recognition task (ERT) responses at age 24 years (Study 1; N = 3,562); and between Diagnostic Analysis of Non-Verbal Accuracy (DANVA) emotion recognition responses at age 8 years and social autistic traits at age 10 years (Study 2; N = 9,071). Next, we used genetic analyses (Study 3) to examine the association between polygenic risk scores for ASD and outcomes for the ERT and DANVA. The genetic correlation between ASD and ERT responses at age 24 was also estimated. Analyses were conducted in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.

RESULTS

Social autistic traits at age 8 years were negatively associated with later total correct responses on ERT in Study 1 (b = -0.18; 95% CI: -0.27 to -0.09). We also found evidence of an association in Study 2 (b = -0.04; 95% CI: -0.05 to -0.03). We found the opposite association, that is positive, between the ASD polygenic risk score and ERT (b = 0.40; 95% CI: 0.10 to 0.70); however, this association varied across different p-value thresholds and would not survive multiple testing, so should be interpreted with caution. We did not find evidence of a genetic correlation between ASD and ERT.

CONCLUSION

We found an observational association between poorer emotion recognition and increased social autistic traits. Our genetic analyses may suggest a shared genetic aetiology between these or a potential causal pathway; however, future research would benefit from using better powered GWAS to examine this further. Our results may inform interventions targeting emotion recognition.

Using social media to be 'social': Perceptions of social media benefits and risk by autistic young people, and parents

Autistic individuals are reported to struggle with aspects of social interaction. Past research has shown that social media use can help to facilitate social functioning, however, the perceptions of risks and benefits when engaging on social media platforms remains unclear. The current study aimed to explore perceptions of social media participation in terms of online risk and online relationships in both autistic young people and parents. Eight autistic young people and six parents of autistic young people took part in semi-structured interviews, with the resultant data being transcribed and analysed using Braun and Clarke's (2006) inductive thematic analysis. Two themes were identified in relation to the impact social media has on autistic young people's relationships (Socialisation; Communication) and two themes were identified in relation to the perceived barriers and risks to engaging online (Abusive interactions; Talking to strangers). These findings show that social interaction is of particular value to young autistic people, in terms of affording them easier social interactions than there would be in 'real life'. The findings also show that the autistic young people were aware of risks online, and considered ways in which they try to manage this risk. Future research is needed to understand if similar interactions and risk take place across all platforms and whether online communication is successful between matched or mixed autistic and non-autistic groups.

Emotion Recognition Performance in Children with Callous Unemotional Traits is Modulated by Co-occurring Autistic Traits

OBJECTIVE

Atypical emotion recognition (ER) is characteristic of children with high callous unemotional (CU) traits. The current study aims to 1) replicate studies showing ER difficulties for static faces in relation to high CU-traits; 2) test whether ER difficulties remain when more naturalistic dynamic stimuli are used; 3) test whether ER performance for dynamic stimuli is moderated by eye-gaze direction and 4) assess the impact of co-occurring autistic traits on the association between CU and ER.

METHODS

Participants were 292 (152 male) 7-year-olds from the Wirral Child Health and Development Study (WCHADS). Children completed a static and dynamic ER eye-tracking task, and accuracy, reaction time and attention to the eyes were recorded.

RESULTS

Higher parent-reported CU-traits were significantly associated with reduced ER for static expressions, with lower accuracy for angry and happy faces. No association was found for dynamic expressions. However, parent-reported autistic traits were associated with ER difficulties for both static and dynamic expressions, and after controlling for autistic traits, the association between CU-traits and ER for static expressions became non-significant. CU-traits and looking to the eyes were not associated in either paradigm.

CONCLUSION

The finding that CU-traits and ER are associated for static but not naturalistic dynamic expressions may be because motion cues in the dynamic stimuli draw attention to emotion-relevant features such as eyes and mouth. Further, results suggest that ER difficulties in CU-traits may be due, in part, to co-occurring autistic traits. Future developmental studies are required to tease apart pathways toward the apparently overlapping cognitive phenotype.

Enhance the Language Ability of Humanoid Robot NAO through Deep Learning to Interact with Autistic Children

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a life-long neurological disability, and a cure has not yet been found. ASD begins early in childhood and lasts throughout a person’s life. Through early intervention, many actions can be taken to improve the quality of life of children. Robots are one of the best choices for accompanying children with autism. However, for most robots, the dialogue system uses traditional techniques to produce responses. Robots cannot produce meaningful answers when the conversations have not been recorded in a database. The main contribution of our work is the incorporation of a conversation model into an actual robot system for supporting children with autism. We present the use a neural network model as the generative conversational agent, which aimed at generating meaningful and coherent dialogue responses given the dialogue history. The proposed model shares an embedding layer between the encoding and decoding processes through adoption. The model is different from the canonical Seq2Seq model in which the encoder output is used only to set-up the initial state of the decoder to avoid favoring short and unconditional responses with high prior probability. In order to improve the sensitivity to context, we changed the input method of the model to better adapt to the utterances of children with autism. We adopted transfer learning to make the proposed model learn the characteristics of dialogue with autistic children and to solve the problem of the insufficient corpus of dialogue. Experiments showed that the proposed method was superior to the canonical Seq2sSeq model and the GAN-based dialogue model in both automatic evaluation indicators and human evaluation, including pushing the BLEU precision to 0.23, the greedy matching score to 0.69, the embedding average score to 0.82, the vector extrema score to 0.55, the skip-thought score to 0.65, the KL divergence score to 5.73, and the EMD score to 12.21.

Health-related risky behaviors and their risk factors in adolescents with high-functioning autism

BACKGROUND

Health-related risky behaviors generally refer to behaviors that have a negative impact on health and quality of life. Health-related risky behaviors in adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA) have not been well understood so far. Adolescents with HFA may have more health-related risky behaviors than neurotypical adolescents.

AIM

To investigate health-related risky behaviors and their risk factors with HFA.

METHODS

This is an observational study. Our study enrolled 110 adolescents aged 12-19-years-old meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4^th edition criteria for HFA. They were recruited from Peking University Sixth Hospital. There were also 110 age, sex and nationality matched controls enrolled who came from a public school in Beijing, China. Both groups completed the Adolescents Health-related Risky Behavior Inventory. Nonparametric tests were carried out for comparison of the Adolescents Health-related Risky Behavior Inventory scores between the two groups. Expression recognition, the Inventory of Subjective Life Quality for Child and Adolescent, Chinese Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Adult-Chinese Revised, Theory of Mind test and Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire were assessed in the autism group to explore factors associated with health-related risky behaviors. Multivariate regression analysis was conducted to explore the risk factors of health-related risky behaviors in the HFA group.

RESULTS

The results showed that the total score of the Adolescents Health-related Risky Behavior Inventory and scores of “aggression and violence,” “suicide and self-injury,” “health compromising behavior” and “unprotected sex” subscales in the HFA group were significantly higher than those in the control group (Z range -4.197 to -2.213, P < 0.05). Among the associated factors, poor emotional experience (B = -0.268, P < 0.001), depression (B = -0.321, P < 0.001), low score of intelligence (B = -0.032, P = 0.042), low score of Theory of Mind test (B = -1.321, P = 0.003) and poor adaptation to school life (B = -0.152, P = 0.006) were risk factors. These risky behaviors may promote the occurrence of health-related risky behaviors in adolescents with HFA.

CONCLUSION

This study showed that adolescents with HFA were more likely to be involved in health-related risky behaviors. Different health-related risky behaviors have different reasons.

Exploring neuropsychological and socio-emotional task performance in anorexia nervosa: A cluster analytic approach

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to characterise heterogeneity in neuropsychological and socio-emotional task performance in young women with anorexia nervosa (AN) using hierarchical cluster analysis. Further, we aimed to test whether cognitive profiles were associated with differences in clinical variables (body mass index, illness duration and age at diagnosis), psychopathology (eating disorder, autistic symptoms, anxiety and depression) and functional impairment.

METHOD

Set-shifting, central coherence and theory of mind abilities were measured in 118 women with acute or remitted AN. A hierarchical cluster analysis using Ward's method with a Euclidean distance measure was performed with the neuropsychological and socio-emotional variables. Differences between clusters were assessed using ANOVAs.

RESULTS

Four clusters emerged, with significant differences in neuropsychological and socio-emotional task performance. There were no significant differences between clusters in clinical variables, psychopathology or functional impairment, however, these analyses lacked power due to small cluster sizes.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results demonstrate significant heterogeneity in cognitive profiles in AN, supporting a more personalised approach to treatment. Studies in larger samples are required to establish whether these variables map onto clinically significant differences in aetiology, clinical presentation, comorbidity patterns and/or treatment responses.

When Disability Is Defined by Behavior, Outcome Measures Should Not Promote "Passing"

When disability is defined by behavior, researchers and clinicians struggle to identify appropriate measures to assess clinical progress. Some choose the reduction or elimination of diagnostic traits, implicitly defining typical appearance as the goal of service provision. Such an approach often interferes with more meaningful, person-centered goals; causes harm to people with disabilities; and is unnecessary for dealing with traits that are intrinsically harmful or personally distressing, such as self-injury. Disability stakeholders should reevaluate outcome measures that seek to eliminate disability-related traits that are stigmatized but not harmful. Using autism and the emergent neurodiversity movement as a case study, this article explores ethical challenges in selecting outcome measures in behaviorally defined disability diagnoses.

Autism symptoms in anorexia nervosa: a comparative study with females with autism spectrum disorder

Background

Recent research suggests a link between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and anorexia nervosa (AN). Individuals with AN show high scores on measures of ASD symptoms, relative to individuals without AN, however, there are currently no studies directly comparing women with AN to women with ASD. The aim of the current study was to examine profiles of ASD symptoms in young women in the acute and recovered stages of AN, women with ASD, and typically developing controls (TD), on both self-report and clinical interview measures.

Methods

Four groups of participants aged 12–30 years were included (n = 218): AN, recovered AN (REC), ASD, and TD. Group differences on the Social Responsiveness Scale, 2nd edition (SRS-2), 10-item Autism Quotient (AQ-10), and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, 2nd edition (ADOS-2) were examined. To explore similarities and differences in specific symptom profiles associated with AN and ASD, individual item endorsement on the ADOS-2 was also examined in AN, REC, and ASD.

Results

Across measures, women with ASD showed the highest scores, and TDs the lowest. Generally, individuals with AN and REC showed intermediate levels of ASD symptoms, scoring between the other two groups. However, AN and ASD did not differ on restricted interests and repetitive behaviour subscales. The ADOS-2 item ‘quality of social response’ adequately discriminated between ASD and non-ASD participants.

Limitations

A full diagnostic assessment for ASD was not provided for participants with AN/REC, nor were eating disorders assessed in the ASD group. Therefore, some diagnostic overlap between groups is possible. The cross-sectional design is another limitation.

Conclusions

The results suggest similarities in scores on both self-report and clinical interview measures in AN and ASD. However, individual ADOS-2 item analyses also revealed subtle differences, particularly in reciprocal social interaction. ASD symptoms may be a combination of both state and trait features in AN.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13229-021-00455-5.

When Alterations in Social Cognition Meet Subjective Complaints in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evaluation With the "ClaCoS" Battery

Background: Deficit in social communication is a core feature in Autism Spectrum Disorder but remains poorly assessed in classical clinical practice, especially in adult populations. This gap between needs and practice is partly due to a lack of standardized evaluation tools. The multicentric Research group in psychiatry GDR3557 (Institut de Psychiatrie) developed a new battery for social cognitive evaluation named "ClaCoS," which allows testing the main components of social cognition: Emotion Recognition, Theory of Mind, Attributional Style, and Social Perception and Knowledge. It further provides an assessment of subjective complaints in social cognition. Methods: We compared the social cognition abilities of 45 adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder without intellectual disability and 45 neurotypically developed volunteers using the "ClaCoS" battery, in order to determine its relevance in the evaluation of social cognition impairments in autism. A correlational approach allowed us to test the links between subjective complaints and objectively measured impairments for the different components of social cognition. Results: As expected, the Autism Spectrum Disorder group showed deficits in all four components of social cognition. Moreover, they reported greater subjective complaints than controls regarding their social abilities, correlated to the neuropsychological assessments. Conclusion: The "ClaCoS" battery is an interesting tool allowing to assess social impairments in autism and to specify the altered components, for a better adjustment of tailored social cognition training programs. Our results further suggest that people with Autism Spectrum Disorder have a good social cognitive insight, i.e., awareness into social cognitive functioning, and may thus benefit from social cognitive training tools.

Automatic Classification of Adult Males With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder by Non-contact Measurement of Autonomic Nervous System Activation

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit atypicality in various domains of behavior. Previous psychophysiological studies have revealed an atypical pattern of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activation induced by psychosocial stimulation. Thus, it might be feasible to develop a novel assessment tool to evaluate the risk of ASD by measuring ANS activation in response to emotional stimulation. The present study investigated whether people with ASD could be automatically classified from neurotypical adults based solely on physiological data obtained by the recently introduced non-contact measurement of pulse wave. We video-recorded faces of adult males with and without ASD while watching emotion-inducing video clips. Features reflective of ANS activation were extracted from the temporal fluctuation of facial skin coloration and entered into a machine-learning algorithm. Though the performance was modest, the gradient boosting classifier succeeded in classifying people with and without ASD, which indicates that facial skin color fluctuation contains information useful for detecting people with ASD. Taking into consideration the fact that the current study recruited only high-functioning adults who have relatively mild symptoms and probably developed some compensatory strategies, ASD screening by non-contact measurement of pulse wave could be a promising assessment tool to evaluate ASD risk.

Autism and Employment: Implications for Employers and Adults with ASD

A small but growing body of research has been conducted on vocational outcomes for adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); however, limited resources have been directed towards understanding outcomes for competitive employers. While ASD does present with a range of social communication and adaptive behavior deficits, adults on the spectrum may be extremely efficient, trustworthy, reliable, and cost-effective employees. Nevertheless, fewer than half of young adults with ASD maintain a job. Many businesses are unwilling to hire these capable candidates, concerned among other things about an increase in supervision costs and a decrease in productivity. This is a bias based on misperceptions; the financial and social benefits of hiring adults with ASD, for businesses and the individual, often outweigh the costs.

Facial Emotion Recognition and Polymorphisms of Dopaminergic Pathway Genes in Children with ASD

Background

It is inconclusive whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience a deficit in facial emotion recognition. The dopaminergic pathway has been implicated in the pathogenesis of ASD. This study was aimed at determining facial emotion recognition and its correlation with polymorphisms in the dopaminergic pathway genes in children with ASD.

Methods

Facial emotion recognition was examined in 98 children with ASD and 60 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. The severity of ASD was evaluated using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS). DNA from blood cells was used to analyze the genotypes of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in dopaminergic pathway genes. SNPs of DBH rs1611115, DDC rs6592961, DRD1 rs251937, DRD2 rs4630328, and DRD3 rs167771 were analyzed.

Results

Children with ASD took a significantly longer time to recognize all facial emotions, and their interpretations were less accurate for anger at low intensity and fear at both low and high intensities. The severity of the disease was associated with significant delays in recognition of all facial emotions and with a decrease in accuracy in recognition of happiness and anger at low intensity. Accuracy in recognizing fear at high intensity and sadness at low intensity was associated with rs251937 and rs4630328, respectively, in children with ASD. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that SNP rs167771, response time for the recognition of happiness, sadness and fear, and accuracy in recognition of anger and fear were all associated with the risk of childhood ASD.

Conclusions

Children with ASD experience a deficit in facial emotion recognition. Certain SNPs in the dopaminergic pathway genes are associated with accuracy in recognizing selective facial emotions in children with ASD.

Facial emotion recognition in autistic adult females correlates with alexithymia, not autism

Research on predominantly male autistic samples has indicated that impairments in facial emotion recognition typically associated with autism spectrum conditions are instead due to co-occurring alexithymia. However, whether this could be demonstrated using more realistic facial emotion recognition stimuli and applied to autistic females was unclear. In all, 83 females diagnosed with autism spectrum condition completed online self-report measures of autism spectrum condition severity and alexithymia, and afacial emotion recognition deficit that assessed their ability to identify multimodal displays of complex emotions. Higher levels of alexithymia, but not autism spectrum condition severity, were associated with less accurate facial emotion recognition. Difficulty identifying one’s own feelings and externally oriented thinking were the components of alexithymia that were specifically related to facial emotion recognition accuracy. However, alexithymia (and autism spectrum condition severity) was not associated with speed of emotion processing. The findings are primarily discussed with the theoretical view that perceiving and experiencing emotions share the same neural networks, thus being able to recognise one’s own emotions may facilitate the ability to recognise others’. This study is in line with previous similar research on autistic males and suggests impairments in facial emotion recognition in autistic females should be attributed to co-occurring alexithymia.

Correlations between facial emotion recognition and cognitive flexibility in autism spectrum disorder

Purpose

Various studies have examined the role of executive functions in autism, but there is a lack of research in the current literature on cognitive flexibility in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The purpose of this study is to investigate whether cognitive flexibility deficits could be related to facial emotion recognition deficits in ASD.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 20 children with ASD and 20 typically developing children, matched for intelligence quotient and gender, were examined both in facial emotion recognition tasks and in cognitive flexibility tasks through the dimensional change card sorting task.

Findings

Despite cognitive flexibility not being a core deficit in ASD, impaired cognitive flexibility is evident in the present research. Results show that cognitive flexibility is related to facial emotion recognition and support the hypothesis of an executive specific deficit in children with autism.

Research limitations/implications

One of the limit is the use of just one cognitive test to measure cognitive flexibility and facial recognition. This could be important to be taken into account in the new research. By increasing the number of common variables assessing cognitive flexibility, this will allow for a better comparison between studies to characterize impairment in cognitive flexibility in ASD.

Practical implications

Investigating impairment in cognitive flexibility may help to plan training intervention based on the induction of flexibility.

Social implications

If the authors implement cognitive flexibility people with ASD can have also an effect on their social behavior and overcome the typical and repetitive behaviors that are the hallmark of ASD.

Originality/value

The originality is to relate cognitive flexibility deficits to facial emotion.

Attentional modulation differentially affects ventral and dorsal face areas in both normal participants and developmental prosopagnosics

Face-selective cortical areas that can be divided into a ventral stream and a dorsal stream. Previous findings indicate selective attention to particular aspects of faces have different effects on the two streams. To better understand the organization of the face network and whether deficits in attentional modulation contribute to developmental prosopagnosia (DP), we assessed the effect of selective attention to different face aspects across eight face-selective areas. Our results from normal participants found that ROIs in the ventral pathway (OFA, FFA) responded strongly when attention was directed to identity and expression, and ROIs in the dorsal pathway (pSTS-FA, IFG-FA) responded the most when attention was directed to facial expression. Response profiles generated by attention to different face aspects were comparable in DPs and normals. Our results demonstrate attentional modulation affects the ventral and dorsal steam face areas differently and indicate deficits in attentional modulation do not contribute to DP.

Grey-Matter Thickness of the Left But Not the Right Primary Visual Area Correlates with Autism Traits in Typically Developing Adults

We examined whether functional and structural variability in the primary visual area (V1) correlated with autism traits. Twenty-nine participants (16 males; M_Age = 26.4 years, SD_Age = 4.0 years) completed the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) questionnaire prior to a magnetic resonance imaging session. The total AQ scores was used to assess the degree of self-reported autism traits. The average functional activation in V1 to visual stimulation and its average grey-matter thickness were calculated. There were no correlations between functional activation in V1 and autism traits. Conversely, grey-matter thickness of the left but not the right V1 correlated with autism traits. We conclude that structural changes in the left V1 could be a marker for the presence of autism traits.

Emotion Recognition Abilities in Adults with Anorexia Nervosa are Associated with Autistic Traits

Difficulties in socio-emotional functioning are proposed to contribute to the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). This study aimed to examine emotion recognition abilities in individuals in the acute and recovered stages of AN compared to healthy controls (HCs). A second aim was to examine whether attention to faces and comorbid psychopathology predicted emotion recognition abilities. The films expressions task was administered to 148 participants (46 AN, 51 recovered AN, 51 HC) to assess emotion recognition, during which attention to faces was recorded using eye-tracking. Comorbid psychopathology was assessed using self-report questionnaires and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2nd edition (ADOS-2). No significant differences in emotion recognition abilities or attention to faces were found between groups. However, individuals with a lifetime history of AN who scored above the clinical cut-off on the ADOS-2 displayed poorer emotion recognition performance than those scoring below cut-off and HCs. ADOS-2 scores significantly predicted emotion recognition abilities while controlling for group membership and intelligence. Difficulties in emotion recognition appear to be associated with high autism spectrum disorder (ASD) traits, rather than a feature of AN. Whether individuals with AN and high ASD traits may require different treatment strategies or adaptations is a question for future research.