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Angry facial expressions produced at real speeds are more difficult for people with autism to recognize than other facial expressions, according to a new study.
The intensity of an expression and the speed at which it is produced can influence how an autistic person interprets the emotion displayed on a person’s face, rfound researchers at the University of Birmingham in the UK.
“We have identified that people with autism have a specific difficulty recognizing anger, which we are starting to think may be related to differences in the way people with and without autism produce these expressions.” mentionned Connor Keating, research fellow at the School of Psychology and the Center for Human Brain Health at the University of Birmingham.
“If this is true, it may not be correct to speak of people with autism as having a ‘deficit’ or ‘deficit’ in emotion recognition – this is more than autistic and non-autistic faces can talk about. a different language when it comes to conveying emotion. ”
Researchers also found that people with a related condition, alexithymia, tend to interpret all types of expressions as more intensely emotional than they actually are.
“One idea is that people with alexithymia are less able to gauge the intensity of emotional expressions and are more likely to not understand what emotion is being presented,” Keating said.
Autism spectrum disorders is a neurodevelopmental disease that affects social skills, behaviors, speech and communication. About 1 in 59 American children have autism. He tends to run in families, but genetic risk factors are not fully understood. Previous studies have shown that most people with autism have severe speech recognition deficits.
People living with alexithymia tend to be less aware of their own emotions and those of others. They also lack social attachment and have difficulty building relationships with others, experts said.
the study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, included 31 participants with autism and 29 without. They were asked to identify emotions from a series of moving pictures made up of dots representing particular facial expressions. The images were displayed at different intensities and speeds.
Participants with autism behaved similarly to those without autism, except for the angry facial expressions produced at normal speeds and intensity.
“When we looked at how well participants could recognize anger expressions, we found that it is definitely the autistic traits that contribute, but not the alexithymic traits,” said Connor. “This suggests that recognizing anger is a difficulty specific to autism.”
“Everyone will know or meet someone with autism at some point in their life,” Keating added. “By better understanding how people with autism perceive and understand the world, we can begin to develop training and other interventions for people with autism and non-autism to overcome some of the barriers to successful interaction.”
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