Abstract
This study explored the electrocortical correlates of conscious and nonconscious perceptions of emotionally laden faces in neurotypical adult women with varying levels of autistic-like traits (Autism Spectrum Quotient—AQ). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the viewing of backward-masked images for happy, neutral, and sad faces presented either below (16 ms—subliminal) or above the level of visual conscious awareness (167 ms—supraliminal). Sad compared to happy faces elicited larger frontal-central N1, N2, and occipital P3 waves. We observed larger N1 amplitudes to sad faces than to happy and neutral faces in High-AQ (but not Low-AQ) scorers. Additionally, High-AQ scorers had a relatively larger P3 at the occipital region to sad faces. Regardless of the AQ score, subliminal perceived emotional faces elicited shorter N1, N2, and P3 latencies than supraliminal faces. Happy and sad faces had shorter N170 latency in the supraliminal than subliminal condition. High-AQ participants had a longer N1 latency over the occipital region than Low-AQ ones. In Low-AQ individuals (but not in High-AQ ones), emotional recognition with female faces produced a longer N170 latency than with male faces. N4 latency was shorter to female faces than male faces. These findings are discussed in view of their clinical implications and extension to autism.
Highlights
Autism is a neurodevelopment condition involving dysfunction in reciprocal-social interaction
The first effect indicated lower accuracy rates in the subliminal compared to supraliminal condition (M = 55.3, SD = 7.0 vs. M = 92.3%, SD = 7.5); the second effect showed that recognition accuracy of supraliminal faces in Hi-Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) participants was significantly lower than that in low AQ (Lo-AQ) ones (M = 88.2%, SD = 8.5% vs. M = 96.3%, SD = 3.1, p < 0.001), while between-group difference of subliminal faces did
We found no evidence for a significant relation of AQ with Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM)
Summary
Autism is a neurodevelopment condition involving dysfunction in reciprocal-social interaction. Deficits in decoding and understanding facially expressed emotions occur commonly in autism spectrum disorders ASDs; see [1], which contribute to the impairment of social communication that serves as one of its core diagnostic criteria; for a review see [2]. Several difficulties in the processing of facial expressions have been reported with ASD [3,4,5,6,7,8] and their relatives [9,10,11,12,13,14]. The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) [19] has been developed to measure the degree to which an adult with normal intelligence has autistic traits with a threshold score of 26 to meet a diagnosis of autism [20]. If individuals with ASD exhibit dysfunctional neural activity in response to emotional faces [5,24,25], perhaps individuals with high AQ (Hi-AQ) may as well
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