Abstract
Previous studies have demonstrated that angry faces capture humans' attention more rapidly than emotionally positive faces. This phenomenon is referred to as the anger superiority effect (ASE). Despite atypical emotional processing, adults and children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have been reported to show ASE as well as typically developed (TD) individuals. So far, however, few studies have clarified whether or not the mechanisms underlying ASE are the same for both TD and ASD individuals. Here, we tested how TD and ASD children process schematic emotional faces during detection by employing a recognition task in combination with a face-in-the-crowd task. Results of the face-in-the-crowd task revealed the prevalence of ASE both in TD and ASD children. However, the results of the recognition task revealed group differences: In TD children, detection of angry faces required more configural face processing and disrupted the processing of local features. In ASD children, on the other hand, it required more feature-based processing rather than configural processing. Despite the small sample sizes, these findings provide preliminary evidence that children with ASD, in contrast to TD children, show quick detection of angry faces by extracting local features in faces.
Highlights
The ability to detect threatening social stimuli quickly and modify our behaviors according to the context is beneficial for avoiding social conflict
Subsequent analysis (Bonferroni correction) for the interaction between Emotion-type and Emotion-degree revealed that angry faces were detected more quickly than happy faces both in the faces of Emotion-degree1, F(1, 35) = 24.82, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.415, and in faces of Emotion-degree2, F(1, 35) = 8.85, p = 0.005, ηp2 = 0.202. This indicated that anger superiority effect (ASE) existed in children of both groups, but it was less significant when the faces included more exaggerated features (Figure 2). These results would be explained by exaggerated emotional faces being physically and emotionally more salient among neutral faces compared to the less exaggerated ones, and that it resulted in showing some floor effect on response times for the detection of exaggerated angry faces and exaggerated happy faces
Subsequent multiple comparisons (Bonferroni correction) in the typically developed (TD) group revealed that recognition of whole faces showed shorter response time than recognition of inverted faces or recognition of local features (p = 0.001, p = 0.002, respectively), but there was no significant difference on the response times between the recognition of inverted faces and the recognition of local features (p = 0.183) (Figure 3B). These results indicated that TD children showed better performance in the recognition of angry whole faces than in the recognition of local features in angry faces or angry inverted faces, whereas Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) children showed similar performance among them
Summary
The ability to detect threatening social stimuli quickly and modify our behaviors according to the context is beneficial for avoiding social conflict. Thought to have evolved to be more sensitive to threatening faces than to other facial expressions (Ohman and Soares, 1993; Ohman et al, 2001). Angry faces are universally treated as signals of potential threat. They are processed rapidly and efficiently, and are efficient in capturing attention (Vuilleumier and Schwartz, 2001). This phenomenon is defined as the anger superiority effect (ASE). Several studies have confirmed that ASE can be observed with schematic-faces (Fox et al, 2000; Eastwood et al, 2001; Ohman et al, 2001; Horstmann, 2009). By using schematic faces it is possible to eliminate many low-level perceptual variations found in photographs of emotional expressions, and to better control experiment variables
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