Abstract
Recent research has shown that adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulty interpreting others' emotional responses, in order to work out what actually happened to them. It is unclear what underlies this difficulty; important cues may be missed from fast paced dynamic stimuli, or spontaneous emotional responses may be too complex for those with ASD to successfully recognise. To explore these possibilities, 17 adolescents and adults with ASD and 17 neurotypical controls viewed 21 videos and pictures of peoples' emotional responses to gifts (chocolate, a handmade novelty or Monopoly money), then inferred what gift the person received and the emotion expressed by the person while eye movements were measured. Participants with ASD were significantly more accurate at distinguishing who received a chocolate or homemade gift from static (compared to dynamic) stimuli, but significantly less accurate when inferring who received Monopoly money from static (compared to dynamic) stimuli. Both groups made similar emotion attributions to each gift in both conditions (positive for chocolate, feigned positive for homemade and confused for Monopoly money). Participants with ASD only made marginally significantly fewer fixations to the eyes of the face, and face of the person than typical controls in both conditions. Results suggest adolescents and adults with ASD can distinguish subtle emotion cues for certain emotions (genuine from feigned positive) when given sufficient processing time, however, dynamic cues are informative for recognising emotion blends (e.g. smiling in confusion). This indicates difficulties processing complex emotion responses in ASD. Autism Res 2015, 8: 534–544. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Highlights
Current diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) includes difficulties interpreting other’s emotions and responding appropriately (APA, 2013), emotion processing difficulties in ASD have not been consistently demonstrated (Gaigg, 2012; Harms, Martin, & Wallace, 2010; Uljarevic & Hamilton, 2013)
This is reflected in the pattern of participants' errors
expected frequencies of emotion labels participants offered alongside their gift inference
Summary
Current diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) includes difficulties interpreting other’s emotions and responding appropriately (APA, 2013), emotion processing difficulties in ASD have not been consistently demonstrated (Gaigg, 2012; Harms, Martin, & Wallace, 2010; Uljarevic & Hamilton, 2013). Recent research suggests that the type of emotion expressions presented, and judgements made by participants in these studies do not match the demands of everyday life, where individuals with ASD are more likely to experience difficulties (Cassidy, Ropar, Mitchell, & Chapman, 2014). Participants are presented with a person’s spontaneous emotional response to a social situation (receiving a wanted or unwanted gift), and subsequently gauge the person’s emotional response to infer what happened to them (what gift did they receive?). This ability has been termed Retrodictive Mindreading, and may be the most common form of emotion processing in everyday life (Millikan, 2005). Results showed that adults with ASD understood what emotions were appropriate to each situation to the same extent as typical controls (e.g. feigning a positive response to an unwanted gift), they had difficulty interpreting subtle emotional responses, (genuine and feigned positive), but not confused, which was recognised to a similar level to typical controls
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