Recognition of facial emotions on human and canine faces in children with and without autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

In children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), it is not clear whether emotion recognition impairments are unique to human faces. In the present study, children with ASD and neurotypical (NT) children were shown photographs of human and canine faces expressing angry, fear, happy, sad, or neutral expressions. Between-group differences showed that children with ASD were less accurate in their overall recognition of emotion on human faces than NT children, whereas the groups did not differ in their recognition of emotion on canine faces. In terms of within-group results, NT children did not differ in their recognition of emotions on human and canine faces, while children with ASD were more accurate in recognizing emotions on canine than on human faces. Although ASD symptomatology was not related to emotion recognition performance, some evidence was found that theory of mind and age were related to emotion recognition in all children.