Impaired Recognition of Negative Facial Expressions is Partly Related to Facial Perception Deficits in Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Impaired Recognition of Negative Facial Expressions is Partly Related to Facial Perception Deficits in Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2019 Feb 13;:
Authors: Yeung MK, Lee TL, Chan AS
Abstract
Accumulating studies have reported facial emotion recognition or facial perception impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To clarify the specificity of the emotion recognition impairment, this study examined the relationships between facial emotion recognition and facial perception abilities in ASD. Twenty-two adolescents with high-functioning ASD (20 males) and 22 typically developing (TD) adolescents (16 males) aged 11-18 years undertook a facial emotion labeling task and a facial perception test. We found that adolescents with ASD had deficits in recognizing negative facial expressions, which correlated with both facial perception deficits and severity of social impairment. In addition, the emotion recognition deficits remained after adjusting for facial perception performance. Thus, our findings suggest an emotion-specific impairment in facial emotion recognition in ASD.
PMID: 30758693 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - February 13, 2019 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Yeung MK, Lee TL, Chan AS Tags: J Autism Dev Disord Source Type: research