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Differences Between Students With Comorbid Intellectual Disability and Autism Spectrum Disorder and Those With Intellectual Disability Alone in the Recognition of and Reaction to Emotions

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Abstract

This study investigates whether students with intellectual disability (ID) alone differ from students with combined individual disability and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their recognition of emotions. The ability to recognise emotions does not mean that students automatically know how to react to these emotions. Differences in performance on recognition and reaction tasks are examined. Participants were 20 primary 6 students who had ID with ASD and 20 primary 6 students who had ID without ASD from four special schools. The testing and training materials were adapted from a local teaching package. The results showed that both groups exhibited similar performance patterns in recognition tasks. Students with comorbid ASD exhibited inferior performance in tasks requiring reactions to complex emotions.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks for the advice from Dr. Grace Lai-har Chan, Consultant Pediatrician at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hong Kong on the issues relating to the assessment of the children with ASD.

Funding

This study was funded by the Department Research Seed Fund of the first author’s University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong

    Fuk-chuen Ho, Cici Sze-ching Lam & Sing-kai Lo

Authors
  1. Fuk-chuen Ho
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  2. Cici Sze-ching Lam
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  3. Sing-kai Lo
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Contributions

FH developed the concept for the current paper and analyzed the data. CSL and SL wrote sections of the paper. All authors discussed the results and implications and edited the manuscript at all stages.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fuk-chuen Ho.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional human research ethics committee.

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Informed consent was obtained from all parents of individual participants in the study.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 Selected results of the analysis for the recognition of emotions
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Ho, Fc., Lam, C.Sc. & Lo, Sk. Differences Between Students With Comorbid Intellectual Disability and Autism Spectrum Disorder and Those With Intellectual Disability Alone in the Recognition of and Reaction to Emotions. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 593–605 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04630-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04630-0

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