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Emotion Recognition in Animated Compared to Human Stimuli in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

There is equivocal evidence as to whether there is a deficit in recognising emotional expressions in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study compared emotion recognition in ASD in three types of emotion expression media (still image, dynamic image, auditory) across human stimuli (e.g. photo of a human face) and animated stimuli (e.g. cartoon face). Participants were 37 adolescents (age 11–16) with a diagnosis of ASD (33 male, 4 female). 42 males and 39 females served as typically developing, age-matched controls. Overall there was significant advantage for control groups over the ASD group for emotion recognition in human stimuli but not animated stimuli, across modalities. For static animated images specifically, those with ASD significantly outperformed controls. The findings are consistent with the ASD group using atypical explicit strategies.

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Notes

  1. We use the term ‘animated’ rather than ‘cartoon’ as it better describes both the visual and auditory conditions, but does not imply that the stimuli move. We use the term ‘dynamic’ to indicate movement.

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Acknowledgments

Grant sponsor EPSRC; Grant Number EP/G031975/1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

    Mark Brosnan, Hilary Johnson & Emma Chapman

  2. London Knowledge Lab, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, WC1N 3QS, UK

    Beate Grawmeyer

  3. London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, University of London, London, WC1N 3QS, UK

    Laura Benton

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  1. Mark Brosnan
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  2. Hilary Johnson
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  4. Emma Chapman
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Correspondence to Mark Brosnan.

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Brosnan, M., Johnson, H., Grawmeyer, B. et al. Emotion Recognition in Animated Compared to Human Stimuli in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 45, 1785–1796 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2338-9

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