scholarly journals Differences Between Autistic and Non-autistic Adults in the Recognition of Anger From Dynamic Expressions Remain After Controlling for Alexithymia.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connor Tom Keating ◽  
Sophie L Sowden ◽  
Dagmar S Fraser ◽  
Jennifer L Cook

Abstract A burgeoning literature suggests that alexithymia, and not autism, is responsible for the difficulties with static emotion recognition that are documented in the autistic population. Here we investigate whether alexithymia can also account for difficulties with dynamic facial expressions. Autistic and control adults (N=60) matched on age, gender, non-verbal reasoning ability and alexithymia, completed an emotion recognition task, which employed dynamic point light displays of emotional facial expressions that varied in speed and spatial exaggeration. The ASD group exhibited significantly lower recognition accuracy for angry, but not happy or sad, expressions with normal speed and spatial exaggeration. The level of autistic, and not alexithymic, traits was a significant predictor of accuracy for angry expressions with normal speed and spatial exaggeration.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connor Tom Keating ◽  
Sophie L Sowden ◽  
Dagmar S Fraser ◽  
Jennifer L Cook

Abstract A burgeoning literature suggests that alexithymia, and not autism, is responsible for the difficulties with static emotion recognition that are documented in the autistic population. Here we investigate whether alexithymia can also account for difficulties with dynamic facial expressions. Autistic and control adults (N=60) matched on age, gender, non-verbal reasoning ability and alexithymia, completed an emotion recognition task, which employed dynamic point light displays of emotional facial expressions that varied in speed and spatial exaggeration. The ASD group exhibited significantly lower recognition accuracy for angry, but not happy or sad, expressions with normal speed and spatial exaggeration. The level of autistic, and not alexithymic, traits was a significant predictor of accuracy for angry expressions with normal speed and spatial exaggeration.


Author(s):  
Connor T. Keating ◽  
Dagmar S. Fraser ◽  
Sophie Sowden ◽  
Jennifer L. Cook

AbstractTo date, studies have not established whether autistic and non-autistic individuals differ in emotion recognition from facial motion cues when matched in terms of alexithymia. Here, autistic and non-autistic adults (N = 60) matched on age, gender, non-verbal reasoning ability and alexithymia, completed an emotion recognition task, which employed dynamic point light displays of emotional facial expressions manipulated in terms of speed and spatial exaggeration. Autistic participants exhibited significantly lower accuracy for angry, but not happy or sad, facial motion with unmanipulated speed and spatial exaggeration. Autistic, and not alexithymic, traits were predictive of accuracy for angry facial motion with unmanipulated speed and spatial exaggeration. Alexithymic traits, in contrast, were predictive of the magnitude of both correct and incorrect emotion ratings.


2013 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Lázaro ◽  
Imanol Amayra ◽  
Juan Francisco López-Paz ◽  
Amaia Jometón ◽  
Natalia Martín ◽  
...  

AbstractThe assessment of facial expression is an important aspect of a clinical neurological examination, both as an indicator of a mood disorder and as a sign of neurological damage. To date, although studies have been conducted on certain psychosocial aspects of myasthenia, such as quality of life and anxiety, and on neuropsychological aspects such as memory, no studies have directly assessed facial emotion recognition accuracy. The aim of this study was to assess the facial emotion recognition accuracy (fear, surprise, sadness, happiness, anger, and disgust), empathy, and reaction time of patients with myasthenia. Thirty-five patients with myasthenia and 36 healthy controls were tested for their ability to differentiate emotional facial expressions. Participants were matched with respect to age, gender, and education level. Their ability to differentiate emotional facial expressions was evaluated using the computer-based program Feel Test. The data showed that myasthenic patients scored significantly lower (p < 0.05) than healthy controls in the total Feel score, fear, surprise, and higher reaction time. The findings suggest that the ability to recognize facial affect may be reduced in individuals with myasthenia.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paddy Ross ◽  
Tessa R. Flack

Emotion perception research has largely been dominated by work on facial expressions, but emotion is also strongly conveyed from the body. Research exploring emotion recognition from the body tends to refer to ‘the body’ as a whole entity. However, the body is made up of different components (hands, arms, trunk etc.), all of which could be differentially contributing to emotion recognition. We know that the hands can help to convey actions, and in particular are important for social communication through gestures, but we currently do not know to what extent the hands influence emotion recognition from the body. Here, 93 adults viewed static emotional body stimuli with either the hands, arms, or both components removed and completed a forced-choice emotion recognition task. Removing the hands significantly reduced recognition accuracy for fear and anger, but made no significant difference to the recognition of happiness and sadness. Removing the arms had no effect on emotion recognition accuracy compared to the full-body stimuli. These results suggest the hands may play a key role in the recognition of emotions from the body.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Klepzig ◽  
Julia Wendt ◽  
Bettina Sarnowski ◽  
Alfons O. Hamm ◽  
Martin Lotze

Abstract Single case studies about patients with unilateral insular lesions reported deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions. However, there is no consensus about both the actual extent of impairments and the role of lesion lateralization. To investigate associations of brain lesions and impairments in a facial emotion recognition task, we used voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) in a group of 29 stroke patients in the chronic stage, 16 with left and 13 with right hemispheric lesion. Recognition accuracy was impaired for fearful and angry expressions in patients with left hemispheric lesions compared to 14 matched healthy controls. VLSM analyses revealed that lesions centered around the left insula were associated with impaired recognition of emotional facial expressions. We here demonstrate a critical role for the left insula in decoding unpleasant emotions from facial expressions and therefore present further evidence for a broader role for the insular cortex not restricted to disgust processing.


Perception ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paddy Ross ◽  
Tessa Flack

Emotion perception research has largely been dominated by work on facial expressions, but emotion is also strongly conveyed from the body. Research exploring emotion recognition from the body tends to refer to “the body” as a whole entity. However, the body is made up of different components (hands, arms, trunk, etc.), all of which could be differentially contributing to emotion recognition. We know that the hands can help to convey actions and, in particular, are important for social communication through gestures, but we currently do not know to what extent the hands influence emotion recognition from the body. Here, 93 adults viewed static emotional body stimuli with either the hands, arms, or both components removed and completed a forced-choice emotion recognition task. Removing the hands significantly reduced recognition accuracy for fear and anger but made no significant difference to the recognition of happiness and sadness. Removing the arms had no effect on emotion recognition accuracy compared with the full-body stimuli. These results suggest the hands may play a key role in the recognition of emotions from the body.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110184
Author(s):  
Paola Surcinelli ◽  
Federica Andrei ◽  
Ornella Montebarocci ◽  
Silvana Grandi

Aim of the research The literature on emotion recognition from facial expressions shows significant differences in recognition ability depending on the proposed stimulus. Indeed, affective information is not distributed uniformly in the face and recent studies showed the importance of the mouth and the eye regions for a correct recognition. However, previous studies used mainly facial expressions presented frontally and studies which used facial expressions in profile view used a between-subjects design or children faces as stimuli. The present research aims to investigate differences in emotion recognition between faces presented in frontal and in profile views by using a within subjects experimental design. Method The sample comprised 132 Italian university students (88 female, Mage = 24.27 years, SD = 5.89). Face stimuli displayed both frontally and in profile were selected from the KDEF set. Two emotion-specific recognition accuracy scores, viz., frontal and in profile, were computed from the average of correct responses for each emotional expression. In addition, viewing times and response times (RT) were registered. Results Frontally presented facial expressions of fear, anger, and sadness were significantly better recognized than facial expressions of the same emotions in profile while no differences were found in the recognition of the other emotions. Longer viewing times were also found when faces expressing fear and anger were presented in profile. In the present study, an impairment in recognition accuracy was observed only for those emotions which rely mostly on the eye regions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 1749-1761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Bick ◽  
Rhiannon Luyster ◽  
Nathan A. Fox ◽  
Charles H. Zeanah ◽  
Charles A. Nelson

AbstractWe examined facial emotion recognition in 12-year-olds in a longitudinally followed sample of children with and without exposure to early life psychosocial deprivation (institutional care). Half of the institutionally reared children were randomized into foster care homes during the first years of life. Facial emotion recognition was examined in a behavioral task using morphed images. This same task had been administered when children were 8 years old. Neutral facial expressions were morphed with happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotional facial expressions, and children were asked to identify the emotion of each face, which varied in intensity. Consistent with our previous report, we show that some areas of emotion processing, involving the recognition of happy and fearful faces, are affected by early deprivation, whereas other areas, involving the recognition of sad and angry faces, appear to be unaffected. We also show that early intervention can have a lasting positive impact, normalizing developmental trajectories of processing negative emotions (fear) into the late childhood/preadolescent period.


Author(s):  
Izabela Krejtz ◽  
Krzysztof Krejtz ◽  
Katarzyna Wisiecka ◽  
Marta Abramczyk ◽  
Michał Olszanowski ◽  
...  

Abstract The enhancement hypothesis suggests that deaf individuals are more vigilant to visual emotional cues than hearing individuals. The present eye-tracking study examined ambient–focal visual attention when encoding affect from dynamically changing emotional facial expressions. Deaf (n = 17) and hearing (n = 17) individuals watched emotional facial expressions that in 10-s animations morphed from a neutral expression to one of happiness, sadness, or anger. The task was to recognize emotion as quickly as possible. Deaf participants tended to be faster than hearing participants in affect recognition, but the groups did not differ in accuracy. In general, happy faces were more accurately and more quickly recognized than faces expressing anger or sadness. Both groups demonstrated longer average fixation duration when recognizing happiness in comparison to anger and sadness. Deaf individuals directed their first fixations less often to the mouth region than the hearing group. During the last stages of emotion recognition, deaf participants exhibited more focal viewing of happy faces than negative faces. This pattern was not observed among hearing individuals. The analysis of visual gaze dynamics, switching between ambient and focal attention, was useful in studying the depth of cognitive processing of emotional information among deaf and hearing individuals.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy P.C. Kessels ◽  
Barbara Montagne ◽  
Angelique W. Hendriks ◽  
David I. Perrett ◽  
Edward H.F. de Haan

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