Gehdu, B.K., Tsantani, M., Press, C. et al. (2 more authors) (2023) Recognition of facial expressions in autism: Effects of face masks and alexithymia. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76 (12). pp. 2854-2864. ISSN 1747-0218
Abstract
It is often assumed that the recognition of facial expressions is impaired in autism. However, recent evidence suggests that reports of expression recognition difficulties in autistic participants may be attributable to co-occurring alexithymia—a trait associated with difficulties interpreting interoceptive and emotional states—not autism per se. Due to problems fixating on the eye-region, autistic individuals may be more reliant on information from the mouth region when judging facial expressions. As such, it may be easier to detect expression recognition deficits attributable to autism, not alexithymia, when participants are forced to base expression judgements on the eye-region alone. To test this possibility, we compared the ability of autistic participants (with and without high levels of alexithymia) and non-autistic controls to categorise facial expressions (a) when the whole face was visible, and (b) when the lower portion of the face was covered with a surgical mask. High-alexithymic autistic participants showed clear evidence of expression recognition difficulties: they correctly categorised fewer expressions than non-autistic controls. In contrast, low-alexithymic autistic participants were unimpaired relative to non-autistic controls. The same pattern of results was seen when judging masked and unmasked expression stimuli. In sum, we find no evidence for an expression recognition deficit attributable to autism, in the absence of high levels of co-occurring alexithymia, either when participants judge whole-face stimuli or just the eye-region. These findings underscore the influence of co-occurring alexithymia on expression recognition in autism.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Experimental Psychology Society 2023. This is an author produced version of an article published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Autism; alexithymia; expression recognition; eye-region; face masks |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 08 Nov 2023 09:58 |
Last Modified: | 12 Dec 2024 01:53 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/17470218231163007 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:205024 |