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01-04-2012 | Original Paper

Can Gaze Avoidance Explain Why Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome Can’t Recognise Emotions From Facial Expressions?

Auteurs: Alyssa C. P. Sawyer, Paul Williamson, Robyn L. Young

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 4/2012

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Abstract

Research has shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties recognising emotions from facial expressions. Since eye contact is important for accurate emotion recognition, and individuals with ASD tend to avoid eye contact, this tendency for gaze aversion has been proposed as an explanation for the emotion recognition deficit. This explanation was investigated using a newly developed emotion and mental state recognition task. Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome were less accurate at recognising emotions and mental states, but did not show evidence of gaze avoidance compared to individuals without Asperger’s Syndrome. This suggests that the way individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome look at faces cannot account for the difficulty they have recognising expressions.
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Metagegevens
Titel
Can Gaze Avoidance Explain Why Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome Can’t Recognise Emotions From Facial Expressions?
Auteurs
Alyssa C. P. Sawyer
Paul Williamson
Robyn L. Young
Publicatiedatum
01-04-2012
Uitgeverij
Springer US
Gepubliceerd in
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 4/2012
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1283-0