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

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.