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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Gepubliceerd in:

01-03-2010 | Original Paper

Emotion Recognition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Relations to Eye Gaze and Autonomic State

Auteurs: Elgiz Bal, Emily Harden, Damon Lamb, Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, John W. Denver, Stephen W. Porges

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 3/2010

Abstract

Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), heart rate, and accuracy and latency of emotion recognition were evaluated in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically developing children while viewing videos of faces slowly transitioning from a neutral expression to one of six basic emotions (e.g., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). Children with ASD were slower in emotion recognition and selectively made more errors in detecting anger. ASD children had lower amplitude RSA and faster heart rate. Within the ASD group, children with higher amplitude RSA recognized emotions faster. Less severe ASD symptoms and increased gaze to the eye region in children with ASD were related to more accurate emotion recognition.

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volgende artikel Brief Report: Representational Momentum for Dynamic Facial Expressions in Pervasive Developmental Disorder

In the ASD group, 8 children did not meet the diagnostic criteria on the ADOS, 3 children were unable to understand the instructions to complete the experimental task, 4 children did not meet IQ criteria of 75 or above, and 1 child’s data were lost due to equipment malfunctioning during data collection. In the control group, 4 children scored above the clinical cut-off on the CBCL, 1 child had a diagnosis of a learning disability, 1 child did not meet IQ criteria of 75 or above, 1 child slept during data collection, and 2 children's data were lost due to equipment malfunctioning.

In the control group, the only significant difference between the males and females was the latency to recognize anger, with males recognizing faster than females, F(1, 35) = 8.85, p = .005. No other significant differences were found on the speed and accuracy of emotion recognition, RSA, eye gaze, and SRS subscales.

Modifications included a series of steps: (1) Final frames of the image sequences that included similar action units for six basic emotions (sadness, anger, fear, disgust, happiness, and surprise) were chosen, (2) Image sequences that included approximately the same number of frames were chosen, (3) Image sequences in which persons’ expressions were ambiguous were eliminated, (4) The final database was evaluated to include an equal number of males and females as much as possible, and (5) Each of the frames in image sequences was morphed so that there were 8 new frames between each of the originals.

Because the distribution of errors was skewed for happiness, surprise, and sadness, non-parametric analyses were also performed for each emotion to evaluate the group differences using Mann–Whitney U tests. Confirming the parametric tests, the ASD group made significantly more errors than the control group only to anger, z = −2.22, p = .026.

The expression of happiness was excluded from the analyses because there was only 1 error across all trials.

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Titel: Emotion Recognition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Relations to Eye Gaze and Autonomic State
Auteurs: Elgiz Bal
Emily Harden
Damon Lamb
Amy Vaughan Van Hecke
John W. Denver
Stephen W. Porges
Publicatiedatum: 01-03-2010
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 3/2010
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0884-3

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