Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Selective Impairment of Basic Emotion Recognition in People with Autism: Discrimination Thresholds for Recognition of Facial Expressions of Varying Intensities

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by early onset qualitative impairments in reciprocal social development. However, whether individuals with ASD exhibit impaired recognition of facial expressions corresponding to basic emotions is debatable. To investigate subtle deficits in facial emotion recognition, we asked 14 children diagnosed with high-functioning autism (HFA)/AS and 17 typically developing peers to complete a new highly sensitive test of facial emotion recognition. The test stimuli comprised faces expressing increasing degrees of emotional intensity that slowly changed from a neutral to a full-intensity happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, disgust, or fear expression. We assessed individual differences in the intensity of stimuli required to make accurate judgments about emotional expressions. We found that, different emotions had different identification thresholds and the two groups were generally similar in terms of the sequence of discrimination threshold of six basic expressions. It was easier for individuals in both groups to identify emotions that were relatively fully expressed (e.g., intensity > 50%). Compared with control participants, children with ASD generally required stimuli with significantly greater intensity for the correct identification of anger, disgust, and fear expressions. These results suggest that individuals with ASD do not have a general but rather a selective impairment in basic emotion recognition.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adolphs, R., Sears, L., & Piven, J. (2001). Abnormal processing of social information from faces in autism. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13, 232–240.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • American Psychiatric Association (APA). (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Angold, A., Prendergast, A., Cox, R., Harrington, E., Simonoff, E., & Rutter, M. (1995). The child and adolescent psychiatric assessment (CAPA). Psychological Medicine, 25, 739–753.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ashwin, C., Chapman, E., Colle, L., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2006). Impaired recognition of negative basic emotions in autism: A test of the amygdala theory. Social Neuroscience, 1(3–4), 349–363.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barbaro, J., & Dissanayake, C. (2007). A comparative study of the use and understanding of self-presentational display rules in children with high functioning autism and asperger’s disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37(7), 1235–1246.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S., Jolliffe, T., Mortimore, C., & Robertson, M. (1997). Another advanced test of theory of mind: Evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38(7), 813–822.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Berggren, S., Engström, A. C., & Bölte, S. (2016). Facial affect recognition in autism, ADHD and typical development. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 21(3), 213–227.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bolte, S., & Poustka, F. (2003). The recognition of facial affect in autistic and schizophrenic subjects and their first degree relatives. Psychological Medicine, 33, 907–915.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boraston, Z., Blakemore, S. J., Chilvers, R., & Skuse, D. (2007). Impaired sadness recognition is linked to social interaction deficit in autism. Neuropsychologia, 45(7), 1501–1510.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bormann-Kischkel, C., Vilsmeier, M., & Baude, B. (1995). The development of emotional concepts in autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 36(7), 1243–1259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brainard, D. H. (1997). The psychophysics toolbox. Spatial Vision, 10, 443–446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, M., Pennington, B. F., & Rogers, S. J. (2002). Interrelations among social-cognitive skills in young children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 32(2), 91–106.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Castelli, F. (2005). Understanding emotions from standardized facial expressions in autism and normal development. Autism, 9(4), 428–449.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dapretto, M., Davies, M. S., Pfeifer, J. H., Scott, A. A., Sigman, M., Bookheimer, S. Y., & Iacoboni, M. (2005). Understanding emotions in others: Mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders. Nature Neuroscience, 9(1), 28–30.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • De Schonen, S., & Mathivet, E. (1989). First come, first served: A scenario about the development of hemispheric specialization in face recognition during infancy. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive, 9(1), 3–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehlers, S., Gillberg, C., & Wing, L. (1999). A screening questionnaire for Asperger syndrome and other high-functioning autism spectrum disorders in school age children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29, 129–141.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P. (1972). Universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion. In J. Cole (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation, 1971. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P., Friesan, W., & Ellsworth, P. (1972). Emotion in the human face: Guidelines for research and an integration of findings. New York: Pergamon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P., & Friesan, W. V. (1969). The repertoire of nonverbal behaviour: Categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica, 1, 49–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17, 124–129.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P., & Rosenberg, E. L. (1997). What the face reveals: Basic and applied studies of spontaneous expression using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Enticott, P. G., Kennedy, H. A., Johnston, P. J., Rinehart, N. J., Tonge, B. J., Taffe, J. R., et al. (2013). Emotion recognition of static and dynamic faces in autism spectrum disorder. Cognition & Emotion, 28(6), 1110–1118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fridenson-Hayo, S., Berggren, S., Lassalle, A., Tal, S., Pigat, D., Bölte, S., et al. (2016). Basic and complex emotion recognition in children with autism: Cross-cultural findings. Molecular Autism, 7(1), 52.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gillberg, C., Gillberg, C., Råstam, M., & Wentz, E. (2001). The Asperger Syndrome (and high-functioning autism) Diagnostic Interview (ASDI): A preliminary study of a new structured clinical interview. Autism, 5, 57–66.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths, S., Jarrold, C., Pentonvoak, I. S., Woods, A. T., Skinner, A. L., & Munafò, M. R. (2017). Impaired recognition of basic emotions from facial expressions in young people with autism spectrum disorder: Assessing the importance of expression intensity. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1–11.

  • Grossman, J. B., Klin, A., Carter, A. S., & Volkmar, F. R. (2000). Verbal bias in recognition of facial emotions in children with Asperger syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 41(3), 369–379.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Harms, M. B., Martin, A., & Wallace, G. L. (2010). Facial emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders: A review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychology Review, 20(3), 290–322.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hennenlotter, A., & Schroeder, U. (2006). Partly dissociable neural substrates for recognizing basic emotions: A critical review. Progress in Brain Research, 156, 443–456.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Herba, C., & Phillips, M. (2004). Annotation: Development of facial expression recognition from childhood to adolescence: Behavioural and neurological perspectives. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(7), 1185–1198.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Howard, M. A., Cowell, P. E., Boucher, J., Broks, P., Mayes, A., Farrant, A., & Roberts, N. (2000). Convergent neuroanatomical and behavioural evidence of an amygdala hypothesis of autism. Neuroreport, 11(13), 2931–2935.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Humphreys, K., Minshew, N., Leonard, G. L., & Behrmann, M. (2007). A fine-grained analysis of facial expression processing in high- functioning adults with autism. Neuropsychologia, 45(4), 685–695.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Joormann, J., & Gotlib, I. H. (2006). Is this happiness I see? Biases in the identification of emotional facial expressions in depression and social phobia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115(4), 705.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F., & Cohen, D. (2002). Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Archives of General Psychiatry, 59, 809–816.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kumada, M., Yoshida, H., Hashimoto, Y., Sawada, K., Maruishi, M., & Miyatani, M. (2011). Discrimination thresholds for recognizing facial emotions: Mostly higher among the elderly. The Japanese Journal of Psychology, 82(1), 56–62.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Loukusa, S., Leinonen, E., Kuusikko, S., Jussila, K., Mattila, M. L., Ryder, N., et al. (2007). Use of context in pragmatic language comprehension by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1049–1059.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Loveland, K. A., Pearson, D. A., Tunali-Kotoski, B., Ortegon, J., & Gibbs, M. C. (2001). Judgments of social appropriateness by children and adolescents with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31(4), 367–376.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, C. A. (1987). The recognition of facial expressions in the first two years of life: Mechanisms of development. Child Development, 58(4), 889–909.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Neumann, D., Spezio, M. L., Piven, J., & Adolphs, R. (2006). Looking you in the mouth: Abnormal gaze in autism resulting from impaired top-down modulation of visual attention. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1(3), 194–202.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Niedenthal, P. M., Brauer, M., Robin, L., & Innes-Ker, ÅH. (2002). Adult attachment and the perception of facial expression of emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 419–433.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Niedenthal, P. M., Halberstadt, J. B., Margolin, J., & Innes-Ker, ÅH. (2000). Emotional state and the detection of change in facial expression of emotion. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 211–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ogai, M., Matsumoto, H., Suzuki, K., Ozawa, F., Fukuda, R., Uchiyama, I., et al. (2003). fMRI study of recognition of facial expressions in high-functioning autistic patients. Neuroreport, 14, 559–563.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ozonoff, S., Pennington, B. F., & Rogers, S. J. (1990). Are there emotion perception deficits in young autistic children? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 31, 343–361.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pan, N., Wu, G. H., Zhang, L., Zhao, Y. F., Guan, H., Xu, C. J., et al. (2017). Association between intelligence development and facial expression recognition ability in children with autism spectrum disorder. Chinese Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, 19(3), 275.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pelli, D. G. (1997). The VideoToolbox software for visual psychophysics: Transforming numbers into movies. Spatial Vision, 10, 437–442.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Prior, M., Dahlstrom, B., & Squires, T. (1990). Autistic children’s knowledge of thinking and feeling states in other people. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 31, 587–601.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Raven, J. C., Court, J. H., & Raven, J. (1992). Standard progressive matrices. Oxford: Oxford Psychologists Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robel, L., Ennouri, K., Piana, H. N., Vaivre-Douret, L., Perier, A., Flament, M. F., Mouren-Siméoni, M. C. (2004). Discrimination of face identities and expressions in children with autism: Same or different? European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 13(4), 227–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rogers, S. J., Hepburn, S. L., Stackhouse, T., & Wehner, E. (2003). Imitation performance in toddlers with autism and those with other developmental disorders. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44(5), 763–781.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rutherford, M. D., & McIntosh, D. N. (2007). Rules versus prototype matching: Strategies of perception of emotional facial expressions in the autism spectrum. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37(2), 187–196.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sigman, M., Mundy, P., Sherman, T., & Ungerer, J. (1986). Social interactions of autistic, mentally retarded and normal children and their caregivers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27(5), 647–656.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. J. L., Montagne, B., Perrett, D. I., Gill, M., & Gallagher, L. (2010). Detecting subtle facial emotion recognition deficits in high-functioning autism using dynamic stimuli of varying intensities. Neuropsychologia, 48(9), 2777–2781.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. L., Cottrell, G. W., Gosselin, F., & Schyns, P. G. (2005). Transmitting and decoding facial expressions. Psychological Science, 16(3), 184–189.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Song, Y., Hakoda, Y., & Sang, B. (2016). A selective impairment in extracting fearful information from another’s eyes in Autism. Autism Research, 9(9), 1002–1011.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Song, Y., Kawabe, T., Hakoda, Y., & Du, X. (2012). Do the eyes have it? Extraction of identity and positive expression from another’s eyes in autism, probed using “Bubbles”. Brain and Development, 34(7), 584–590.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Spezio, M. L., Adolphs, R., Hurley, R. S., & Piven, J. (2007a). Abnormal use of facial information in high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37(5), 929–939.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Spezio, M. L., Adolphs, R., Hurley, R. S., & Piven, J. (2007b). Analysis of face gaze in autism using “Bubbles”. Neuropsychologia, 45(1), 144–151.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tell, D., Davidson, D., & Camras, L. A. (2014). Recognition of emotion from facial expressions with direct or averted eye gaze and varying expression intensities in children with autism disorder and typically developing children. Autism Research and Treat, 2014(9), 816137.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallace, G. L., Case, L. K., Harms, M. B., Silvers, J. A., Kenworthy, L., & Martin, A. (2011). Diminished sensitivity to sad facial expressions in high functioning autism spectrum disorders is associated with symptomatology and adaptive functioning. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41(11), 1475–1486.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Walsh, J. A., Vida, M. D., & Rutherford, M. D. (2013). Strategies for perceiving facial expressions in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 44(5), 1018–1026.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whitaker, L. R., Simpson, A., & Roberson, D. (2017). Brief report: Is impaired classification of subtle facial expressions in children with autism spectrum disorders related to atypical emotion category boundaries?. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1–7.

  • Williams, J., Scott, F., Stott, C., Allison, C., Bolton, P., Baron-Cohen., et al. (2015). The cast (childhood asperger syndrome test): Test accuracy. Autism the International Journal of Research & Practice, 11(2), 173–185.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wingenbach, T. S. H., Ashwin, C., & Brosnan, M. (2017). Diminished sensitivity and specificity at recognising facial emotional expressions of varying intensity underlie emotion-specific recognition deficits in autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 34, 52–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yoshida, H., & Toshima, T. (2007). Independent age cues for infancy and older age in one face: Evidence for rivalry in age perception. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 104, 483–493.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The funding was provided by MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (13YJC190020), Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at ECNU. The thesis is the initial result of the project “Selective impairment of expression processing in children with autism spectrum disorder” supported by Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Plan.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Yongning Song

  2. School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Yongning Song

  3. Faculty of Human Development and Education, Kyoto Women’s University, Kyoto, Japan

    Yuji Hakoda

  4. Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Yongning Song

Authors
  1. Yongning Song
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yuji Hakoda
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

YS and YH: conceived and designed the experiments. YS: performed the experiments. YS: analyzed the data. YS and YH: wrote the paper. YS and YH: revised the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yongning Song.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Approval

The internal review board of the East China Normal University approved our experimental procedures.

Informed Consent

We obtained written informed consent from all participants prior to testing.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Song, Y., Hakoda, Y. Selective Impairment of Basic Emotion Recognition in People with Autism: Discrimination Thresholds for Recognition of Facial Expressions of Varying Intensities. J Autism Dev Disord 48, 1886–1894 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3428-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3428-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation