Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESEmotional Attribution in High-Functioning Individuals With Autistic Spectrum Disorder: A Functional Imaging Study
Section snippets
Subject Recruitment
Fourteen high-functioning males with ASD (mean age 13.1 [SD 2.5]; range 9–17 years) and 10 male control subjects (mean age 14.4 [SD 3.3]; range 10–18 years) were recruited. Individuals with ASD were recruited through the Stanford Autism Clinic, professionals working with high-functioning individuals with ASD in the local community, parent networks, and media advertisement. These high-functioning individuals with ASD all had a documented clinical diagnosis of autism or Asperger's syndrome (AS)
Demographic and Neuropsychological Results
Independent samples t tests showed no significant difference in age (t22 = − 0.99; p = .33) or intelligence (FSIQ: t22 = 0.633; p = .53; VIQ: t22 = −1.26; p = .22); PIQ: t22 = 0.897; p = .328) between the two groups. There also was no significant difference in accuracy between groups in the EM task (t22 = −1.626; p = .118) (ASD mean = 76% [SD 25%], control mean = 90% [SD 11%]) or the EL task (t22 = −1.768; p = .095) (ASD mean = 69% [SD 27%], control mean = 85% [SD 12%]). There was a significant
DISCUSSION
Our hypothesis that high-functioning individuals with ASD would be less expert in the attribution of emotion from basic facial expressions was supported only for the EM task. Specifically, the ASD group had a significantly longer response time than the control group in the EM task. The ASD and the control groups had comparable accuracy and response times, and thus expertise, on the EL task. Comparing different brain activations is facilitated when both groups are able to perform the tasks (
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Financial support from M.I.N.D. Institute, NIH grants MH01142, MH50047, HD31715, MH64708 , and a fellowship in basic research awarded to Dr. Piggot by the National Alliance of Autism Research.
The authors thank Dr. Amy Garrett for help in manuscript preparation.