Do children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) recognize his/her own facial expression appropriately? A survey of school-aged children with ASD in Japan (II)

Background: Studies have revealed that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are limited in face-reading, i.e. not good at relating other’s facial expression to a specific emotion. However, few studies have ever explored whether they are also limited in relating his/her own facial expression to a specific emotion elicited inside themselves.Objectives: The present study aimed at examining whether children with ASD show a different pattern of recognition of his/her own facial expressions under situations designed to elicit a specific emotion in comparison with age-matched typically developed children.

Methods: We recruited 41 children with ASD and 205 age-matched control children (8 to 12 years). The participants were asked to complete a questionnaire, where six situations were prepared to elicit specific emotions (e.g. delight, anger, sadness). For each of the 6 situations, the participants were asked to choose one picture that most closely resembled his/her elicited emotion out of 6 cartoon pictures of facial expressions (e.g. astonishment, anger, neutral, confusion, delight, sadness). Two children with ASD and 14 control children were excluded from the analyses because no choices were provided. We analyzed the frequency of chosen pictures for each of the 6 situations.

Results: The proportion of participants who chose pictures suitable for each situation did not differ between the two groups. However, in two situations where the participants are expected to choose a sad face, and in one situation where they were expected to choose an angry face, children with ASD were more likely to choose an astonished face than were typically developed children.

Conclusions: The results implied that most children with ASD can recognize his/her own facial expression appropriately, whereas a few children who could not recognize it appropriately although they tended to recognize it uniformly as astonishment.