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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Champagne Terrace/Bordeaux (Novotel London West)
Background: There is an ongoing debate as to whether the deficits shown by children with autism in emotion recognition stem from a specific and widespread affective disorder (Hobson et al., 1986, 1988, 1989) or are a consequence of other cognitive problems.
Objectives: Our studies extended the work of Gepner et al. (2001) and systematically investigated the extent to which problems in emotion recognition in faces and bodies in children with autism are predicted by cognitive factors including motion perception abilities, biological motion sensitivity and capacities for featural and configural processing of faces and non-faces. We wished to establish whether, once these factors are accounted for, children with autism continue to show impairments in emotion recognition in faces and bodies.
Methods: Children with autism aged 8 to 14 years and verbally-matched typically developing children aged 4 to 7 years took part in this series of experiments. Children were asked to undertake three emotion recognition tasks, in which they had to match photographs or dynamic videos of emotions with corresponding photographs. In the first task, target stimuli consisted of static images or dynamic videos of facial emotions in which the speed of presentation was manipulated; in the second task, the amount and type of movement presented in dynamic facial stimuli was manipulated; the third task tested emotion recognition abilities in moving silhouettes of whole bodies. Children’s capacities for general motion processing; face perception and processing style were assessed using a motion coherence threshold task (based on Reiss et al., 2005), a biological motion processing task (based on Blake et al., 2003), a modified ‘Ann’ face-processing task (based on Yovel & Duchaine, 2006), and a Navon task (based on Plaisted et al., 1999).
Results: and Conclusions: Analyses are currently being conducted and will be ready for presentation and discussion at the IMFAR conference.
Objectives: Our studies extended the work of Gepner et al. (2001) and systematically investigated the extent to which problems in emotion recognition in faces and bodies in children with autism are predicted by cognitive factors including motion perception abilities, biological motion sensitivity and capacities for featural and configural processing of faces and non-faces. We wished to establish whether, once these factors are accounted for, children with autism continue to show impairments in emotion recognition in faces and bodies.
Methods: Children with autism aged 8 to 14 years and verbally-matched typically developing children aged 4 to 7 years took part in this series of experiments. Children were asked to undertake three emotion recognition tasks, in which they had to match photographs or dynamic videos of emotions with corresponding photographs. In the first task, target stimuli consisted of static images or dynamic videos of facial emotions in which the speed of presentation was manipulated; in the second task, the amount and type of movement presented in dynamic facial stimuli was manipulated; the third task tested emotion recognition abilities in moving silhouettes of whole bodies. Children’s capacities for general motion processing; face perception and processing style were assessed using a motion coherence threshold task (based on Reiss et al., 2005), a biological motion processing task (based on Blake et al., 2003), a modified ‘Ann’ face-processing task (based on Yovel & Duchaine, 2006), and a Navon task (based on Plaisted et al., 1999).
Results: and Conclusions: Analyses are currently being conducted and will be ready for presentation and discussion at the IMFAR conference.