Emotion Recognition in ASD: An Investigation in the Visual and Auditory Modalities

Background:

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterised by social and communication difficulties in day-to-day life, including problems in recognising emotions. However, experimental investigations of emotion recognition ability in ASD have been equivocal; hampered by small sample sizes, narrow IQ range and over-focus on the visual modality.

Objectives:

We aimed to assess emotion recognition skills in both the visual and auditory modalities using structural equation modelling (SEM).   

Methods:

We tested 89 adolescents (mean age 15;5, mean full-scale IQ 84) with an ASD and 56 adolescents without an ASD (mean age 15;6, mean full-scale IQ 87) on a facial emotion recognition task and two vocal emotion recognition tasks (one verbal with neutral content; one non-verbal). Recognition of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust was assessed. Using SEM, we modelled the recognition capability for each emotion as a specific latent trait, measured by the three tasks. We examined how the mean levels of the six traits (emotion recognition capability) differed by group (ASD vs. non-ASD) and IQ (>= 80 vs. < 80).

Results:

We did not find any evidence of fundamental difficulties in the recognition of emotion in our ASD group. Further, analysis of error patterns suggested that the ASD group were vulnerable to the same pattern of confusion between emotions as the non-ASD group.

Conclusions:

Using a statistical approach that deals with the problems of multiple testing and a large sample that encompasses the full range of IQ, we do not find evidence that individuals with ASD have a fundamental deficit in the recognition of emotion in the visual and auditory modalities.