Objectives: This study investigated implicit emotion processing in children with ASD via an affective priming task in which emotions were displayed on 1) real (photographed) or 2) cartoon faces.
Methods: 26 children with high-functioning autism and 26 typically developing (TD) controls, matched on chronological age completed the affective priming task. Faces portraying happy or angry emotions were briefly presented (70ms; "primes"), followed by emotional scenes that were either congruent or incongruent in emotional valence with the primes. Participant judged whether scenes were pleasant or unpleasant. There were four priming conditions: happy/angry real faces, happy/angry cartoon faces, presented in a mixed design. A "congruency effect," computed for each group, was defined as faster Response Time for same-valence primes and scenes relative to different-valence prime-scene pairs.
Results: The TD group exhibited a significant congruency effect only with the negative real faces. In contrast, the ASD group exhibited a significant affective priming effect only in negative cartoon faces.
Conclusions: Findings revealed that while typically developing children were significantly influenced by implicit processing of emotions displayed on real faces, children with ASD were influenced only by emotions portrayed as cartoons. Implicit processing of emotional information appears to be disrupted for real but not for cartoon faces in ASD. This result is consistent with previous reports showing that explicit emotion processing is also affected for real but not for cartoon faces. We discuss the implications, including potential differences in face-processing expertise.
See more of: Cognition and Behavior
See more of: Symptoms, Diagnosis & Phenotype