ERIC Number: EJ1232655
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Nov
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0162-3257
EISSN: N/A
Expression Recognition Difficulty Is Associated with Social but Not Attention-to-Detail Autistic Traits and Reflects Both Alexithymia and Perceptual Difficulty
Bothe, Ellen; Palermo, Romina; Rhodes, Gillian; Burton, Nichola; Jeffery, Linda
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, v49 n11 p4559-4571 Nov 2019
Autistic people often show difficulty with facial expression recognition. However, the degree of difficulty varies widely, which might reflect varying symptom profiles. We examined three domains of autistic traits in the typical population and found that more autistic-like social skills were associated with greater difficulty labelling expressions, and more autistic-like communication was associated with greater difficulty labelling and perceptually discriminating between expressions. There were no associations with autistic-like attention to detail. We also found that labelling, but not perceptual, difficulty was mediated by alexithymia. We found no evidence that labelling or perceptual difficulty was mediated by weakened adaptive coding. Results suggest expression recognition varies between the sub-clinical expressions of autistic symptom domains and reflects both co-occurring alexithymia and perceptual difficulty.
Descriptors: Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Recognition (Psychology), Nonverbal Communication, Interpersonal Competence, Communication (Thought Transfer), Perception, Attention, Emotional Response, Cognitive Processes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A