Emotional decoding in facial expression, scripts and videos: A comparison between normal, autistic and Asperger children

ASD subjects are described as showing particular difficulty in decoding emotional patterns. This paper explored linguistic and conceptual skills in response to emotional stimuli presented as emotional faces, scripts (pictures) and interactive situations (videos). Participants with autism, Asperger syndrome and control participants were shown facial, pictorial and video representation of six basic emotions (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, disgust). They were asked to identify the emotion and to individuate possible causes of the emotional state. A semantic analysis was applied to verbal reports, focusing on labeling and conceptualization. Log-linear analyses showed different representations across the participants as a function of emotion, pathology and presentation modality. Autistic participants were able to correctly decode primary emotions while showing difficulties with surprise. In contrast, Asperger participants performance was more similar to control subjects’. Finally, when situational correlates were provided, it was evident a “facilitation effect” for the representation of emotions.

► Autism and Asperger showed different conceptualization of emotional domain.
► Basic emotions (mainly anger, fear, happiness) were recognized by all sample.
► Surprise and disgust discriminated between the control and clinical sample.
► Contextual variable affected the subjects’ recognition process.