Emotion differentiation in autism spectrum disorder

• This study examined the level of emotion differentiation in individuals with ASD.
• We measured differentiation between own feelings and between semantic emotion terms.
• The performance of the ASD group was compared to that of a typically developing group.
• Results show that the ASD individuals differentiate less on both levels.
• However, the meaning attached to different emotion terms is similar across groups.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is commonly associated with reduced ability to recognize emotions in others. It is less clear however, whether ASD is also associated with impaired knowledge of one's own emotions. In the current study we present a first examination of how much knowledge individuals with ASD have about their emotions by investigating their ability to differentiate between emotions. Across two lab tasks that measured to what extent and how people differentiate between their own feeling states and semantic emotion terms, results showed that ASD individuals differentiated less than typically developing individuals. Yet, both groups of participants similarly categorized emotions according to previously established theoretical categories. These findings indicate that while both give similar meaning to emotions, individuals with ASD make less subtle distinctions between emotions. With low levels of emotion differentiation being linked to reduced well-being, these findings may help to better understand the high prevalence of internalizing problems associated with ASD.