A study of schoolchildren in Italy found that children with autism and specific learning disorders have more trouble recognizing facial emotions compared to non-diagnosed children. In autistic children, higher social anxiety is associated with better emotion recognition, while in those with learning disorders, higher anxiety is associated with more difficulty recognizing emotions. The research was published in Development and Psychopathology.
Being able to recognize the emotional state of another person by looking at his/her face is a crucial ability for social functioning. Many individuals can derive a wealth of information about internal psychological states or characteristics of another person just from nonverbal cues. This ability to recognize emotions of another person by looking at his/her facial expression is called facial emotion recognition.
Autism spectrum disorder, commonly referred to as autism, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by challenges in social interaction, communication, and repetitive behaviors or restricted interests. The severity of these symptoms can vary greatly. Those with milder forms of autism can live independently, complete their education, maintain employment, and have fulfilling social relationships. However, individuals with more severe forms might require continuous support throughout their lives.
One of the prominent characteristics of autism are difficulties in social interactions. Studies suggest that at least a part of these difficulties might be because of the reduced ability of autistic individuals to recognize emotional and mental expressions using nonverbal cues.
Study author Rachele Lievore and her colleagues sought to explore the ability to recognize facial emotions, social anxiety levels, and cognitive factors in schoolchildren with and without autism and specific learning disabilities. Children with specific learning disabilities experience significant challenges in reading, writing, and/or mathematics. While distinct from autism, previous studies have shown these children often have lower levels of various cognitive abilities, prompting the researchers to investigate their emotion recognition capabilities.
The study involved 263 children and adolescents aged 8 to 16. Among them, 60 had autism, 63 had specific learning disabilities, and 140 had neither diagnosis. All participants were native Italian speakers.
Participants completed a facial emotion recognition task, where they were shown pairs of images of actors expressing specific emotions. Their task was to determine whether the actors expressed the same or different emotions in each pair of images. There were 144 pairs in total, with half showing the same emotion and the other half showing different emotions.
Parents of the participants completed an assessment of their children’s social anxiety using the parent-report form of the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children. The children also completed three tests of executive functions, which assessed inhibitory control, updating, and set-shifting.
Inhibitory control is the ability to suppress impulsive responses and resist distractions to maintain goal-directed behavior. Updating refers to the capacity to monitor and revise working memory with new, relevant information. Set-shifting is the ability to switch attention and adapt to changing tasks, rules, or perspectives flexibly.
The results showed that participants with autism and specific learning disabilities were less capable of recognizing facial emotions compared to children without these diagnoses. Those with autism also had poorer executive functioning than the other two groups. Children and adolescents with autism and specific learning disabilities exhibited higher levels of social anxiety.
In children suffering from autism, those with high social anxiety tended to be better at recognizing emotions on faces. In their peers with specific learning disabilities, lower social anxiety was associated with better facial emotion recognition abilities.
“Overall, despite similar weaknesses in FER [facial emotion recognition] in ASD [autism spectrum disorder] and SLD [specific learning disabilities], different underlying mechanisms may lie behind such performances in these two different neurodevelopmental conditions. Understanding these differences can guide practitioners in designing individualized interventions, tailored to the specific challenges of the examined clinical profile,” the study authors concluded.
The study makes a valuable contribution to the scientific understanding of the links between autism, specific learning disabilities, social anxiety, and facial emotion recognition abilities. However, it is important to note that the facial emotion recognition abilities were measured using static images of actors who were simulating emotional expressions, rather than experiencing them. This, along with the static nature of the images, differs from how emotions are recognized in real-world situations.
The paper, “Let’s face it! The role of social anxiety and executive functions in recognizing others’ emotions from faces: Evidence from autism and specific learning disorders,” was authored by Rachele Lievore, Ramona Cardillo and Irene C. Mammarella.
