Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, United States, USA.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2013 Jan;3:11-21. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2012.08.005. Epub 2012 Sep 1.
This study sought to describe heterogeneity in emotion processing in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) via electrophysiological markers of perceptual and cognitive processes that underpin emotion recognition across perceptual modalities. Behavioral and neural indicators of emotion processing were collected, as event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while youth with ASD completed a standardized facial and vocal emotion identification task. Children with ASD exhibited impaired emotion recognition performance for adult faces and child voices, with a subgroup displaying intact recognition. Latencies of early perceptual ERP components, marking social information processing speed, and amplitudes of subsequent components reflecting emotion evaluation, each correlated across modalities. Social information processing speed correlated with emotion recognition performance, and predicted membership in a subgroup with intact adult vocal emotion recognition. Results indicate that the essential multimodality of emotion recognition in individuals with ASDs may derive from early social information processing speed, despite heterogeneous behavioral performance; this process represents a novel social-emotional intervention target for ASD.
本研究旨在通过感知和认知过程的电生理标记物来描述自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中的情绪处理异质性，这些标记物是跨感知模式识别情绪的基础。收集了情绪处理的行为和神经指标，因为在 ASD 青少年完成标准化面部和声音情绪识别任务时记录了事件相关电位（ERP）。患有 ASD 的儿童在识别成人面孔和儿童声音时表现出情绪识别能力受损，其中一个亚组表现出识别能力正常。早期感知 ERP 成分的潜伏期标志着社会信息处理速度，随后反映情绪评估的成分的振幅在各个模态中相互关联。社会信息处理速度与情绪识别性能相关，并预测了具有正常成人声音情绪识别能力的亚组的成员身份。研究结果表明，尽管行为表现存在异质性，但 ASD 个体的情绪识别的基本多模态可能源自于早期的社会信息处理速度；这个过程代表了 ASD 的一个新的社交情绪干预目标。
