Eack Shaun M, Mazefsky Carla A, Minshew Nancy J
University of Pittsburgh, USA
University of Pittsburgh, USA.
Autism. 2015 Apr;19(3):308-15. doi: 10.1177/1362361314520755. Epub 2014 Feb 17.
Facial emotion perception is significantly affected in autism spectrum disorder, yet little is known about how individuals with autism spectrum disorder misinterpret facial expressions that result in their difficulty in accurately recognizing emotion in faces. This study examined facial emotion perception in 45 verbal adults with autism spectrum disorder and 30 age- and gender-matched volunteers without autism spectrum disorder to identify patterns of emotion misinterpretation during face processing that contribute to emotion recognition impairments in autism. Results revealed that difficulty distinguishing emotional from neutral facial expressions characterized much of the emotion perception impairments exhibited by participants with autism spectrum disorder. In particular, adults with autism spectrum disorder uniquely misinterpreted happy faces as neutral, and were significantly more likely than typical volunteers to attribute negative valence to nonemotional faces. The over-attribution of emotions to neutral faces was significantly related to greater communication and emotional intelligence impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. These findings suggest a potential negative bias toward the interpretation of facial expressions and may have implications for interventions designed to remediate emotion perception in autism spectrum disorder.
面部表情情感认知在自闭症谱系障碍中受到显著影响，但对于自闭症谱系障碍患者如何错误解读面部表情导致他们难以准确识别面部情感，我们知之甚少。本研究对45名有语言能力的自闭症谱系障碍成年人和30名年龄及性别匹配的无自闭症谱系障碍志愿者的面部表情情感认知进行了检测，以确定在面部处理过程中导致自闭症患者情感识别受损的情感错误解读模式。结果显示，难以区分情绪化面部表情与中性面部表情是自闭症谱系障碍参与者所表现出的大部分情感认知障碍的特征。具体而言，自闭症谱系障碍成年人独特地将快乐面孔误判为中性面孔，并且比典型志愿者更有可能将负性情绪归因于非情绪化面孔。对中性面孔过度归因情感与自闭症谱系障碍患者更严重的沟通和情商障碍显著相关。这些发现表明在面部表情解读方面可能存在潜在的负面偏差，并且可能对旨在改善自闭症谱系障碍患者情感认知的干预措施具有启示意义。
