Lewis Michael B, Dunn Emily
a School of Psychology , Cardiff University , Cardiff , UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2017 Nov;70(11):2357-2370. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2016.1238950. Epub 2016 Oct 13.
People tend to mimic the facial expression of others. It has been suggested that this helps provide social glue between affiliated people but it could also aid recognition of emotions through embodied cognition. The degree of facial mimicry, however, varies between individuals and is limited in people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). The present study sought to investigate the effect of promoting facial mimicry during a facial-emotion-recognition test. In two experiments, participants without an ASC diagnosis had their autism quotient (AQ) measured. Following a baseline test, they did an emotion-recognition test again but half of the participants were asked to mimic the target face they saw prior to making their responses. Mimicry improved emotion recognition, and further analysis revealed that the largest improvement was for participants who had higher scores on the autism traits. In fact, recognition performance was best overall for people who had high AQ scores but also received the instruction to mimic. Implications for people with ASC are explored.
人们倾向于模仿他人的面部表情。有人认为，这有助于在有亲属关系的人之间提供社交凝聚力，但它也可能通过具身认知来帮助识别情绪。然而，面部模仿的程度因人而异，并且在患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASC）的人群中是有限的。本研究旨在调查在面部情绪识别测试中促进面部模仿的效果。在两项实验中，对没有ASC诊断的参与者进行了自闭症商数（AQ）测量。在基线测试之后，他们再次进行情绪识别测试，但其中一半的参与者被要求在做出反应之前模仿他们看到的目标面孔。模仿提高了情绪识别能力，进一步分析表明，自闭症特征得分较高的参与者改善最大。事实上，AQ得分高且还收到模仿指令的人总体上识别表现最佳。文中探讨了对ASC患者的启示。
