García-Blanco Ana, López-Soler Concepción, Vento Máximo, García-Blanco María Carmen, Gago Belén, Perea Manuel
Health Research Institute La Fe, Av. de Fernando Abril Martorell, 106, 46026 Valencia, Spain; University of Valencia, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, Valencia 46010, Spain.
Virgen de la Arrixaca University Hospital, Ctra. Madrid-Cartagena, s/n, 30120 El Palmar, Murcia, Spain.
Res Dev Disabil. 2017 Mar;62:218-226. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2017.02.002. Epub 2017 Feb 15.
Understanding how emotional faces are processed is important to help characterize the social deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
We examined: (i) whether attention is modulated by emotional facial expression; (ii) the time course of the attentional preferences (short vs. long stimulus presentation rates); and (iii) the association between attentional biases and autistic symptomatology.
We applied a dot-probe experiment with emotional faces (happy, sad, and angry). The sample was composed of ASD children without additional language and/or intellectual impairments (n=29) and age-matched Typically Developing (TD) children (n=29).
When compared to the TD group, the ASD group showed an attentional bias away from angry faces at long presentation rates. No differences between groups were found for happy or sad faces. Furthermore, correlational analyses showed that the higher avoidance of angry faces, the greater are the social communication difficulties of ASD children. The attentional bias away from angry faces may be an underlying mechanism of social dysfunction in ASD. We discuss the implications of these findings for current theories of emotional processing in ASD.
了解情绪面孔如何被加工对于帮助刻画自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中的社交缺陷很重要。
我们研究了：（i）注意力是否受情绪面部表情调节；（ii）注意力偏好的时间进程（短刺激呈现率与长刺激呈现率）；以及（iii）注意力偏差与自闭症症状之间的关联。
我们对情绪面孔（开心、悲伤和愤怒）进行了点探测实验。样本由无额外语言和/或智力障碍的ASD儿童（n = 29）以及年龄匹配的发育正常（TD）儿童（n = 29）组成。
与TD组相比，ASD组在长呈现率时表现出远离愤怒面孔的注意力偏差。在开心或悲伤面孔上未发现组间差异。此外，相关分析表明，对愤怒面孔的回避越高，ASD儿童的社交沟通困难就越大。远离愤怒面孔的注意力偏差可能是ASD社交功能障碍的一种潜在机制。我们讨论了这些发现对当前ASD情绪加工理论的意义。
