Høyland Anne Lise, Nærland Terje, Engstrøm Morten, Lydersen Stian, Andreassen Ole Andreas
Regional Centre for Child and Youth Mental Health and Child Welfare, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Department of Pediatrics, St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital, Norway.
PLoS One. 2017 Oct 11;12(10):e0186124. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186124. eCollection 2017.
An altered processing of emotions may contribute to a reduced ability for social interaction and communication in autism spectrum disorder, ASD. We investigated how face-emotion recognition in ASD is different from typically developing across adolescent age groups. Fifty adolescents diagnosed with ASD and 49 typically developing (age 12-21 years) were included. The ASD diagnosis was underpinned by parent-rated Social Communication Questionnaire. We used a cued GO/ NOGO task with pictures of facial expressions and recorded reaction time, intra-individual variability of reaction time and omissions/commissions. The Social Responsiveness Scale was used as a measure of social function. Analyses were conducted for the whole group and for young (< 16 years) and old (≥ 16 years) age groups. We found no significant differences in any task measures between the whole group of typically developing and ASD and no significant correlations with the Social Responsiveness Scale. However, there was a non-significant tendency for longer reaction time in the young group with ASD (p = 0.099). The Social Responsiveness Scale correlated positively with reaction time (r = 0.30, p = 0.032) and intra-individual variability in reaction time (r = 0.29, p = 0.037) in the young group and in contrast, negatively in the old group (r = -0.23, p = 0.13; r = -0.38, p = 0.011, respectively) giving significant age group interactions for both reaction time (p = 0.008) and intra-individual variability in reaction time (p = 0.001). Our findings suggest an age-dependent association between emotion recognition and severity of social problems indicating a delayed development of emotional understanding in ASD. It also points towards alterations in top-down attention control in the ASD group. This suggests novel disease-related features that should be investigated in more details in experimental settings.
情绪加工改变可能导致自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者社交互动和沟通能力下降。我们研究了ASD患者在青少年各年龄组中面部表情识别与正常发育个体有何不同。研究纳入了50名被诊断为ASD的青少年和49名正常发育青少年（年龄12 - 21岁）。ASD诊断以家长评定的社会沟通问卷为依据。我们使用了带有面部表情图片的线索式“是/否”任务，并记录反应时间、反应时间的个体内变异性以及遗漏/错误。社会反应量表被用作社会功能的衡量指标。对整个组以及年轻（<16岁）和年长（≥16岁）年龄组进行了分析。我们发现，在整个正常发育组和ASD组之间，任何任务指标均无显著差异，且与社会反应量表无显著相关性。然而，ASD年轻组存在反应时间较长的非显著趋势（p = 0.099）。社会反应量表与年轻组的反应时间（r = 0.30，p = 0.032）和反应时间的个体内变异性（r = 0.29，p = 0.037）呈正相关，相反，在年长组呈负相关（分别为r = -0.23，p = 0.13；r = -0.38，p = 0.011），这在反应时间（p = 0.008）和反应时间的个体内变异性（p = 0.001）方面均产生了显著的年龄组交互作用。我们的研究结果表明，情绪识别与社会问题严重程度之间存在年龄依赖性关联，这表明ASD患者的情绪理解发育延迟。这也表明ASD组自上而下的注意力控制存在改变。这提示了一些与疾病相关的新特征，应在实验环境中进行更详细的研究。
