Keating Connor T, Sowden Sophie, Cook Jennifer L
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Autism Res. 2022 Mar;15(3):493-506. doi: 10.1002/aur.2642. Epub 2021 Nov 30.
Recent developments suggest that autistic individuals require dynamic angry expressions to have a higher speed in order for them to be successfully identified. Therefore, it is plausible that autistic individuals do not have a 'deficit' in angry expression recognition, but rather their internal representation of these expressions is characterised by very high-speed movement. In this study, matched groups of autistic and non-autistic adults completed a novel emotion-based task which employed dynamic displays of happy, angry and sad point light facial (PLF) expressions. On each trial, participants moved a slider to manipulate the speed of a PLF stimulus until it moved at a speed that, in their 'mind's eye', was typical of happy, angry or sad expressions. Participants were shown three different types of PLFs-those showing the full-face, only the eye region, and only the mouth region, wherein the latter two were included to test whether differences in facial information sampling underpinned any dissimilarities in speed attributions. Across both groups, participants attributed the highest speeds to angry, then happy, then sad, facial motion. Participants increased the speed of angry and happy expressions by 41% and 27% respectively and decreased the speed of sad expressions by 18%. This suggests that participants have 'caricatured' internal representations of emotion, wherein emotion-related kinematic cues are over-emphasised. There were no differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals in the speeds attributed to full-face and partial-face angry, happy and sad expressions respectively. Consequently, we find no evidence that autistic adults possess atypically fast internal representations of anger.
最近的研究进展表明，自闭症患者需要动态愤怒表情具有更高的速度，以便他们能够成功识别。因此，自闭症患者在愤怒表情识别方面可能不存在“缺陷”，而是他们对这些表情的内部表征的特点是运动速度非常快。在这项研究中，自闭症和非自闭症成年配对组完成了一项基于新颖情绪的任务，该任务采用了快乐、愤怒和悲伤的点光面部（PLF）表情的动态展示。在每次试验中，参与者移动滑块来操纵PLF刺激的速度，直到它以他们“心目中”典型的快乐、愤怒或悲伤表情的速度移动。参与者观看了三种不同类型的PLF——展示全脸的、只展示眼睛区域的和只展示嘴巴区域的，其中后两种用于测试面部信息采样的差异是否是速度归因中任何差异的基础。在两组中，参与者将最高速度归因于愤怒的面部运动，其次是快乐的面部运动，然后是悲伤的面部运动。参与者分别将愤怒和快乐表情的速度提高了41%和27%，并将悲伤表情的速度降低了18%。这表明参与者对情绪有“夸张”的内部表征，其中与情绪相关的运动线索被过度强调。自闭症和非自闭症个体在分别归因于全脸和部分脸的愤怒、快乐和悲伤表情的速度上没有差异。因此，我们没有发现证据表明自闭症成年人对愤怒有非典型的快速内部表征。
