Center for Autism Research, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
J Neurodev Disord. 2024 Sep 4;16(1):51. doi: 10.1186/s11689-024-09567-4.
Individuals on the autism spectrum commonly have differences from non-autistic people in expressing their emotions using communicative behaviors, such as facial expressions. However, it is not yet clear if this reduced expressivity stems from reduced physiological reactivity in emotional contexts or if individuals react internally, but do not show these reactions externally to others. We hypothesized that autism is characterized by a discordance between in-the-moment internal psychophysiological arousal and external communicative expressions of emotion.
Forty-one children on the autism spectrum and 39 non-autistic, typically developing (TD) children of two age groups (2-4 and 8-12 years) participated in a low-level stress task whilst wearing a wireless electrocardiogram. Children's negative emotional expressions (facial, vocal, bodily) were coded following standardized protocols. Alexithymia traits were assessed using the Children's Alexithymia Measure with school-aged children only. Data analyses involved ANOVAs, correlations, and sensitivity analyses.
There were no group differences in physiological arousal (heart rate) or in communicative expressions of stress to the stress task. For TD preschoolers, physiological arousal during the stress task was associated with vocal expressions and for TD school-aged children, they were associated with facial and bodily expressions. By contrast, for children on the autism spectrum, physiological arousal during the stress tasks was not associated with communicative expressions across age groups.
Our findings suggest that children on the autism spectrum might experience emotional disconcordance, in that their physiological arousal does not align with their communicative expressions. Therefore, the internally experienced stress of children on the autism spectrum may be inadvertently missed by teachers and caregivers and, consequently, learning opportunities for teaching emotional communication and regulation may be also missed. Our results support the use of wearable biosensors to facilitate such interventions in children on the autism spectrum.
自闭症谱系个体在使用面部表情等交际行为表达情绪方面与非自闭症个体存在差异。然而，目前尚不清楚这种表达能力的降低是源于情绪情境下生理反应的降低，还是个体内部有反应，但不向他人表现出这些反应。我们假设自闭症的特征是即时内部心理生理唤醒与情绪的外部交际表达之间存在不和谐。
41 名自闭症谱系儿童和 39 名非自闭症、典型发育（TD）的儿童分为两个年龄组（2-4 岁和 8-12 岁），参与了一项低水平的应激任务，同时佩戴了无线心电图。根据标准化协议对儿童的负性情绪表达（面部、声音、身体）进行编码。仅对学龄儿童使用儿童 alexithymia 量表评估 alexithymia 特征。数据分析包括方差分析、相关性和敏感性分析。
在生理唤醒（心率）或对应激任务的交际表达方面，两组之间没有差异。对于 TD 学龄前儿童，应激任务期间的生理唤醒与声音表达相关，对于 TD 学龄儿童，与面部和身体表达相关。相比之下，对于自闭症谱系儿童，应激任务期间的生理唤醒与交际表达在各个年龄组之间均不相关。
我们的研究结果表明，自闭症谱系儿童可能存在情绪不和谐，即他们的生理唤醒与交际表达不匹配。因此，自闭症谱系儿童的内在体验到的压力可能会被教师和照顾者无意中忽略，因此也可能会错过教授情绪沟通和调节的学习机会。我们的研究结果支持使用可穿戴生物传感器来促进自闭症谱系儿童的此类干预。
