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Moraitopoulou G, Pickard H, Simonoff E, Pickles A, Bedford R, Carter Leno V. No association between alexithymia and emotion recognition or theory of mind in a sample of adolescents enhanced for autistic traits. AUTISM : THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND PRACTICE 2024; 28:2066-2079. [PMID: 38240268 PMCID: PMC11301953 DOI: 10.1177/13623613231221928] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 08/07/2024]
Abstract
LAY ABSTRACT Alexithymia is a sub-clinical condition characterised by difficulties identifying and describing one's own emotions, which is found in many, but not all autistic people. The alexithymia hypothesis suggests that certain aspects of socio-cognitive functioning typically attributed to autism, namely difficulties in emotion recognition, might be better explained by often co-occurring alexithymia. It is important to understand what is specific to autism and what is due to other co-occurring characteristics to develop appropriate support for autistic people. However, most research on this topic has been conducted in adults, which limits our knowledge about the relevance of this theory to younger autistic populations. This study tested whether difficulties in emotion recognition and theory of mind traditionally associated with autism might be better explained by alexithymia in a sample of adolescents with and without a diagnosis of autism. Results found that difficulties in emotion recognition and theory of mind were both associated with autistic traits, and this was not accounted for by individual differences in levels of alexithymia. This research suggests that more work is needed to understand the applicability of the alexithymia hypothesis in younger populations, but that at least in adolescents and when using parent-report measures, alexithymia may not account for emotion recognition or theory of mind difficulties associated with autistic traits.
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Affiliation(s)
- Georgianna Moraitopoulou
- Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, London, UK
| | - Hannah Pickard
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, London, UK
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
| | - Emily Simonoff
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, London, UK
| | - Andrew Pickles
- Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics, Institute of
Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, London, UK
| | - Rachael Bedford
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, London, UK
- Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, UK
| | - Virginia Carter Leno
- Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics, Institute of
Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, London, UK
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Surian D, van den Boomen C. The age bias in labeling facial expressions in children: Effects of intensity and expression. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0278483. [PMID: 36459504 PMCID: PMC9718404 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278483] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/02/2022] [Accepted: 11/17/2022] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Emotion reasoning, including labeling of facial expressions, is an important building block for a child's social development. This study investigated age biases in labeling facial expressions in children and adults, focusing on the influence of intensity and expression on age bias. Children (5 to 14 years old; N = 152) and adults (19 to 25 years old; N = 30) labeled happiness, disgust or sadness at five intensity levels (0%; 25%; 50%; 75%; and 100%) in facial images of children and adults. Sensitivity was computed for each of the expression-intensity combinations, separately for the child and adult faces. Results show that children and adults have an age bias at low levels of intensity (25%). In the case of sadness, children have an age bias for all intensities. Thus, the impact of the age of the face seems largest for expressions which might be most difficult to recognise. Moreover, both adults and children label most expressions best in adult rather than child faces, leading to an other-age bias in children and an own-age bias in adults. Overall, these findings reveal that both children and adults exhibit an age bias in labeling subtle facial expressions of emotions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dafni Surian
- Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
- * E-mail:
| | - Carlijn van den Boomen
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Plank IS, Christiansen LN, Kunas SL, Dziobek I, Bermpohl F. Mothers need more information to recognise associated emotions in child facial expressions. Cogn Emot 2022; 36:1299-1312. [PMID: 35930357 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2022.2105819] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/21/2023]
Abstract
Parenting requires mothers to read social cues and understand their children. It is particularly important that they recognise their child's emotions to react appropriately, for example, with compassion to sadness or compersion to happiness. Despite this importance, it is unclear how motherhood affects women's ability to recognise emotions associated with facial expressions in children. Using videos of an emotionally neutral face continually and gradually taking on a facial expression associated with an emotion, we quantified the amount of information needed to match the emotion with the facial expression. Mothers needed more information than non-mothers to match the emotions with the facial expressions. Both mothers and non-mothers performed equally on a control task identifying animals instead of emotions, and both groups needed less information when recognising the emotions associated with facial expressions in adolescents than pre-schoolers. These results indicate that mothers need more information for to correctly recognise typically associated emotions in child facial expressions but not for similar tasks not involving emotions. A possible explanation is that child facial expressions associated with emotions may have a greater emotional impact on mothers than non-mothers leading to task interference but possibly also to increased compassion and compersion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Irene S Plank
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Einstein Center for Neurosciences, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Lina-Nel Christiansen
- Center for Chronically Sick Children, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Stefanie L Kunas
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Isabel Dziobek
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Einstein Center for Neurosciences, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Felix Bermpohl
- Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Einstein Center for Neurosciences, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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4
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Culture shapes preschoolers’ emotion recognition but not emotion comprehension: a cross-cultural study in Germany and Singapore. JOURNAL OF CULTURAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2022. [DOI: 10.1007/s41809-021-00093-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
AbstractContemporary approaches suggest that emotions are shaped by culture. Children growing up in different cultures experience culture-specific emotion socialization practices. As a result, children growing up in Western societies (e.g., US or UK) rely on explicit, semantic information, whereas children from East Asian cultures (e.g., China or Japan) are more sensitive towards implicit, contextual cues when confronted with others’ emotions. The aim of the present study was to investigate two aspects of preschoolers’ emotion understanding (emotion recognition and emotion comprehension) in a cross-cultural setting. To this end, Singaporean and German preschoolers were tested with an emotion recognition task employing European-American and East Asian child’s faces and the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC; Pons et al., 2004). In total, 129 German and Singaporean preschoolers (mean age 5.34 years) participated. Results indicate that preschoolers were able to recognize emotions of child’s faces above chance level. In line with previous findings, Singaporean preschoolers were more accurate in recognizing emotions from facial stimuli compared to German preschoolers. Accordingly, Singaporean preschoolers outperformed German preschoolers in the Recognition component of the TEC. The overall performance in TEC did not differ between the two samples. Findings of this study provide further evidence that emotion understanding is culturally shaped in accordance with culture-specific emotion socialization practices.
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Griffiths S, Jarrold C, Penton-Voak IS, Woods AT, Skinner AL, Munafò MR. Impaired Recognition of Basic Emotions from Facial Expressions in Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Assessing the Importance of Expression Intensity. J Autism Dev Disord 2019; 49:2768-2778. [PMID: 28361375 PMCID: PMC6606653 DOI: 10.1007/s10803-017-3091-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
It has been proposed that impairments in emotion recognition in ASD are greater for more subtle expressions of emotion. We measured recognition of 6 basic facial expressions at 8 intensity levels in young people (6-16 years) with ASD (N = 63) and controls (N = 64) via an Internet platform. Participants with ASD were less accurate than controls at labelling expressions across intensity levels, although differences at very low levels were not detected due to floor effects. Recognition accuracy did not correlate with parent-reported social functioning in either group. These findings provide further evidence for an impairment in recognition of basic emotion in ASD and do not support the idea that this impairment is limited solely to low intensity expressions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah Griffiths
- School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. .,MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. .,Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
| | | | - Ian S Penton-Voak
- School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
| | | | - Andy L Skinner
- School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.,MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
| | - Marcus R Munafò
- School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.,MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.,UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
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Children’s recognition of emotion expressed by own-race versus other-race faces. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 182:102-113. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.01.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/22/2018] [Revised: 01/14/2019] [Accepted: 01/14/2019] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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Prada M, Garrido MV, Camilo C, Rodrigues DL. Subjective ratings and emotional recognition of children's facial expressions from the CAFE set. PLoS One 2018; 13:e0209644. [PMID: 30589868 PMCID: PMC6307702 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209644] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2018] [Accepted: 12/10/2018] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Access to validated stimuli depicting children's facial expressions is useful for different research domains (e.g., developmental, cognitive or social psychology). Yet, such databases are scarce in comparison to others portraying adult models, and validation procedures are typically restricted to emotional recognition accuracy. This work presents subjective ratings for a sub-set of 283 photographs selected from the Child Affective Facial Expression set (CAFE [1]). Extending beyond the original emotion recognition accuracy norms [2], our main goal was to validate this database across eight subjective dimensions related to the model (e.g., attractiveness, familiarity) or the specific facial expression (e.g., intensity, genuineness), using a sample from a different nationality (N = 450 Portuguese participants). We also assessed emotion recognition (forced-choice task with seven options: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise and neutral). Overall results show that most photographs were rated as highly clear, genuine and intense facial expressions. The models were rated as both moderately familiar and likely to belong to the in-group, obtaining high attractiveness and arousal ratings. Results also showed that, similarly to the original study, the facial expressions were accurately recognized. Normative and raw data are available as supplementary material at https://osf.io/mjqfx/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marília Prada
- Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS - IUL, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Margarida V. Garrido
- Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS - IUL, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Cláudia Camilo
- Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS - IUL, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - David L. Rodrigues
- Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS - IUL, Lisboa, Portugal
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Quantifying facial expression signal and intensity use during development. J Exp Child Psychol 2018; 174:41-59. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.05.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2017] [Revised: 05/10/2018] [Accepted: 05/11/2018] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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Vetter NC, Drauschke M, Thieme J, Altgassen M. Adolescent Basic Facial Emotion Recognition Is Not Influenced by Puberty or Own-Age Bias. Front Psychol 2018; 9:956. [PMID: 29977212 PMCID: PMC6022279 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00956] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2017] [Accepted: 05/24/2018] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Basic facial emotion recognition is suggested to be negatively affected by puberty onset reflected in a “pubertal dip” in performance compared to pre- or post-puberty. However, findings remain inconclusive. Further, research points to an own-age bias, i.e., a superior emotion recognition for peer faces. We explored adolescents’ ability to recognize specific emotions. Ninety-five children and adolescents, aged 8–17 years, judged whether the emotions displayed by adolescent or adult faces were angry, sad, neutral, or happy. We assessed participants a priori by pubertal status while controlling for age. Results indicated no “pubertal dip”, but decreasing reaction times across adolescence. No own-age bias was found. Taken together, basic facial emotion recognition does not seem to be disrupted during puberty as compared to pre- and post-puberty.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nora C Vetter
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.,Department of Psychiatry and Neuroimaging Center, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.,Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.,Department of Psychology, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
| | - Mandy Drauschke
- Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany
| | - Juliane Thieme
- Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany
| | - Mareike Altgassen
- Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.,Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands
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Griffiths S, Penton-Voak IS, Jarrold C, Munafò MR. Correction: No Own-Age Advantage in Children's Recognition of Emotion on Prototypical Faces of Different Ages. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0131488. [PMID: 26098913 PMCID: PMC4476834 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131488] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
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