There is a general consensus that most children with autism have difficulty recognizing emotional expressions, especially in non-verbal contexts. This difficulty affects social interactions as children with autism often miss key emotion-related social cues preventing them from engaging in the ‘expected’ behavior (for example stopping a particular theme in a conversation when someone appears to be uncomfortable or upset about the topic). Yet, our understanding of the deficits in the processing of verbal information is more limited. For example, are children with high functioning autism impaired in recognizing the emotional content provided in the words of a conversation, the emotional content embedded in how the words are spoken, or both? In addition, what could be the underlying cause of such deficit? One possibility is that affected children differ from typically developing children in the way their brains process such emotional information. For example, it is thought that the right hemisphere plays a key role in the processing of ‘negative emotions’ while the left hemisphere plays a role in the processing of positive emotions (although there is a compelling alternative theory that refutes such ‘emotional valance’ explanation and instead proposes that different hemispheres process different motivational content [approach vs. withdrawal] with the left hemisphere processing approach related content and the right hemisphere processing withdrawal related information). Nonetheless, there is preliminary evidence that suggest that kids with autism do not show this ‘typical’ hemisphere specialization and instead show involvement of both hemispheres with processing emotional verbal content.
In an article to be published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Dr. Kimberly Baker and a team from the University of South Carolina report the findings from a very interesting study on the perception of spoken emotions by typically developing children and kids with high functioning autism and Aspergers’s disorder. The authors were interested in expanding our understanding the way children with HFA and Asperger’s process spoken emotions. The study included a combined group of 19 kids with HFA or Asperger’s (labeled High Functioning Forms of Autism, or HFFA) and 19 typically developing children. Both groups included 13 males and 6 females. The range in age from 10 to 14 years, with a mean age of 12 in both groups. All participants were right handed.
The study used 4 nonsense passages that were narrated to display four emotions: Anger, Happy, Sadness, and neutral. These passages were presented using a Dichotic Listening Task. In this task, two passages containing two different emotions were presented simultaneously to the right or left ear. For example, the happy passage was presented to the right ear while the sad passage was presented to the left ear. The children then had to select the emotions included in both passages using a multiple-choice sheet.
- There was no difference between the autism and typically developing groups in the proportion of correct responses identifying emotions. See the figure below.
- There was no difference between the groups in the way the cerebral hemisphere processed the emotions
- When combining both groups, sadness was processed better when presented to the left ear (processed by the right hemisphere). However, there was no hemisphere difference in the processing of anger or happiness.
Definitely the most critical limitation of this study is the sample size. The number of participants in each group (19) makes it very difficult to find statistically significant differences between the groups even when the differences actually exist. However, looking at the graphic above we can see that the HFFA group actually scored better (albeit not statistically significantly better) that then typically developing group when the emotion was presented to the left ear, and a bit worse when the emotion was presented to the right ear. The patterns for each emotion were also mixed, with the HFFA scoring better for some emotions (Anger, Neutral) and worse for others (Happy, Sadness). Therefore, there was no clear pattern or tendency in the results that would suggest that the lack of significant findings would be mostly due to limitations in the sample size. The authors stated that these findings are consistent with other recent examinations of emotion recognition deficits in autism that suggest that such deficits are more related to general cognitive deficits rather than the presence of autism.
Baker, K., Montgomery, A., & Abramson, R. (2009). Brief Report: Perception and Lateralization of Spoken Emotion by Youths with High-Functioning Forms of Autism Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders DOI: 10.1007/s10803-009-0841-1
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