Perception of human and nonhuman facial age by developmentally disabled children

• Published in: Journal of autism and developmental disorders Vol. 32; no. 3; pp. 169 - 179
• Main Author: GROSS, Thomas F
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Springer 01.06.2002; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Age; Aging - psychology; Attention; Autism; Autistic children; Autistic Disorder - diagnosis; Autistic Disorder - psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child clinical studies; Child, Preschool; Concept Formation; Control Groups; Developmental Disabilities; Developmental disorders; Developmentally disabled children; Disabled Children - psychology; Discrimination Learning; Emotions; Eye Movements; Face; Face perception; Female; Humans; Individual Characteristics; Inferences; Information processing; Intellectual disabilities; Intellectual Disability - diagnosis; Intellectual Disability - psychology; Interpersonal Competence; Interpersonal Relations; Language Development Disorders - diagnosis; Language Development Disorders - psychology; Male; Medical sciences; Miscellaneous; Neonates; Physical Characteristics; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reference Values; Resistance (Psychology); Social Cognition; Social Perception; Stimuli; Verbal Ability; Visual Perception; Young Children; Human; Preschool age; Inference; Developmental disorder; Cognition; Emotion emotionality; Human aspect; Experimental study; Mental retardation; Language disorder; Social cognition; Communication disorder; Autism; School age; Information processing; Intellectual deficiency; Face; Child; Age; Comparative study; Facial expression
• ISSN: 0162-3257; 1573-3432
• DOI: 10.1023/A:1015445629062

Human and nonhuman faces were shown to clinical controls, autistic, mentally retarded, and language-disordered children to assess their ability to detect and draw inferences about facial age. Children were asked to select from sets of three faces the one that appeared youthful or to select faces that would be associated with some age-related characteristic. In two studies, it was found that, relative to other children, autistic children had more difficulty perceiving youthfulness in nonhuman faces compared with human faces. These data are discussed with respect to differences in mechanisms and processes that may underlie facial information processing in autistic and nonautistic children.