The Perception of Four Basic Emotions in Human and Nonhuman Faces by Children with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities

• Published in: Journal of abnormal child psychology Vol. 32; no. 5; pp. 469 - 480
• Main Author: Gross, Thomas F
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Springer-Verlag New York, LLC 01.10.2004; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Affect; Animals; Autism; Autistic children; Autistic Disorder - diagnosis; Autistic Disorder - psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child clinical studies; Child psychology; Children & youth; Control Groups; Developmental Disabilities; Developmental Disabilities - diagnosis; Developmental Disabilities - psychology; Developmental disorders; Developmentally disabled children; Emotion recognition; Emotions; Error Patterns; Face; Face perception; Facial Expression; Humankind; Humans; Infantile autism; Intellectual Disability - diagnosis; Intellectual Disability - psychology; Language Impairments; Learning Disorders - diagnosis; Learning Disorders - psychology; Medical sciences; Mental Retardation; Perceptions; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Recognition (Psychology); Social Cognition; Social information processing; Visual Perception; Human; face perception; Autism; Social perception; facial emotion; Developmental disorder; Emotion emotionality; Personality; Face; Performance; Child
• ISSN: 0091-0627; 2730-7166; 1573-2835; 2730-7174
• DOI: 10.1023/B:JACP.0000037777.17698.01

Children who experienced autism, mental retardation, and language disorders; and, children in a clinical control group were shown photographs of human female, orangutan, and canine (boxer) faces expressing happiness, sadness, anger, surprise and a neutral expression. For each species of faces, children were asked to identify the happy, sad, angry, or surprised expressions. In Experiment 1, error patterns suggested that children who experienced autism were attending to features of the lower face when making judgements about emotional expressions. Experiment 2 supported this impression. When recognizing facial emotion, children without autism performed better when viewing the full face, compared to the upper and lower face alone. Children with autism performed no better when viewing the full face than they did when viewing partial faces; and, performed no better than chance when viewing the upper face alone. The results are discussed with respect to differences in the manner that children with and without autism process social information communicated by the face.