Children with autism find understanding facial expressions difficult but make similar mistakes as peers, new study finds
A team from Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology aimed to find out whether six basic facial expressions differing in intensity are challenging for young people with autism to recognise. Researchers gave 63 children and adolescents with an ASC diagnosis and 64 without a diagnosis , an internet-based test of emotion recognition. The two groups, aged between 6 -- 16 years-old, were presented with 'happy', 'sad', 'surprised', 'disgusted', 'scared' and 'angry' facial expressions and asked to select a label that matched the expression. Some faces had exaggerated 'high-intensity' expressions -- which were easier to identify, while others had subtle 'low-intensity' expressions -- which were more difficult but considered more relevant to real world interactions. The team also measured language skills and non-verbal reasoning skills in order to see if differences in these skills explained any differences in ability to...