Emotion recognition in autism spectrum condition during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tim Schnitzler, Christoph Korn, Sabine C Herpertz and 1 others
PMID 37882152WHAT IT FOUND
The expected extra difficulty recognizing emotions from masked faces in autistic adults was not found.
Autistic adults were less accurate than non-autistic adults across uncovered, masked, and sunglasses faces, but eye tracking did not show different looking patterns.
Key findings
01The predicted extra difficulty recognizing emotions from masked faces in autistic adults was not significant.
02For masked faces, autistic adults averaged 59.1 ± 7.7 and non-autistic adults 72.4 ± 1.5 on emotion recognition accuracy.
03Eye tracking did not show group differences in fixation patterns.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was small, especially for eye tracking, because 4 participants with ASC and 5 non-autistic participants were excluded for insufficient pupil data. Pandemic restrictions and the need for a professional ASC diagnosis made recruitment difficult. Stimuli were static photographs, not real moving faces with voice and body cues. Mask wearing had been mandatory for several months before testing, so participants may already have adapted to masked faces. Only 5 participants with ASC fulfilled the criteria for high alexithymia, so the study could not test the alexithymia subgroup explanation.
Declared interests
Participants received no payment. No funding or conflict-of-interest declaration is provided.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that masks are specifically worse for autistic adults. The study did not find that masked faces affected autistic adults' emotion recognition more than non-autistic adults' emotion recognition; their lower accuracy was also present for uncovered faces and sunglasses.