Social Anxiety Symptoms Predict Poorer Facial Emotion Recognition in Autistic Male Adolescents and Young Adults Without Intellectual Disability.
Ligia Antezana, Andrew Valdespino, Andrea T Wieckowski and 6 others
PMID 37120659WHAT IT FOUND
In 19 autistic males, higher social anxiety predicted poorer facial emotion recognition, but only when they had to identify emotions from brief, low-intensity glimpses.
This effect was not seen when they could view the full expression. IQ also predicted accuracy.
Key findings
01Greater social anxiety significantly predicted poorer overall facial emotion recognition accuracy, accounting for a large portion of the variance, while autistic traits and alexithymia did not.
02The link between social anxiety and poor recognition was specific to the 'truncated' condition (rapid interpretation of low-intensity faces) and was not present in the 'full viewing' condition.
03Within the truncated condition, social anxiety specifically predicted poorer accuracy for recognizing disgust and surprise, but not other emotions.
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 very small (n=19) and homogeneous, consisting only of autistic males without intellectual disability, which limits generalizability to females, non-binary individuals, or those with intellectual disability. The study was a pilot analysis within a larger feasibility study for neurotechnology, not a randomized controlled trial of an intervention. There was no neurotypical control group, so it is unclear if the social anxiety-FER link is specific to autism or reflects a general effect of social anxiety. The cross-sectional design cannot determine causality; it is unclear if social anxiety causes FER difficulties or if FER difficulties contribute to the development of social anxiety.
Declared interests
One author disclosed being a statistical consultant for a company (Behaivior LLC) that had no interest in the results. No other conflicts of interest were declared. The study was funded by the authors' institution (Virginia Tech IRB approval mentioned, no external commercial funder listed for this specific analysis).
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic individuals have a global deficit in facial emotion recognition caused by autism. The study found that autistic traits did not predict FER accuracy; instead, social anxiety predicted poorer accuracy only when faces were viewed briefly. This suggests the difficulty may be state-dependent (anxiety-driven) rather than a fixed trait of autism.