Impaired emotion recognition and expression in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may contribute to observed social impairment. The aim of this study was to examine the role of visual attention directed toward nonsocial aspects of a scene as a possible mechanism underlying recognition and expressive ability deficiency in ASD. One recognition and two expression tasks were administered. Recognition was assessed in force-choice paradigm, and expression was assessed during scripted and free-choice response (in response to emotional stimuli) tasks in youth with ASD (n = 20) and an age-matched sample of typically developing youth (n = 20). During stimulus presentation prior to response in each task, participants' eye gaze was tracked. Youth with ASD were less accurate at identifying disgust and sadness in the recognition task. They fixated less to the eye region of stimuli showing surprise. A group difference was found during the free-choice response task, such that those with ASD expressed emotion less clearly but not during the scripted task. Results suggest altered eye gaze to the mouth region but not the eye region as a candidate mechanism for decreased ability to recognize or express emotion. Findings inform our understanding of the association between social attention and emotion recognition and expression deficits.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 June 2024.
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Outputs from Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology
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#119,638
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Outputs of similar age from Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology
#10
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Altmetric has tracked 34,359,530 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 65th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,287 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 17.1. This one is in the 48th percentile – i.e., 48% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 72% of its contemporaries.
