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No description available.

Autism spectrum condition (ASC) is a lifelong developmental condition. Along with restricted interests and deficits in social imagination, people with ASC have difficulty understanding the social world. Evidence suggests that ASC individuals have difficulty understanding the emotional expressions of others, particularly when these expressions have negative valence. It is suggested that ASC is not a discrete phenomenon. Instead research has shown that traits associated with autism are seen in varying levels throughout the general population. It is believed that ASC is a spectrum, with those who have the most difficulty obtaining a diagnosis. The traits of autism present in the general population are seen to be qualitatively similar to those seen in ASC. It is therefore suggested that the ASC can be explored and further understood by assessing people in the Wider Autism Spectrum (WAS) of ASC-traits who do not hold a diagnosis. This research contributes to the understanding of the WAS and how ASC-traits manifest in the general population. Additionally, the differences between ASC and the WAS can be assessed by comparing the performance of people with a diagnosis to those in the WAS who have high ASC-traits. Through understanding the differences between these populations we are better able to understand what drives the clinical impairments associated with ASC. The current thesis assesses facial emotion processing in people with ASC and those in the WAS in order to understand the differences and similarities that exist. This was conducted using several cognitive tasks that assess the underlying brain mechanisms associated with facial emotion processing. Directed by the social motivation theory of autism, the current work used visual adaptation paradigms to assess how the brain represents emotional expression information in those with ASC and people with high and low ASC-traits. Additionally, the dot-probe paradigm was employed to explore attentional orienting for emotional expressions in ASC and the WAS. Results found that WAS participants with high ASC-traits do not represent negative emotional expressions in the same way as those with fewer ASC-traits. When assessing attention mechanisms those with high autism-traits were more likely to bias attention towards emotional expression information. Results suggests that WAS individuals with high ASC-traits process emotional faces differently from their low ASC-trait counterparts and also have a different way of selecting which emotions to attend to in their environment. People with ASC had deficits in mental representation of emotional expression but did not show the same pattern of attention to emotional expressions seen in high ASC-trait WAS individuals. These results do not suggest the autism spectrum is linear. Results are discussed suggesting that those with high traits of autism have a profile of behaviour that cannot be explained by the social motivation theory whereas ASC results do follow predictions this theory makes.

abstract: The present research expands on prior research that demonstrated a prototypical facial expression in response to cute, baby-like Kindchenschema targets. This expression, referred to as the tenderness expression, is recognizable to onlookers as a response to such stimuli. Across two studies, the current research examined if there were differences in perceptions of trustworthiness (Studies 1 and 2) and willingness to trust (Study 2) toward individuals displaying the tenderness expression as compared to a Duchenne smile or a neutral expression. Results indicate the tenderness expression is associated with lower ratings of trustworthiness relative to a smile, but no differences among the expressions on willingness to trust. Exploratory analyses demonstrate a replicated pattern of differences on the Big Five Personality Inventory among these three expressions. While these findings were not consistent with a priori hypotheses, this research provides further insight into the social implications associated with this tenderness expression. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2019

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No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Prior research has shown that both emotion recognition and expression in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) differs from that of typically developing children, and that these differences may contribute to observed social impairment. This study extends prior research in this area with an integrated examination of both expression and recognition of emotion, and evaluation of spontaneous generation of emotional expression in response to another person's emotion, a behavior that is characteristically deficient in ASD. The aim of this study was to assess eye gaze patterns during scripted and spontaneous emotion expression tasks, and to assess quality of emotional expression in relation to gaze patterns. Youth with ASD fixated less to the eye region of stimuli showing surprise (F(1,19.88) = 4.76, p = .04 for spontaneous task; F(1,19.88) = 3.93, p = .06 for the recognition task), and they expressed emotion less clearly than did the typically developing sample (F(1, 35) = 6.38, p = .02) in the spontaneous task, but there was not a significant group difference in the scripted task across the emotions. Results do not, however, suggest altered eye gaze as a candidate mechanism for decreased ability to express an emotion. Findings from this research inform our understanding of the social difficulties associated with emotion recognition and expression deficits. / Master of Science

In this study of preschool children and parents (N=64), we examined relations between two facets of parents' emotion socialization: direct and indirect socialization; three facets of children's emotional competence: emotion expression, regulation, and understanding; and their relations with children's social and emotional adjustment. Few associations were observed between indicators of parents' emotion socialization and among indicators of children's emotional competence, suggesting that these constructs are better understood as multi-faceted, rather than unitary processes. Additionally, aspects of children's emotional competence linked--both directly and indirectly--parents' emotion socialization behaviors and children's social and emotional adjustment. Results are discussed with regard to the role of parents' emotion socialization and children's emotional competence, especially emotion regulation, in children's adjustment during preschool.