Studies exploring facial emotion recognition (FER) abilities in autism spectrum
disorder (ASD) samples have yielded inconsistent results despite the widely-accepted
finding that an impairment in emotion recognition is a core component of ASD. The
current study aimed to determine if an FER task featuring both unfamiliar and familiar
faces would highlight additional group differences between ASD children and typically
developing (TD) children. We tested the two groups of 4- to 8-year-olds on this revised
task, and also compared their resting-state brain activity using electroencephalogram
(EEG) measurements. As hypothesized, the TD group had significantly higher overall
emotion recognition percent scores. In addition, there was a significant interaction effect
of group by familiarity, with the ASD group recognizing emotional expressions
significantly better in familiar faces than in unfamiliar ones. This finding may be related
to the preference of children with autism for people and situations which they are accustomed to. TD children did not demonstrate this pattern, as their recognition scores
were approximately the same for familiar faces and unfamiliar ones. No significant group
differences existed for EEG alpha power or EEG alpha asymmetry in frontal, central,
temporal, parietal, or occipital brain regions. Also, neither of these EEG measurements
were strongly correlated with the group FER performances. Further evidence is needed to
assess the association between neurophysiological measurements and behavioral
symptoms of ASD. The behavioral results of this study provide preliminary evidence that
an FER task featuring both familiar and unfamiliar expressions produces a more optimal
assessment of emotion recognition ability. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fau.edu/oai:fau.digital.flvc.org:fau_38053 |
| Contributors | Shanok, Nathaniel (author), Jones, Nancy Aaron (Thesis advisor), Florida Atlantic University (Degree grantor), Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Psychology |
| Publisher | Florida Atlantic University |
| Source Sets | Florida Atlantic University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 85 p., application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright © is held by the author, with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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