Abstract
Children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have difficulties recognizing others' emotions. Research has mostly focused on basic emotion recognition, devoid of context. This study reports the results of a new task, assessing recognition of complex emotions and mental states in social contexts. An ASC group (n = 23) was compared to a general population control group (n = 24). Children with ASC performed lower than controls on the task. Using task scores, more than 87% of the participants were allocated to their group. This new test quantifies complex emotion and mental state recognition in life-like situations. Our findings reveal that children with ASC have residual difficulties in this aspect of empathy. The use of language-based compensatory strategies for emotion recognition is discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1534-1541 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2008 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements Ofer Golan was supported by the Corob Charitable Trust, the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR), The Wingate Foundation, and B’nai B’rith Scholarships. Simon Baron-Cohen was supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC), UK. We would like to thank Sullivan Entertainment International for their permission to use a screenshot from their series. We are grateful to the Wirral Autistic Society, Umbrella Autism Cam-bridgeshire, the Hertfordshire Autistic Resource Centre, Brookside Family Consultation Clinic, Mayfield Primary School, and Kings Hedges Primary School for their help with recruiting participants, and to Jacqueline Hill, Chris Ashwin, Sally Wheelwright, Sarah Johnson and Emma Chapman for advice and help with this study.
Funding
Acknowledgements Ofer Golan was supported by the Corob Charitable Trust, the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR), The Wingate Foundation, and B’nai B’rith Scholarships. Simon Baron-Cohen was supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC), UK. We would like to thank Sullivan Entertainment International for their permission to use a screenshot from their series. We are grateful to the Wirral Autistic Society, Umbrella Autism Cam-bridgeshire, the Hertfordshire Autistic Resource Centre, Brookside Family Consultation Clinic, Mayfield Primary School, and Kings Hedges Primary School for their help with recruiting participants, and to Jacqueline Hill, Chris Ashwin, Sally Wheelwright, Sarah Johnson and Emma Chapman for advice and help with this study.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Corob Charitable Trust | |
| NAAR | |
| Medical Research Council | G0600977 |
| Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation |
Keywords
- Autism spectrum
- Childhood
- Complex emotions
- Emotion recognition
- Empathy
- Social cognition