"Who said that?" Matching of low- and high-intensity emotional prosody to facial expressions by adolescents with ASD

Abstract

Data on emotion processing by individuals with ASD suggest both intact abilities and significant deficits. Signal intensity may be a contributing factor to this discrepancy. We presented low- and high-intensity emotional stimuli in a face-voice matching task to 22 adolescents with ASD and 22 typically developing (TD) peers. Participants heard semantically neutral sentences with happy, surprised, angry, and sad prosody presented at two intensity levels (low, high) and matched them to emotional faces. The facial expression choice was either across- or within-valence. Both groups were less accurate for low-intensity emotions, but the ASD participants' accuracy levels dropped off more sharply. ASD participants were significantly less accurate than their TD peers for trials involving low-intensity emotions and within-valence face contrasts.

Figures

Figure 1

Sample facial expression stimuli

Figure 2

Accuracy levels for emotional intensity and face contrast combinations

Figure 3

Accuracy levels for emotional intensity

Figure 4

Accuracy levels for face contrast