The Role of Racial and Developmental Experience on Emotional Adaptive Coding in Autism Spectrum Disorder

ABSTRACT

Sensitivity to emotional face aids in rapid detection and evaluation of others, such that by school-age, children and youth exhibit adult-like patterns when the prolonged viewing of an emotional face distorts the perception of a subsequent face. However, the developmental considerations of this phenomenon (known as emotional adaptive coding) are unclear given ongoing maturational and experiential changes, including the influence of own-race experiences or the lack of face expertise, as is evident in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study addressed whether emotional adaptive coding is sensitive to factors of face perception expertise, specifically self-race and developmental experience, in adults (age 19–28 years) and youth (age 10–16 years). Emotional adaptive coding was not influenced by race expertise (i.e., other versus same race identity) in White and Asian adults. Emotional adaptation coding during childhood and adolescence is consistent with adults, though youth with ASD exhibited stronger adaptor after-effects in response to other-race faces, relative to TD youth and adults. By extending prior work to examine the integration of race and emotional adaptive coding in ASD, we discovered that the strength of response in ASD is atypical when viewing other-race faces, which clarifies the role of racial and facial experience on emotional face adaption.

Acknowledgments

Development of the MacBrain Face Stimulus Set was overseen by Nim Tottenham and supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Early Experience and Brain Development. Please contact Nim Tottenham at [email protected] for more information concerning the stimulus set. This research was supported by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea under Grant HI18C0458.

Author contributions

The study was conceived and designed by C.M.H., K-M.C., W.H.J., and S.J.W. Stimuli was provided and created by C.M.H. and W.H.J. Data was collected by C.M.H., M.S., and C.C. Analyses were conducted by C.M.H. and S.J.W. and results were interpreted by all authors. C.M.H. and S.J.W. wrote the paper with edits from M.S. and K-M.C. All authors approved the final version of this manuscript.

Data availability statement

Data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, C.M.H., upon reasonable request.

Declaration of interest statement

None of the authors have conflicts of interest to report.