Are emotion recognition skills related to autism symptom severity in children with autism?

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to assess the relationship between degree of autism symptom severity (as measured by the ADOS and the SRS) and emotion recognition ability in young children with autism.

Methods: The sample consisted of 55 children with Autistic Disorder aged 4–7 years with a range of cognitive ability. Participants completed emotion identification and matching tasks for facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger and fear, as well as situation-based and desire-based emotion tasks.

Results: Regression analyses controlled for the influence of age and IQ on results, demonstrating that higher autism severity scores were associated with reduced accuracy in the recognition of facial expressions of fear and anger, as well as decreased accuracy in the identification of desire-based but not situation-based emotions.

Discussion: Results suggest that autism symptomatology may be related to less accurate recognition of expressions of anger and fear.

Keywords:

• autism severity
• emotion recognition
• young children

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Financial Markets Foundation for Children, Australia.