Do children perceive features of real and cartoon faces in the same way? Evidence from typical development and autism

Abstract

In the current study, typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were presented with a facial-feature discrimination task including both real and cartoon faces, displayed either upright or inverted. Results demonstrated that typically developing children were more accurate at discriminating facial features from upright than from inverted faces and that this effect was specific to real faces. By contrast, children with ASD failed to show such a specific pattern of performance for processing facial features displayed in real faces. Findings of the current study suggest that face type (real vs. cartoon) does not affect perceptual ability in children with ASD as it does in typically developing children.

Keywords:

• Perceptual discrimination
• Faces
• Children
• Autism
• Social status
• Cartoon

We are grateful to all the participants. A. Santos was supported by a grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - Ministério da Ciência Tecnologia e Ensino Superior (Portugal, SFRH/BD/18820/2004) to conduct this study.

Notes

¹The procedure used in the current study was previously validated by a pilot study conducted on 31 typically developing adults. Results of this study showed more accuracy for feature discrimination in real than in cartoon faces, F(1, 30) = 9.19, p < .05. Also, participants were more accurate at discriminating facial features in upright than in inverted photographs of real faces, t(30) = 39.35, p < .05, while for cartoon faces they were more accurate when faces were inverted, t(30) = 70.82, p < .05.