The general objetive of this paper is to better understand emotional expression in people with autism. In the first place, we will focus on the identification of patterns in emotional communication in order to demonstrate that people with autism show emotional communicative intentions but not following the normalized patterns (Alonso, Fernández and Suberviola, 2007). In the second place, we want to correlate patters identified by professionals and families in order to determine if there is a common ground among them. Plutchik (2001) identifies four pairs of Basic emotions -sadness/happiness, acceptance/disgust, fear/anger and anticipation/surprise - plus secondary emotions, resulting from the combinations of the above in different degrees of intensity.In order to clarify and make known these atypical emotional reactions, we have devised a measurement instrument which will allow us to gather information and work out an answer inventory from people with TEA.The instrument consists of three different parts:a) Personal identification. Data gathering on socio economic and cultural status of the family, schooling, and diagnosis of the person with TEA,b) physiological needs that can provoke emotions (for instance, hunger or thirst) andc) emotional states (following Plutchik taxonomy), distinguishing verbal and non verbal behaviour and the accompanying facial expressions that are used.The reliability of the instrument has been assessed by two extensive interjudge tests conducted by a wide number of national and international experts from different professional fields related to TEA: direct attention, advice and support, assessment and diagnosis, and study and research.

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Background/Objective:Despite the well established genetic basis of schizophrenia, the relationship between genes and the disorder itself is still elusive. Individual endophenotypes, which reduce the complexity of genetic analyses, allow statistical approaches with quantitative trait methodologies. P200 abnormalities of event-related potentials have been reported in schizophrenia with conflicting results. The present study aims to characterize the P200 in first-episode patients and to compare it with that of first-degree relatives and controls.Methods:ERPs were recorded at 19 sites with an auditory oddball for 21 first-episode patients with schizophrenia (mean age=25.14; SD=6.20), 41 of their first degree relatives (mean age=47.65; SD=15.53) and 19 healthy controls (mean age=26.32; SD=7.16). Potentials were averaged for frequent stimuli and P200 amplitude and latency measures were obtained.Results:Analysis of midline electrodes revealed significant group effects for P200 peak amplitudes (F(2, 78)=3.315, p=.042), but not for peak latencies. Post-hoc analyses revealed that patients with schizophrenia present significantly lower P200 amplitudes (M=2.466; SD=1.564) than controls (M=5.037; SD=2.500) at Pz (T(38)=3.851, p=.003). No other significant differences were found.Conclusion:The results obtained do not straight-forwardly support the P200 peak amplitude nor peak latency as an endophenotype of schizophrenia. However, the trends of our results may suggest that the P200 amplitudes of relatives may present intermediate values between healthy controls (with higher amplitudes) and patients (with lower amplitudes). Further statistical analyses will be required in order to disentangle the effects of possible confounding variables.