Emotional face recognition in autism and in cerebral visual impairments: In search for specificity

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties in the social domain, but also by hyper-and hypo-reactivity. Atypical visual behaviours and processing have often been observed. Nevertheless, several similar signs are also identified in other clinical conditions including cerebral visual impairments (CVI). In the present study, we investigated emotional face categorization in groups of children with ASD and CVI by comparing each group to typically developing individuals (TD) in two tasks. Stimuli were either non-filtered or filtered by low-and high-spatial frequencies (LSF and HSF). All participants completed the autism spectrum quotient score (AQ) and a complete neurovisual evaluation. The results show that while both clinical groups presented difficulties in the emotional face recognition tasks and atypical processing of filtered stimuli, they did not differ from one another. Additionally, autistic traits were observed in the CVI group and symmetrically, some visual disturbances were present in the ASD group as measured via the AQ score and a neurovisual evaluation, respectively. The present study suggests the relevance of comparing ASD to CVI by showing that emotional face categorization difficulties should not be solely considered as autismspecific but merit investigation for potential dysfunction of the visual processing neural network. These results are of interest in both clinical and research perspectives, indicating that systematic visual examination is warranted for individuals with ASD.Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by (1) impairments in the social and communication domain and by (2) stereotyped and repetitive behaviours as well as by sensory hypo-and hyper-responsiveness (APA, 2013).

High spatial frequency information in primes hastens happy faces categorization in autistic adults.

“…We found a main effect of Group, with ASD participants being slower than TD participants. This effect is in line with our expectations and with other studies on face processing in autism (e.g., Grossman et al, 2000;Harms et al, 2010;Kovarski et al, 2019). The exploratory analysis shows that while there is no group difference on the drift rate, meaning that evidence accumulation is similar in both groups, a difference between groups exists on the non-decision time, which is longer in autistic participants.…”

“…Our results are at odds with the Coarse-to-Fine model of visual perception (Bar et al, 2006) and with its extension to faces (Goffaux et al, 2011). Nevertheless, other studies found an HSF advantage during emotional faces categorization (Deruelle & Fagot, 2005;Jahshan et al, 2017;Kovarski et al, 2019;Shankland et al, 2021) and several hypotheses can explain this result in our task, as discussed below.…”

“…DeRamus & Kana, 2015) and by fMRI investigations exhibiting underconnectivity between the FFA and frontal and primary visual cortices (Lynn et al, 2018 (Mennella et al, 2017). In sum, emotional face processing impairments in autism might be partly due to atypical sensory processing and related to predictive specificities due to atypical spatial frequency processing (see Caplette et al, 2016;Deruelle et al, 2008;Kovarski et al, 2019) and frontal-posterior underconnectivity (Just et al, 2012;Mennella et al, 2017).…”

“…Autistic individuals with good cognitive abilities can show few impairments regarding the recognition of prototypical basic emotions, particularly happy faces (Grossman et al, 2000;Harms et al, 2010;Uljarevic & Hamilton, 2013). However, they show decreased accuracy when the facial-emotion processing is made more difficult (for a review, see, Harms et al, 2010) and atypical brain activity when emotion recognition is implicit (Kana et al, 2016;Kovarski et al, 2019). Atypical face processing and emotion recognition in autism might partly arise from specificities in perceptual processing (Deruelle et al, 2008;Mottron et al, 2006), in line with atypical sensory behaviors, which are also a hallmark of autism (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).…”

Sensory processing of children and students with autism spectrum disorder and typical development in relation to gender and age

“…U zadacima u kojima je cilj da se izdvoji jedan određeni stimulus, pored mnogobrojnih distraktora, osobe sa PSA su uspešnije od osoba tipične populacije (TP) (Robertson & Baron-Cohen, 2017). Ovakvi nalazi impliciraju mogućnost drugačijeg načina obrade vizuelnih informacija kod osoba sa PSA (Kovarski et al, 2020).…”