The “beauty is good” for children with autism spectrum disorders too

Fonséca, D. Da; Santos, Aline Rôde; Rosset, Delphine; Deruelle, Christine

doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2010.04.012

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In line with previous evidence of intact attractiveness perception in autism [21] , [22] , we observed strong, significant correlations between the (highly consistent) attractiveness ratings made by the children with and without autism for all three stimulus categories. This result suggests successful translation of subjective feeling states to self-report judgments in these children with autism.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Attractive faces have higher reward value than unattractive faces [18] , [19] and typical adults will work harder to view them [20] . Recent reports of typical perceptions of attractiveness in children and adults with autism suggest that sensitivity to differences in reward value associated with differences in facial attractiveness may be unaffected in individuals with the condition [21] , [22] , but see [23] . Yet, the possibility that standards of beauty can be learned [24] as well as the extent to which these self-report ratings require interpretation of subjective feeling states may compromise the validity of attractiveness as an index of stimulus reward value in individuals with autism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Using Effort to Measure Reward Value of Faces in Children with Autism

2013

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According to one influential account, face processing atypicalities in autism reflect reduced reward value of faces, which results in limited attention to faces during development and a consequent failure to acquire face expertise. Surprisingly, however, there is a paucity of work directly investigating the reward value of faces for individuals with autism and the evidence for diminished face rewards in this population remains equivocal. In the current study, we measured how hard children with autism would work to view faces, using an effortful key-press sequence, and whether they were sensitive to the differential reward value of attractive and unattractive faces. Contrary to expectations, cognitively able children with autism did not differ from typically developing children of similar age and ability in their willingness to work to view faces. Moreover, the effort expended was strongly positively correlated with facial attractiveness ratings in both groups of children. There was also no evidence of atypical reward values for other, less social categories (cars and inverted faces) in the children with autism. These results speak against the possibility that face recognition difficulties in autism are explained by atypical reward value of faces.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Effort to Measure Reward Value of Faces in Children with Autism

2013

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“…One explanation for this may be that individuals with ASD show less sensitivity to social reputation concerns (Izuma et al, 2011) and are thus less inclined to engage in modulation of their responses on surveys assessing explicit bias. Therefore, at the explicit level our data converge with that of previous studies (Hirschfeld et al, 2007; da Fonseca et al, 2011) in demonstrating that in ASD there is intact knowledge of culturally transmitted stereotypes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Implicit Social Biases in People With Autism

et al. 2015

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Implicit social biases are ubiquitous and are known to influence social behavior. A core diagnostic criterion of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is abnormal social behavior. Here we investigated the extent to which individuals with ASD might show a specific attenuation of implicit social biases, using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) across Social (gender, race) and Nonsocial (flowers/insect, shoes) categories. High-functioning adults with ASD showed intact but reduced IAT effects relative to healthy controls. Importantly, we observed no selective attenuation of implicit social (vs. nonsocial) biases in our ASD population. To extend these results, we collected data from a large online sample of the general population, and explored correlations between autistic traits and IAT effects. No associations were found between autistic traits and IAT effects for any of the categories tested in our online sample. Taken together, these results suggest that implicit social biases, as measured by the IAT, are largely intact in ASD.

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“…Judgement of other people's attractiveness probably occurs subconsciously and influences us in ways we do not consciously realise [3]. Taken together, these findings suggest that some characteristics of beauty are important social cues that can induce stereotypes or promote different behavioural expectations [9]. Ultimately, they may also affect the ability to experience pleasure, which plays an important role in social interactions [10,11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discrepancies between explicit and implicit evaluation of aesthetic perception ability in individuals with autism: a potential way to improve social functioning

et al. 2020

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Background: The capacity to evaluate beauty plays a crucial role in social behaviour and social relationships. It is known that some characteristics of beauty are important social cues that can induce stereotypes or promote different behavioural expectations. Another crucial capacity for success in social interactions is empathy, i.e. the ability to understand and share others' mental and emotional states. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have an impairment of empathic ability. We showed in a previous study that empathy and aesthetic perception abilities closely related. Indeed, beauty can affect different aspects of empathic behaviour, and empathy can mediate the aesthetic perception in typically developing (TD) individuals. Thus, this study evaluates the ability of aesthetic perception in ASD individuals compared to TD individuals, using the Golden Beauty behavioural task adapted for eye-tracking in order to acquire both explicit and implicit evidences. In both groups, the relationship between empathic and aesthetic perception abilities was also evaluated. Methods: Ten ASD individuals (age ± SD:20.7 ± 4.64) and ten TD individuals (age ± SD:20.17 ± 0.98) participated in the study. Participants underwent empathy tasks and then the Golden Beauty task. To assess differences in the participants' performance, we carried out a repeated measures general linear model. Results: At the explicit level, our behavioural results show an impairment in aesthetic perception ability in ASD individuals. This inability could have relevance for their ability to experience pleasure during social interactions. However, at the implicit level (eye-tracking results), ASD individuals conserved a good ability to feel aesthetic pleasure during the Golden Beauty task, thus indicating a discrepancy between the explicit and implicit evaluation of the beauty task. Finally, beauty perception appears to be linked to empathy when neither of these capacities is compromised, as demonstrated in the TD group. In contrast, this link is missed in ASD individuals.

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The “beauty is good” for children with autism spectrum disorders too

Cited by 11 publications

References 31 publications

Using Effort to Measure Reward Value of Faces in Children with Autism

Using Effort to Measure Reward Value of Faces in Children with Autism

Implicit Social Biases in People With Autism

Discrepancies between explicit and implicit evaluation of aesthetic perception ability in individuals with autism: a potential way to improve social functioning

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