What Difference Does It Make? Implicit, Explicit and Complex Social Cognition in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

We tested social cognition abilities of adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and neurotypically developed peers (NTD). A multi-faceted test-battery including facial emotion categorization (FEC), classical false belief tasks (FBT), and complex social cognition (SC), yielded significantly lower accuracy rates for FEC and complex SC tasks in ASD, but no significant differences in performance concerning FBT. A significant correlation between age and performance in a FEC task and in a complex task was found only in ASD. We propose that dynamic and/or fragmented FEC tasks can elicit deficits in implicit processing of facial emotion more efficiently. The difficulties of ASD in solving complex SC tasks can be ascribed to deficits in the acquisition and application of social schemata.

Implicit vs. Explicit Emotion Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Opinion on the Role of the Cerebellum

“…One of the most primitive and implicitly learned processes crucial for social interactions is the ability to elaborate emotions conveyed by facial expressions (Schaller and Rauh, 2017). This ability and that of spontaneous emotional mimicry are part of the implicit processes that contribute to emotional contagion (McIntosh et al, 2006;Senju, 2013).…”

“…The explicit processing of emotions requires subjects to interpret several idiosyncratic and environmental stimuli and needs a detailed appraisal based on the interplay between present and past states (Schaller and Rauh, 2017).…”

“…However, the neural networks underpinning these processes are still far from being well-defined (Schaller and Rauh, 2017).…”

“…Indeed, while most of the literature on people with ASD agrees on the existence of implicit emotional processing impairment, i.e., when the task requires the elaboration of emotional facial expression (Baron-Cohen et al, 1997, controversial results emerge when the task requires the explicit elaboration of emotions. In the latest case, the heterogeneous nature of the ASD condition and camouflaging phenomena due to learned compensatory strategies might lead to the fallacious assumption that people with high-functioning ASD (hf-ASD) do not show such deficits (Senju, 2012;Schuwerk et al, 2014;Schaller and Rauh, 2017). For example, this could happen in tasks in which context information can help the person explicitly attribute emotions to others (Frith and Frith, 2012;Senju, 2012;Schaller and Rauh, 2017).…”

“…In the latest case, the heterogeneous nature of the ASD condition and camouflaging phenomena due to learned compensatory strategies might lead to the fallacious assumption that people with high-functioning ASD (hf-ASD) do not show such deficits (Senju, 2012;Schuwerk et al, 2014;Schaller and Rauh, 2017). For example, this could happen in tasks in which context information can help the person explicitly attribute emotions to others (Frith and Frith, 2012;Senju, 2012;Schaller and Rauh, 2017). However, it must be considered that when the amount of context information increases, the environment becomes more confusing, and the compensation ability may no longer guarantee the processing of emotional information (Frith and Frith, 2012).…”