• • Examples of stimuli, showing all six emotions posed by one participant in the standard posing condition. Emotion Recognition Phase Participants Fourteen adults with ASD (1 female) and 13 control individuals (0 female) participated in this study. Boston Acoustics Vr 40 Manual here. Of these participants, 10 ASD participants and 4 NT participants had taken part in the stimulus production stage. Participants were matched according to gender ( X 2 = 0.96, P = 0.326) and IQ [ t(25) = 1.68, P = 0.105], measured by the WAIS or WASI.

The Control ( M = 31.62, SD = 9.66) and ASD ( M = 44.86, SD = 13.06) groups differed in age [ t(25) = 2.98, P = 0.006], so age was included as a covariate in all analyses. ASD symptom severity was measured in all participants using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient [AQ; Baron-Cohen et al., ], and alexithymia was measured using the TAS-20 [Bagby et al., ]. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. Again, the ADOS [Lord et al., ] was used to assess current functioning of all individuals in the ASD group. Of the 14 participants with a clinical diagnosis of ASD, 13 also met the ADOS criteria for ASD (10 for autism, 3 for autism spectrum). Although one of the individuals in the ASD group did not meet criteria for ASD according to the ADOS, this individual received a diagnosis from an independent clinician and scored above cutoff for autism on the AQ. Stimuli and procedure Stimuli were the 486 emotional facial images described above.

These comprised 270 ASD expressions (54 females) and 216 control expressions (0 female). In order to match the number of ASD and control expressions viewed by each participant, but maximize the number of poser participants viewed, each individual taking part in the behavioral study viewed 216 ASD and 216 control expressions. Expressions posed by three ASD individuals were, therefore, removed from the total stimulus set at random for each behavioral study participant.

Equal numbers of expression stimuli depicting each emotion and produced in each posing condition were viewed by all participants. 100 Pagine Di Algebra Lineare Pdf To Word. Where participants had taken part in expression production, responses to their own expressions were removed from analyses. Each trial consisted of a single expression stimulus, presented on a black background for 800 ms, followed by a six-alternative forced choice prompt to attribute emotion to the stimulus. Participants were instructed to select the emotion that best described the expression. This was replaced by a prompt to express the degree of confidence in their choice on a scale from 1 to 9. Stimulus order was fully randomized, and participants were blind to both ASD diagnosis of posers, and the posing condition in which each stimulus was produced.

The task lasted approximately 40 min and was written in Matlab (The MathWorks, Natick, MA) using the Psychophysics Toolbox [Brainard,; Pelli, ]. Results Recognition accuracy was measured using percentage of correct trials, due to the inappropriateness of methods based on signal detection theory, such as d′, with more than two response options. Analysis of covariance, controlling for age, was performed on accuracy data (proportion of correct responses) with Poser Group (ASD, NT), Posing Condition (Standard, Communicate, Mirror) and Emotion (Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Fear, Disgust, Anger) entered as within-participants variables, and Recognizer Group (ASD, NT) entered as a between-participants variable. Press Gothic Font Rare.

For all post hoc comparisons, Bonferroni-corrected statistics are reported. See Table for all means and standard deviations. • • Expressions produced by NT posers were better recognized than those produced by ASD posers, regardless of ASD diagnosis of recognizer.