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In Autism, Facial Expression Recognition Tends to Worsen with Age

Brent

Administrator
Recognizing emotional facial expressions, an ability already impaired in many of those with autism, tends to get worse over time, according to new research from Georgetown University.

“Our findings suggest that while neurodevelopmental processes and social experience produce improvements in facial emotion recognition abilities for children without autism, autistic children experience disruptions in these processes,” said Dr. Abigail Marsh, associate professor of psychology in Georgetown College.

The researchers found consistent facial-emotion recognition deficits — particularly in expressions of anger, fear, and surprise — by analyzing data from more than 40 previous studies of facial-emotion recognition deficits in children and adults with autism.

“A major take-home message of this research is that impairments in recognizing emotional facial expressions get worse over time,” said researcher Leah Lozier, who just received her Ph.D. in neuroscience.

According to Marsh, there has been an ongoing discussion among researchers on whether or not facial expression recognition impairment even exists, and, if it does exist, whether it applies to only a few or many different types of emotions.

“It’s surprising how little consensus there has been on autism and its effects on facial expression recognition,” said Marsh, “because difficulties in nonverbal communication are a big part of an autism diagnosis.”

The researchers noted that since these difficulties become worse later in life, that adults with autism could have even more problems in social settings due to their inability to read nonverbal cues. They say their findings support the importance of developing treatments for people with autism long before they become adults.

“Autistic adults have even more trouble recognizing facial expressions than autistic children do,” said Marsh. “Given how important facial expressions are for regulating social interactions, this reinforces the importance of early interventions that may help prevent this gap from widening during development.”

It is estimated that about one in 68 children has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) according to the latest findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disorder is characterized by social and communication difficulties as well as repetitive behaviors.

“There is a snowballing effect,” Lozier said, “which underscores how important it is to develop targeted treatments and interventions for very young children in order to mitigate the developmental consequences before more severe impairments in affect recognition have set in.”

The research is published in the journal Development and Psychopathology.

Source: In Autism, Facial Expression Recognition Tends to Worsen with Age | Psych Central News
 
I kept track of nonverbal signals as a child because survival and well-being depended on it.
 
Um, the mention of such things becoming worse with age doesn't fit my experience. With age, we've had more time to be aware of and to purposely study such things.
 
The disorder is characterized by social and communication difficulties as well as repetitive behaviors.

Social difficulties like bullying those who are perceived as being in some sense strange?
Communication difficulties like the propensity to engage in moronic small-talk about the weather, or not understanding someone who is being literal in their use of language?
Repetitive behaviours like squandering all of one's cash on a pointless ritual called 'gambling' due to one's own inability to understand the concept of probability, or endlessly watching 'reality television' due to the misguided belief that it is actually entertaining?

Yes, that really IS a 'disorder'. I'm glad I don't have it.
 
My difficulty understanding the incomprehensible has not gotten worse with age at all … what's changed is that I have much more experience trying to appease the whims of the intolerant, and it has never worked to my benefit. Literally. Never. My therapist would call that 'black & white thinking', I call it detailed observation and statistical analysis. What's changed in recent years is that I've realized & accepted that catering to the whims of the intolerant will never help me -- side effect of being mistakenly sent to Al-Anon meetings, admitting that I'm powerless, accepting what I cannot change, blah blah … I learned quite a bit there, but it isn't what they wanted me to learn. I've also come to realize that the advice I've been given was to enhance the comfort of the person giving it, but never to help me at all. To the contrary, it's delayed/prevented me from being properly diagnosed, understood, or seen as a human being.

So, yes, it's given me more time to study others, and see how they project their own flaws on us … even writing them into the DSM definition of Aspergers, as Peter A. pointed out … so they have a better chance of reaching success in their own lives. No, I haven't gotten 'worse', I've become stronger. In spite of their efforts to keep me isolated & riddled with anxiety & self-doubt, I finally know who I am. I will not tolerate being judged or blamed for what they do to us, or for what they do to each other.
 
Some good reading just out, it seems that ppl w epilepsy deal with the same issue. Some have both autism and epilepsy, as does someone in my family.

Banks, S. J., Bellerose, J., Douglas, D., & Jones-Gotman, M. (2014). The Insular Cortex: Relationship to Skin Conductance Responses to Facial Expression of Emotion in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 39(1), 1-8.
 
I find that I understand nonverbal cues when I see them on TV, but not as much in real life, mainly because real NT people don't always have unanimous facial expressions for a given emotion.
 
I find that I understand nonverbal cues when I see them on TV, but not as much in real life, mainly because real NT people don't always have unanimous facial expressions for a given emotion.

I agree, I believe actors 'have the right face' for TV/film, clearer, or slightly hammed-up facial expressions/body language.
 
I've read an article about people who've had head traumas being unable to recognize their own mother.
(Vilayanur Ramachandran is the author, but it's been translated to dutch, I can't find an english version)

The "Gyrus Fusiformus" is responsible for facial recognition, from there draw an imaginary line to the amygdala, which is the emotional center of the brain.
The Gyrus fusiformus of test subjects was intact - they could recognize their mothers face. Or they stated they looked like mum.
However, the connection between the GF and the amygdala had been impaired, therefor there was no emotional response, resulting in no physical response.

They could not believe they were staring at a picture of their mothers, because the faces in front of them did not trigger an emotional response.


Funky brains!
 
Just watched 'Sherlock'.. good series, interesting portrayal of Aspergers by the Holmes brothers.
Out of curiosity, do Aspies have style-sense tho? Or grooming-sense?
Incidentally, I find I'm incapable of violence toward another; is this common among Aspies?
 

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