ERIC Number: EJ1460711
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Feb
Pages: 9
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0162-3257
EISSN: EISSN-1573-3432
Available Date: 2024-01-18
Emotional Face Processing in Autism Spectrum Condition: A Study of Attentional Orienting and Inhibitory Control
Rosa Sahuquillo-Leal1; Manuel Perea1,2; Alba Moreno-Giménez1,3; Ladislao Salmerón1; Julia Andreu4; Diana Pons1; Máximo Vento3; Ana García-Blanco1,3,4
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, v55 n2 p440-448 2025
A core feature of Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC) is the presence of difficulties in social interactions. This can be explained by an atypical attentional processing of social information: individuals with ASC may show problems with orienting attention to socially relevant stimuli and/or inhibiting their attentional responses to irrelevant ones. To shed light on this issue, we examined attentional orienting and inhibitory control to emotional stimuli (angry, happy, and neutral faces). An antisaccade task (with both prosaccade and antisacade blocks) was applied to a final sample of 29 children with ASC and 27 children with typical development (TD). Whereas children with ASC committed more antisaccade errors when seeing angry faces than happy or neutral ones, TD children committed more antisaccade errors when encountering happy faces than neutral faces. Furthermore, latencies in the prosaccade and antisaccade blocks were longer in children with ASC and they were associated with the severity of ASC symptoms. Thus, children with ASC showed an impaired inhibitory control when angry faces were presented. This bias to negative high-arousal information is congruent with affective information-processing theories on ASC, suggesting that threatening stimuli induce an overwhelming response in ASC. Therapeutic strategies where train the shift attention to emotional stimuli (i.e. faces) may improve ASC symptomatology and their socials functioning.
Descriptors: Nonverbal Communication, Emotional Response, Interpersonal Competence, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Social Influences, Attention, Inhibition, Self Control, Children, Psychological Patterns, Symptoms (Individual Disorders)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain; 2Nebrija University, Madrid, Spain; 3Health Research Institute La Fe, Valencia, Spain; 4University and Polytechnic Hospital La Fe, Valencia, Spain