Emotion Identification Among Typically-Developing Children and Children with Autism May be Facilitated by Environmental Contexts

Abstract Purpose This study, which was a follow-up to a previous work with young adult participants, examined whether the visual information provided by extra-facial stimuli (i.e., human bodies and contextual surroundings) affected emotion-identification accuracy among TD children and children with an autism spectrum disorder.Methods Participants were 25 children with autism spectrum disorder (Mage = 8.72) and 25 typically-developing children (Mage = 8.08), who identified emotions (fear, anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise) from photographs. Stimuli developed in a previous study were used, which included head-only, whole-body, and whole-body-in-context (e.g., a person in a store) visuals. Participants viewed the images on a computer and identified the emotions.Results Findings showed that mean emotion-recognition accuracy among both typically-developing children and children with autism was the highest on whole-body-in-context images and lowest on head-only images. Typically-developing children significantly outperformed the children with autism on head-only and whole-body images. No significant differences between groups on whole-body-in-context images were found.Conclusion These findings indicate that emotion recognition in both typically-developing children and children with autism may be facilitated by extra-facial visual information. These results may have implications for real-world skill application and future measurement and interventions, especially for those with ASD.