The Impact of Facemask on Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults’ Face Processing Abilities

Atypical emotion recognition is argued to be characteristic of autism spectrum conditions (ASC), underpinned in part by atypical eye gaze, with less eye contact and more gaze direction towards the mouth. Given the widespread adoption of facemasks due to the Covid-19 pandemic, exploring the effect of facemasks on face processing in autism, as they occlude the mouth region, is of interest. This study investigated the impact of facemasks on emotion and identity recognition, with a non-autistic (N = 38) and autistic sample (N = 25). Participants also completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and the abridged Autism Quotient, to investigate the roles of alexithymia and autistic traits in any impacts of facemasks on face processing abilities. Masks were detrimental to performance for both autistic and non-autistic groups, and masks affected participants’ performance on the emotion recognition task more than the identity recognition task. Autistic participants’ performance was more negatively affected by the presence of masks, for both identity and emotion recognition. The impact of facemasks was not predicted by alexithymia or autistic traits, after gender, ethnicity and age were taken into account. Overall, the results suggest that masks negatively affect face processing for both non-autistic and autistic groups, particularly emotion recognition, however the impact of masks is amplified for autistic people. These results supplement reports of autistic people that masks interfere with social interactions.