The conceptualisation, experience, and recognition of emotion in autism: Differences in the psychological mechanisms involved in autistic and non-autistic emotion recognition

Existing literature suggests that differences between autistic and non-autistic people in emotion recognition might be related to differences in how these groups experience emotions themselves. Specifically, autistic individuals may show differences in the consistency of emotional experiences, the ability to distinguish between emotions, and/or their semantic understanding of emotions. In this study, we empirically tested this claim by (1) investigating whether autistic and non-autistic adults differed in the consistency and/or differentiation of their emotional experiences, and their understanding and differentiation of emotion concepts, after controlling for alexithymia, and (2) assessing the contribution of these emotional abilities to emotion recognition. To this end, a total of 58 autistic and 59 non-autistic individuals, matched on age, sex, and non-verbal reasoning ability, completed a series of validated questionnaires and computer-based emotion tasks. We found no group differences in emotional consistency, emotion differentiation, and understanding or differentiation of emotion concepts after controlling for alexithymia. For non-autistic people, the ability to differentiate one’s own emotions contributed to enhanced emotion recognition. Whilst having more differentiated emotion concepts (indirectly) contributed to elevated emotion recognition for non-autistic people, having a more precise understanding of emotion concepts contributed for autistic people. Our findings demonstrate that there are differences in the psychological mechanisms involved in autistic and non-autistic emotion recognition. The results of the current study pave the way for future systems to help both autistic and non-autistic people to more accurately recognize emotional facial expressions.