Journal Article

Alterations in Rapid Social Evaluations in Individuals with High Autism Traits

Caterer, Evangeline, Laycock, Robin, Chouinard, Philippe A, Becker, Casey

2021

Overview

Typically developing adults with low and high Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores made rapid social evaluations of neutral faces when these were primed by briefly presented emotional faces. High AQ participants rated neutral faces as more threatening than low AQ participants, regardless of the prime condition. Both groups rated target neutral faces as more threatening with fearful compared with neutral primes, while neither group demonstrated an effect of happy primes on the ratings of neutral target faces. These results demonstrate subtle anomalies in rapid visual processing of emotional faces across the broader autism spectrum. They suggest that higher autism traits may be associated with a generalized threat bias in rapid social evaluations.

• Publisher: Springer US,Springer,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Adults / Affective Behavior / Autism / Autism Spectrum Disorders / Behavior Patterns / Behavioral Science and Psychology / Child and School Psychology / Chinese / Cognitive Processes / College Science / Comparative Analysis / Correlation / Cues / Demographic aspects / Development and progression / Diagnosis / Emotion recognition / Emotional Response / Emotions / Evaluation / Face / Facial expressions / Fear / Human Body / Information processing / Interpersonal Competence / Interpersonal relations / Meta Analysis / Neurosciences / Original Paper / Pediatrics / Pervasive Developmental Disorders / Psychological Patterns / Psychology / Public Health / Scores / Sentences / Social Bias / Social Characteristics / Social Cognition / Symptoms (Individual Disorders) / Task Analysis / Visual Perception / Visual processing / Visual Stimuli