Abstract
There is currently limited research and a lack of consensus on emotional processing impairments among adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present pilot study sought to characterize the extent to which adults with ASD are impaired in processing emotions in both words and pictures. Ten adults with ASD rated word and picture stimuli on emotional valence and arousal. Their ratings were compared to normative data for both stimuli sets using item-level correlations. Adults with ASD rank-ordered stimuli similarly to typically developing individuals, demonstrating relatively typical understanding of emotional words and pictures. However, they used a narrower range of the scales which suggests more subtle impairments affecting emotion-processing. Future directions arising from the findings of this pilot study are discussed.
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Notes
One participant did not undergo ADOS-2 testing due to resource constraints, but provided documentation of diagnosis as verification.
For the purposes of the present study, only valence and arousal ratings are reported.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Foreword Coffee Pte. Ltd., Singapore, and all participants for their involvement in this research study. We also thank Chew Kai Mun (Daniel) for all his efforts and support during recruitment and data collection. This study was supported by the National University of Singapore Heads and Deanery Research Support Scheme Grant R-581-000-236-101 awarded to M.Y., and by a Ministry of Education and Yale-NUS College internal Grant (IG17-LR007) to C.A.
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The study was conceptualized and designed by TW, MY and ET. Material preparation, data collection and analyses were conducted by TW, supervised by MY and ET. Additionally, TO supported diagnostic testing of participants for autism spectrum disorder. The first draft of the manuscript was written by TW and revised by ET and MY, with comments from TO and CA. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Wong, T.Y.Q., Yap, M.J., Obana, T. et al. Brief Report: Emotional Picture and Language Processing in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 52, 435–446 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04920-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04920-1