Intact but protracted facial and prosodic emotion recognition among autistic adults.

Jertberg, R. M., Begeer, S., Geurts, H. M., Chakrabarti, B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6649-7895 and Van der Burg, E. (2025) Intact but protracted facial and prosodic emotion recognition among autistic adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. ISSN 0162-3257 doi: 10.1007/s10803-025-06786-z

Abstract/Summary

Despite extensive research efforts, it is unclear how autistic and non-autistic individuals compare in their ability to recognize emotions. Differences in demographic and task factors have been proposed as explanations for divergent findings, but limitations in samples and designs have obscured insight into this possibility. This study investigated the extent of emotion recognition differences among autistic adults and the influence of these factors upon them. We recruited a large sample of autistic and non-autistic adults (N = 1,239) spanning across adulthood (18-76 years). In three online experiments, we compared their performance in recognizing emotions from basic facial expressions, complex expressions conveyed by the eyes alone, and prosodic elements of speech. Autistic individuals performed as well as non-autistic ones in terms of recognition accuracy/sensitivity across measures and emotional categories but took longer to do so. We also detected comparable influences of age, estimated intelligence quotient, and gender (as well as task demands) on both groups. While autistic adults may differ in how they process emotional stimuli, they can do so effectively when given sufficient time. Accordingly, efforts to help autistic individuals improve their ability to recognize emotions may be more fruitful if they focus on efficiency over accuracy. Additionally, reaction time data may offer greater insight than accuracy into differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals on emotion recognition tasks. The similar effects of the demographic and task factors we analyzed on both groups suggest that explanations of the discrepancies in prior literature lie elsewhere.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/122172
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s10803-025-06786-z
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Interdisciplinary centres and themes > ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders) Research Network Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Psychopathology and Affective Neuroscience
Publisher	Springer
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