The role of emotional factors in face processing abilities in autism spectrum conditions

Facial emotion recognition is considered atypical in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC), but emotion recognition abilities vary widely in autistic people, and there are inconsistent findings on the causes of these differences. Research indicates alexithymia may result in facial emotion recognition differences in ASC. Alternatively, mood disorders have been linked to atypical facial emotional expression recognition abilities in neurotypical adults. Investigating both the effects of alexithymia and mood disorders (depression and anxiety) is necessary to establish which of these factors may cause atypical facial emotion recognition in ASC. This study aimed to examine whether alexithymia or mood disorder symptomology is a predictor of atypical facial emotion recognition in individuals with ASC. Ninety-eight non-autistic adults and 80 autistic adults were recruited. Participants completed an online facial processing task to examine emotion and identity recognition abilities, the AQ-28, the TAS-20, and the HADS to measure autism severity, alexithymia symptoms, and depression and anxiety symptoms. Regression-based analyses found that autistic traits and autistic group membership did not predict facial emotion processing abilities after accounting for demographic variables, alexithymia and mood disorders: however, neither alexithymia nor mood disorder symptoms predicted variance in face processing abilities either. Our results concur with previous meta-analyses of facial emotion processing in autism spectrum disorder which report that studies do not always report deficits in face processing in autism: our findings are also not supportive of the model that argues that alexithymia explains facial emotion processing difficulties in autism.