Question 1

a. What are the challenges our children with ASD face with respect to emotion understanding?

There are a variety of challenges children with ASD face in understanding and projecting emotion. Overall in the readings, it is understood that people with an ASD have difficulty processing and understanding emotion. Many authors/researchers have speculated and studied why children with autism have differences in understanding/displaying emotion compared to other people.  This posting will discuss some of these thoughts.

Children with ASD may have difficulty with the cognitive processing and understanding of emotions In other words, the way the brain processes the understanding of emotion. (Hill, E., Berthoz, S., & Frith, U,2004)

One theory of children with autism’s understanding of emotion is entitled “mind-blindness.” Baron Cohen developed the  mindblindness theory; he hypothesized that people with ASD have a delay in developing the understanding of what others are feeling. People with ASD have difficulty putting themselves in someone else’s place and understanding how that other person is feeling.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-blindness)

Another theory is that people with autism have difficulty controlling and understanding emotion because they have difficulties with socialization, communication, and flexibility; the combination of these deficits leads to difficulty understanding other’s emotions.

(http://www.emotionalprocessing.org.uk)

Another thought is that people with an ASD have difficulty interpreting emotion and understanding emotion including emotion noted by the intonation of speech; this will be further discussed on the next posting(Hubbard &Trauner, 2007).

    

b. Processing facial features?

People with autism are understood to have difficulty processing facial features as well as reading emotion on facial expressions.  One of the first indicators of abnormal brain development is decreased facial recognition by age one. By 12 months a typically developing child should use their mothers’ expression to guide their reactions; this is not always found in children with ASD. (Dawson, Webb, Carver, Panagiotides, McPartland , 2004)

Children with ASD may not process the face holistically and have been known to focus on the person’s mouth as opposed to eyes.  This results in difficulty with facial recognition.  If the child is cued to focus on certain parts of the face, he has a better chance of facial recognition.  Overall, Children with ASD’s brains show abnormal facial processing on fMRI and ERP which demonstrated different use of the brain to process faces as compared to typical children (Gauthier, Klaiman, Schultz, 2009.)

Different brain activity has been found in children with ASD opposed to typically developing children when looking at faces with different emotion. (Dawson et al, 2004)  This impairment in facial processing may be secondary to impairment in emotion, socialization or with joint attention. (Dawson et al, 2004)

c How are they inter-related?

It is very hard to distinguish between if children with ASD have difficulty with emotional processing, facial processing or a combination.  You must look at someone’s face, facial features, and expression to aid in understanding what emotion they are displaying or feeling.  “Given that emotion is often displayed in the face, separating a deficit in facial processing from a deficit in understanding and recognizing facial expression is difficult (343, dawson et al, 2004). However, there are also studies that oppose the idea that facial recognition and emotional recognition are separate (Dawson, 2004).

d How does it impact daily function? (ie: verbal communication, non-verbal communication, eye contact/social referencing/social skills, and overall participation in the community..) 

We use understanding of emotion and facial expression/recognition often.  In regards to verbal communication, not understanding intonation and the emotion of expression can affect how you react to a situation (http://www.emotionalprocessing.org.uk/Various%20articles/Autism.htm#Autism_and_Emotional_Processing).  For example if we see someone start to get teary when we are talking about someone who passed away, we may switch the subject.  Someone with an ASD may not recognize the sadness and switch the subject.

     Having impaired non verbal communication makes it difficult to make friends and interact in the community. For example, when a waitress asks for your order, sometimes they will just look at you and smile indicating you should order, but if you do not

understand what this means, then you will miss ordering. 

Social skills is greatly affected by difficulty understanding emotion.  The ability to make friends could be very difficult.  Many people rely on friends to cheer them up or understand what they are going through and that is difficult to do with lack of emotional understanding. You could also easily misunderstand many things that friends say.

     Working involves socialization.  Knowing when is a good time to speak with a supervisor about a day off or getting a raise or asking them a question about work, is integral in getting a good response.  For example, you are not going to ask your supervisor for a raise right after they finish yelling at you.

e. How could it impact behaviors across the lifespan and challenge things like getting and sustaining a job?

Reading people is important throughout life.  Being able to interview is vital in getting a job and having trouble responding to questions, such as, what would you do if you disliked a co-worker, may result in difficulty finding a job.  Being able to understand if a coworker is upset with you or happy for you can make for difficulty working together on projects which is very important with most jobs.

References

Dawson, G., Webb, S., Carver, L., Panagitotides, H., McPartland, J. (2004). Young children with autism show atypical brain responses to fearful versus neutral facial expressions of emotion. Developmental Science. 7:3 340-359.

Gauthier, I., Klaiman, C., Schultz, R. (2009)Face composite effects reveal abnormal face processing in Autism spectrum disorders. Vision Research. 49: 470-478.

Hill, E., Berthoz, S., & Frith, U. (2004). Brief report: Cognitive processing of own emotions in individuals with autistic spectrum disorder and in their relatives. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34: 2.

Hubbard, K., Trauner, D. (2007). Intonation and Emotion in Autistic Spectrum Disorders. J Pyscholinguist Res. 36: 159-173.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-blindness

http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/01/emotional-processing-in-autism-spectrum.php

http://www.emotionalprocessing.org.uk/Various%20articles/Autism.htm#Autism_and_Emotional_Processing_