The impact of face masks on autistic and non-autistic adults’ face processing abilities

Atypical emotion recognition is argued to be characteristic of autism spectrum conditions (ASC), underpinned in part by atypical eye gaze, with less eye contact and more gaze direction towards the mouth. Given the widespread adoption of face masks due to the Covid-19 pandemic, exploring the effect of face masks on face processing in autism, as they occlude the mouth region, is of interest. This study investigated the impact of face masks on emotion and identity recognition, with a non-autistic ( N = 50) and autistic ( N = 27) sample. Participants also completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and the abridged Autism Quotient, to investigate the roles of alexithymia and autistic traits in any impacts of face masks on face processing abilities. Masks were detrimental to performance for both autistic and non-autistic groups, and masks affected participants’ performance on the emotion recognition task more than the identity recognition task. Autistic participants’ performance was more negatively affected by the presence of masks, affecting emotion recognition precision in particular. The impact of face masks was not predicted by alexithymia or autistic traits, after gender and age were taken into account. Overall, the results suggest that masks negatively affect face processing for both non-autistic and autistic groups, particularly emotion recognition, however the impact of masks is amplified for autistic people. These results supplement autistic people’s reports that masks interfere with social interactions. • Previous research suggests autistic people show atypical eye gaze patterns to others’ eyes and mouths. • Facemasks occlude the mouth region, and could disproportionately affect autistic people’s face processing abilities. • We examined face processing abilities when stimuli did and did not have masks, with autistic and non-autistic adults. • Both groups were negatively impacted by masks, and emotion recognition was more affected than identity recognition. • Autistic participants were more negatively affected by masks than non-autistic people, especially with regards to emotion recognition precision. Alexithymia and autistic traits did not predict the impact of masks.