Discriminating between facial expressions of anger and fear by individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder

This study examined the effects of facial color on emotion recognition in individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder compared to typically developing individuals. A total of 34 participants with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and 39 typically developing individuals underwent two cognitive facial expression tasks using images altered to have a reddish color representing anger. Task 1 required participants to categorize images as either fear or anger as the emotion corresponding to the image, while Task 2 required ranking the images along a continuum from anger to fear. Results showed that individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder exhibited a facial color effect similar to typically developing participants but had lower accuracy in recognizing facial emotions. Interestingly, the color effect was less pronounced in Japanese individuals with autism spectrum disorder when viewing faces of the same race, but more pronounced for unfamiliar European faces. This suggests that individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder may develop compensatory strategies for recognizing facial expressions, and that cultural and racial factors influence emotion perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.