Differences Between Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults in the Recognition of Anger from Facial Motion Remain after Controlling for Alexithymia

Abstract
To date, studies have not established whether autistic and non-autistic individuals differ in emotion recognition from facial motion cues when matched in terms of alexithymia. Here, autistic and non-autistic adults (N = 60) matched on age, gender, non-verbal reasoning ability and alexithymia, completed an emotion recognition task, which employed dynamic point light displays of emotional facial expressions manipulated in terms of speed and spatial exaggeration. Autistic participants exhibited significantly lower accuracy for angry, but not happy or sad, facial motion with unmanipulated speed and spatial exaggeration. Autistic, and not alexithymic, traits were predictive of accuracy for angry facial motion with unmanipulated speed and spatial exaggeration. Alexithymic traits, in contrast, were predictive of the magnitude of both correct and incorrect emotion ratings.

Conclusions
The current study tested whether autistic, relative to alexithymia-matched controls, have greater difficulty recognising emotions from facial motion cues. In conflict with our hypotheses, we observed that autistic, relative to control, adults showed reduced recognition of angry facial motion at the normal (100%) spatial and speed level. Interestingly, whilst for controls recognition accuracy improved across all levels of the kinematic manipulation for angry videos, autistic participants only benefitted from the 100% to 150% speed increase. Alexithymic traits were associated with elevated correct and elevated incorrect emotion ratings, but not accuracy. Our results draw attention to anger specific differences in emotion recognition between autistic and non-autistic individuals. Future research should aim to elucidate why autistic individuals exhibit differences that are specific to angry expressions.

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