Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study aims to investigate whether autistic individuals (e.g., ASD) have consistent or inconsistent age-related changes for recognizing different facial emotions compared to typical ones. Particularly, we also examined whether facial recognition abilities vary with developmental trends in both groups. Pictures of six primary facial types (happy, sad, angry, surprised, and confused faces) of real person were adopted in the study for 91 ASD patients and 177 normal participants recruited from kindergartens, elementary schools, and colleges. The results showed that, although, in general, normal participants had greater recognition performance as expected, both groups of participants had three distinct categories of developmental patterns: (1) angry and fear, (2) happy and surprised, and the last, (3) sad and confused. These findings revealed significant theoretical and practical values for further research and treatment.