Young Adults with Autism May Possess Typical-Level Skills in Identifying Emotions from Person-in-Context Images

This quantitative study was designed to examine whether the visual information provided by extra-facial elements (i.e., human bodies and contextual surroundings) affects emotion-identification accuracy among young adults with an autism spectrum disorder. Participants were 15 young adults with autism spectrum disorder (M_age = 19.47) and 15 neurotypical young adults (M_age = 19.73), who identified emotions (fear, anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise) from photographs. Author-developed stimuli were used, which included head-only, whole-body-only, and whole-body-in-a-context (e.g., a person in a store) visuals. Participants viewed the images and verbally identified the emotions. Findings showed that emotion-recognition accuracy among young adults with autism increased when identifying emotions from whole-body-in-a-context images compared to their performances on the head-only or whole-body-only visuals. Young adults with autism were also less accurate than neurotypical young adults on head-only and whole-body-only visuals, but no significant differences were found between groups when identifying emotions from whole-body-in-a-context visuals. Neurotypical participants showed no significant changes across visuals. These findings indicate that young adults with autism may rely on visual information, such as bodily and contextual cues, to accurately identify emotions, which has ramifications for this group’s ability to recognize emotions in real-world situations and may inform future evaluations and interventions.