Differences in Processing Emotional Facial Stimuli in Young Adults with High Versus Low Autism Quotient Scores

Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by difficulty with social responses which may contribute to trouble forming social relationships. These challenges may be due to differences in interpreting facial emotions. Social anxiety, often comorbid with ASD, may also contribute to social difficulties (Tyson & Cruess, 2011). College students who self-report high levels of autistic-like behaviors tend to have higher social anxiety levels (Min Liew, et al. 2014). 

Objectives: The goal of this study was to understand the relationship between self-reported autistic characteristics, self-reported social anxiety and the ability to attend to and correctly identify a target emotional stimulus amongst other emotional stimuli. 

Methods: Participants were 70 undergraduate students (19 males; M_age = 19.5; 65.7% White) who completed the Autism Quotient (AQ; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) and the Abbreviated Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI-23; Roberson-Nay et al., 2007). Participants also completed a flanker task designed to assess the ability to control attention to a target stimulus amongst competing stimuli. The flanker task assessed attention to a target face expressing an emotion (i.e., happy, surprise, anger, fear) when surrounded by four distracter emotional faces. Participants’ task was to identify the target face emotion. Reaction times for accurate trials were compared between those students with AQ scores in the top third (AQ scores > 24.44) with those in the bottom third (AQ scores < 15.56) as well as for the five AQ subscales. 

Results: A mixed-model ANOVA yielded a significant target x flanker x Social Skill AQ subscale group interaction; F(9, 396) = 1.90, p < .05 (Figure 1). There was also a significant target x flanker x Communication AQ subscale group interaction; F(9, 378) = 1.93, p < .05 (Figure 2). When the flanker displayed an angry face, those in the low Social Skill group showed a significant main effect of target emotion (F(3, 81) = 4.94, p = .003) but those in the high Social Skill group had no significant effect of target emotion (F(3, 66) = .29, p = .83). Similarly, in trials that contained angry flankers, those with low Communication scores displayed a significant effect of target (F(3, 75) = 3.49, p = .02). However, those with high Communication scores did not show this effect (F(3, 66) = 1.65, p = .19). SPAI scores were significantly higher for those in the high AQ groups for both subscales compared with the low AQ groups (Social Skills t(47) = 5.73, p < .05; Communication t(47) = 5.90, p < .05). When SPAI scores were included as a covariate, the target x flanker x AQ interaction remained significant for Social Skill (F(9, 378) = 1.95, p < .05) but not for Communication. 

Conclusions: Adults undiagnosed with ASD who report higher levels of social characteristics associated with ASD do not differentially attend to target emotions whereas those who report lower levels of these characteristics do exhibit differences when the target face is surrounded by angry emotional faces. These effects may be due to overlapping traits associated with social anxiety and ASD.