“Emodiversity” in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background:   There is mounting evidence that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have emotional disturbances, difficulties identifying and labeling own emotions (alexithymia), and emotion dysregulation. However, the precise nature of emotional disturbances in ASD is still not very well understood. 

Objectives:   The goal of the present study is to examine “emodiversity” for the first time in ASD. This is an emotional index that measures richness and complexity of an individual’s emotional experiences, taking into account the degree to which an individual can characterize an emotional experience with precision (emotional granularity). Our goals were to: (1) document differences between individuals with ASD and typically developing (TD) participants, (2) relate emodiversity in positive and negative emotions to emotion understanding of positive and negative emotions, alexithymia, and ASD symptom severity; and (3) assess the extent to which positive and negative emodiversity, alexithymia, and ASD symptom severity contributed to problematic behavior. 

Methods:   Forty-one high functioning individuals with ASD and 35 gender and age group-matched typically developing (TD) controls (age range 8-20 years) as well as their parents were interviewed to assess positive and negative emodiversity and emotion understanding. In addition, parents filled out questionnaires to assess symptom severity (Social Responsiveness Scale), alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Questionnaire) and problematic behavior (Child Behavior Checklist). All analyses were controlled for participant’s age, sex, and IQ.

Results:   Compared to TD participants, individuals with ASD had lower positive and higher negative emodiversity, lower emotion understanding of positive and negative emotions, increased levels of alexithymia, symptom severity, and problematic behaviors. Positive emodiversity was positively associated with understanding of positive emotions and negatively with symptom severity. Negative emodiversity was negatively associated with the understanding of positive emotions and positively with symptom severity. Emodiversity (positive and negative) was not associated with alexithymia, indicating that both capture different emotional components. Interestingly, besides ASD symptom severity, parent reported emodiversity significantly predicted problematic behaviors in multiple regression analyses. Alexithymia did not further contribute to the explanation of problematic behavior in the present study.

Conclusions:  

Emodiversity seems to be an important new concept to study in ASD and might have clinical relevance. However, additional investigations are needed to better understand emodiversity in ASD and how it is related to other emotional components in larger samples that include lower functioning individuals.