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Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions

BACKGROUND: A prominent diagnostic criterion of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) relates to the abnormal or diminished use of facial expressions. Yet little is known about the mechanisms that contribute to this feature of ASD. METHODS: We showed children with and without ASD emotionally charged video...

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Autores principales: Trevisan, Dominic A., Bowering, Marleis, Birmingham, Elina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5106821/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27895883
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-016-0108-6
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author Trevisan, Dominic A.
Bowering, Marleis
Birmingham, Elina
author_facet Trevisan, Dominic A.
Bowering, Marleis
Birmingham, Elina
author_sort Trevisan, Dominic A.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: A prominent diagnostic criterion of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) relates to the abnormal or diminished use of facial expressions. Yet little is known about the mechanisms that contribute to this feature of ASD. METHODS: We showed children with and without ASD emotionally charged video clips in order to parse out individual differences in spontaneous production of facial expressions using automated facial expression analysis software. RESULTS: Using hierarchical multiple regression, we sought to determine whether alexithymia (characterized by difficulties interpreting one’s own feeling states) contributes to diminished facial expression production. Across groups, alexithymic traits—but not ASD traits, IQ, or sex—were associated with quantity of facial expression production. CONCLUSIONS: These results accord with a growing body of research suggesting that many emotion processing abnormalities observed in ASD may be explained by co-occurring alexithymia. Developmental and clinical considerations are discussed, and it is argued that alexithymia is an important but too often ignored trait associated with ASD that may have implications for subtyping individuals on the autism spectrum.
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spelling pubmed-51068212016-11-28 Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions Trevisan, Dominic A. Bowering, Marleis Birmingham, Elina Mol Autism Research BACKGROUND: A prominent diagnostic criterion of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) relates to the abnormal or diminished use of facial expressions. Yet little is known about the mechanisms that contribute to this feature of ASD. METHODS: We showed children with and without ASD emotionally charged video clips in order to parse out individual differences in spontaneous production of facial expressions using automated facial expression analysis software. RESULTS: Using hierarchical multiple regression, we sought to determine whether alexithymia (characterized by difficulties interpreting one’s own feeling states) contributes to diminished facial expression production. Across groups, alexithymic traits—but not ASD traits, IQ, or sex—were associated with quantity of facial expression production. CONCLUSIONS: These results accord with a growing body of research suggesting that many emotion processing abnormalities observed in ASD may be explained by co-occurring alexithymia. Developmental and clinical considerations are discussed, and it is argued that alexithymia is an important but too often ignored trait associated with ASD that may have implications for subtyping individuals on the autism spectrum. BioMed Central 2016-11-11 /pmc/articles/PMC5106821/ /pubmed/27895883 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-016-0108-6 Text en © The Author(s). 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Trevisan, Dominic A.
Bowering, Marleis
Birmingham, Elina
Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions
title Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions
title_full Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions
title_fullStr Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions
title_full_unstemmed Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions
title_short Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions
title_sort alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5106821/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27895883
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-016-0108-6
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