Emotion recognition from the eye region in children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder in Arab and Scandinavian countries

BACKGROUND: Difficulties in facial emotion recognition (ER) skills are linked to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in studies performed in Western and Eastern Asian countries. However, there is a paucity of research examining ER skills in Arab countries, where face-covering veils are more common than in Western countries. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to examine basic ER and ER error patterns in Egyptian and Finnish children with and without ASD. METHOD: We employed the eye-submodule of the Frankfurt Test and Training of Facial Affect Recognition (FEFA) and the Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ). RESULTS: Arab children with ASD (n = 34, M age = 8.6 years, FSIQ = 96.7) recognized correctly fewer emotions than did Scandinavian children with ASD (n = 32, M age = 12.5 years, FSIQ = 102.8) and Arab typically developing (TD) children (n = 34, M age = 10.3 years, FSIQ = 123.4) in general and specifically on surprise, disgust and neutral scales as well as on a blended emotion scale. Scandinavian children with ASD demonstrated a lower ability to recognize emotions in general and specifically happiness than did Scandinavian TD children. There were no differences between Arab and Scandinavian (n = 28, M age = 13.9 years) TD children in ER accuracy. We found country specific differences in ER error patterns in happiness, sadness and anger: Arab children interpreted these emotions more often as another emotion (happiness = sadness, sadness = anger, anger = sadness and surprise), whereas Scandinavian children interpreted happiness and sadness as neutral expression and anger as disgust. Arab children with ASD labeled sadness and anger in their ER error patterns more negatively than did Arab TD children, but there were no differences between Scandinavian children with ASD and TD in ER error patterns. CONCLUSIONS: The differences between the Arab and Scandinavian children may reflect cultural differences in ER and ER error patterns.