Facial emotion recognition in adults with autism under masked and unmasked conditions

Abstract

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing facial masks had become part of the social distancing measures globally. Previous studies had shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) recognized face emotion poorer than healthy controls (HC), and that mask use impaired face emotion recognition in the general population. Nonetheless, little was known about whether individuals with ASD would be more affected by mask use during emotion recognition. 90 university students or graduates (ASD, n = 45; HC, n = 45), aged 17 - 42 years participated in this current study. We aimed to compare the effect of mask use on face emotion recognition performance and eye movement behaviour between these two groups. Results showed that individuals with ASD were not more affected by mask use than healthy controls. For both groups, individuals had more performance impairment when recognizing masked faces. In general, ASD recognized emotions less accurately and with longer reaction time than healthy controls, no matter in masked or unmasked conditions. In terms of eye movement strategy, there were no significant differences between the two groups. Also, there was no association between autistic traits and eye movement strategy. Therefore, impairment in emotion recognition in ASD might be explained by other factors. In our study, we found that individuals with ASD demonstrated a more random and less consistent eye movement pattern and transition between fixation points. Correlation analysis also revealed that more severe autistic traits could predict a more random eye movement pattern and transition. We suggested that autistic traits do not affect where we look, but how consistent we look during emotion recognition tasks. A less consistent eye movement pattern might explain emotion recognition deficits of individuals with ASD.