Abstract
The recognition of facial immaturity and emotional expression by children with autism, language disorders, mental retardation, and non-disabled controls was studied in two experiments. Children identified immaturity and expression in upright and inverted faces. The autism group identified fewer immature faces and expressions than control (Exp. 1 & 2), language disordered (Exp. 1), and mental retardation (Exp. 2) groups. Facial inversion interfered with all groups’ recognition of facial immaturity and with control and language disordered groups’ recognition of expression. Error analyses (Exp. 1 & 2) showed similarities between autism and other groups’ perception of immaturity but differences in perception of expressions. Reasons for similarities and differences between children with and without autism when perceiving facial immaturity and expression are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adolphs, R., Baron-Cohen, S., & Tranel, D. (2002). Impaired recognition of social emotions following amygdala damagae. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 1264–1274.
Alley, T. R. (1988). The effects of Growth and aging on facial aesthetics. In T. R. Alley (Ed.), Social and applied aspects of perceiving faces (pp. 51–62). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Alley, T. R., & Hall, D. L. (1989). Adults’ responses to the physical appearance of children with growth disorders. Child Study Journal, 19, 117–131.
American Psychiatric Association (1994). The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, IV. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
Baron-Cohen, S., Campbell, R., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Grant, J., & Walker, J. (1995). Are children with autism blind to the mentalistic significance of the eyes? British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13, 379–398.
Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., & Jolliffe, T. (1997). Is there a “language of the eyes?” Evidence from normal adults and adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome. Visual Cognition, 4, 311–331.
Bartlett, J. C., & Searcy, J. (1993). Inversion and configuration of faces. Cognitive Psychology, 25, 281–316.
Berry, D. S., & McArthur, L. Z. (1988). The impact of age-related craniofacial changes on social perception. In T. R. Alley (Ed.), Social and applied aspects of perceiving faces (pp. 67–87). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Borod, J. C., Caron, H. S., & Koff, E. (1981). Asymmetry of facial expressions related to handedness, footedness, and eyedness: A quantitative study. Cortex, 17, 381–390.
Bormann-Kischkel, C., Vilsmeier, M., & Baude, B. (1995). The development of emotional concepts in autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36, 1243–1259.
Boucher, J., & Lewis, V. (1992). Unfamiliar face recognition in relatively able autistic children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 33, 843–859.
Boucher, J., & Lewis, V., & Collis, G. (1998). Familiar face and voice matching and recognition in children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 39, 171–181.
Breen, N., Caine, D., & Colehart, M. (2000). Models of face recognition and delusional misidentification: A critical review. Cognitive Neuroscience Special Issue: The cognitive neuroscience of face processing, 17, 55–71.
Calder, A. J., & Jansen, J. (2005). Configural coding of facial expressions: The impact of inversion and photographic negative. Visual Cognition, 12, 495–518.
Calder, A. J., & Young, A. W. (2005). Understanding the recognition of face identity and facial expression. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 641–651.
Camras, L. A., Dunn, J., Izard, C. E., Lazarus, R., Panksepp, J., Rothbart, M. K., Davidson, R. J., & Ekman, P. (1994). What develops in emotional development? In P. Ekman, & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotions: Fundamental questions (pp. 345–375). New York: Oxford University Press.
Carey, S., & Diamond, R. (1994). Are faces perceived as configurations more by adults than by children. In V. Bruce, G. W. Humphreys (Eds.), Object and Face Recognition: Special issue of Visual Cognition, 1, 253–274.
Celani, G., Battacchi, M. W., & Arcidiacono, L. (1999). The understanding of the emotional meaning of facial expressions in people with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29, 57–60.
Chang, P. P. W., Levine, S. C., & Benson, P. J. (2002). Children’s recognition of charactures. Developmental Psychology, 38, 1038–1057.
Critchley, H. D., Daly, E. M., Bullmore, E. T., Williams, S. C. R., Van Amelsvoort, T., Robertson, D. M., Rowe, A., Phillips, M., McAlonan, G., Howlin, P., & Murphy, D. G. M. (2000). The functional neuroanatomy of social behavior: Changes in cerebral blood flow when people with autism process facial expressions. Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 123, 2203–2212.
Cunningham, J., & Odom, R. (1986). Differential salience of facial features in children’s perception of affective expression. Child Development, 57, 136–142.
de Gelder, B., Vroomen, J., & Van der Heide, L. (1991). Face recognition and lip-reading in autism. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology. Special Issue: Face recognition, 3, 69–86.
Ekman, P. (1992). Telling lies: Clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage. New York: Norton.
Feldman, R. S., McGee, G. G., Mann, L., & Strain, P. (1993). Nonverbal affect decoding ability in children with autism and typical preschoolers. Journal of Early Intervention, 17, 341–350.
Frith, U., & Happé, F. (1994). Autism: Beyond ‘theory of mind.’ Cognition, 50, 115–132.
George, P. A., Hole, G. J., & Scaife, M. (2000). Factors influencing young children’s ability to discriminate unfamiliar faces by age. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 24, 480–491.
Gepner, B., de Gelder, B., & de Schonen, S. (1996). Face processing in autistics: Evidence for a generalized deficit? Child Neuropsychology, 2, 123–139.
Gross, A. L., & Ballif, B. (1991). Children’s understanding of emotions from facial expressions and situations: A review. Developmental Review, 11, 368–398.
Gross, T. F. (1997). Children’s perception of faces of varied immaturity. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 66, 42–63.
Gross, T. F. (2002). Perception of human and nonhuman facial age by developmentally disabled children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 32, 169–179.
Gross, T. F. (2004a). Children’s perceptions of and beliefs about facial maturity. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 165, 81–97.
Gross, T. F. (2004b). The perception of four basic emotions in human and nonhuman faces by autistic and other developmentally disabled children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. 32, 469–480..
Gross, T. F. (2005). Global–local precedence in the perception of facial age and emotional expression by children with autism and other developmental disabilities. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 35, 773–785.
Geurts, H. M., Verté, S., Oosterlaan, J., Roeyers, H., & Sergeant, J. (2004). How specific are executive functioning deficits in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 2004.
Hauck, M., Fein, D., Maltby, N., Waterhouse, L., & Feinstein, C. (1998). Memory for faces in children with autism. Child Neuropsychology, 4, 187–198.
Haxby, J. V., Hoffman, E. A., & Gobbini, M. I. (2000). The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4, 223–233.
Hobson, R. P. (1983). The autistic child’s recognition of age-related features of people, animals, and things. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1, 343–352.
Hobson, R. P., Ouston, J., & Lee, A. (1988). What’s in a face—the case of autism. British Journal of Psychology 79, 441–453.
Ishi, H. (2004). Analyses of facial attractiveness on feminised and juvenilised faces. Perception, 33, 135–145.
Jarrold, C., Butler, W., Cottington, E. M., & Jiminez, F. (2000). Linking theory of mind and central coherence bias in autism and in the general population. Developmental Psychology, 36, 126–138.
Johnston, R. A., & Ellis, H. D. (1995). Age effects in the processing of typical and distinctive faces. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology, 48A, 447–465.
Jones, G., & Smith, P. K. (1984). The eyes have it: Young children’s discrimination of age in masked and unmasked facial photographs. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38, 328–337.
Joseph, R. M., & Tanaka, J. (2003). Holistic and part-based face recognition in children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 529–542.
Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F., & Cohen, D. (2002). Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Archives of General Psychology, 59, 809–816.
Klin, A., Sparrow, S. S., de Bildt, A., Cicchetti, D. V., Cohen, D. J., & Volkmar, F. R. (1999). A normed study of face recognition in autism and related disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29, 499–508.
Lahaie, A., Mottron, L., Arguin, M., Berthlaume, C., Jemel, B., & Saumier, D. (2006). Face perception in high-functioning autistic adults: Evidence for superior processing of face parts, not for a configural face-processing deficit. Neuropsychology, 20, 30–41.
Landry, R., & Bryson, S. E. (2004). Impaired disengagement of attention in young children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 1115–1122.
Langdell, T. (1978). Recognition of faces: An approach to the study of autism. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 19, 255–268.
López, B., Donnely, N., Hadwin, J. A., & Leekam, S. R. (2004). Face processing in high-functioning adolescents with autism: Evidence for weak central coherence. Visual Cognition, 11, 673–688.
Maurer, D., Le Grand, R., & Mondloch, C. J. (2002). The many faces of configural processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 255–260.
McCall, R. B., & Kennedy, C. B. (1980). Attention of 4-month infants to discrepancy and babyishness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 29, 189–201.
McKelvie, S. J. (1995). Emotional expression in upside-down faces: Evidence for configural and componential processing. British Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 325–334.
McKelvie, S. J. (1997). Perceived cuteness, activity level, and gender in schematic babyfaces. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 8, 297–310.
Mobbs, D., Piggot, J., Kwon, H., Merion, V., Bookheimer, S., & Reiss, A. (2004). Emotional attribution in high-functioning individuals with autistic spectrum disorder: A functional imaging study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 43, 473–480.
Morgan, B., Maybery, M., & Durkin, K. (2003). Weak central coherence, poor joint attention, and low verbal ability: Independent deficits in early autism. Developmental Psychology, 39, 646–656.
Mottron, J. B., & Dawson, V. (2006). Impaired face processing in autism: Fact or artifact? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 91–106.
Mottron, L., Burack, J. A., Iarocci, G., Belleville, S., & Enns, J. T. (2003). Locally oriented perception with intact global processing among adolescents with high-functioning autism: Evidence from multiple paradigms. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 904–913.
Mottron, L., Burack, J. A., Stauder, J. E. A., & Robaey, P. (1999). Perceptual processing among high-functioning persons with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 40, 203–211.
Mouchetant-Rostaing, Y., & Giard, M. H. (2003). Electrophysiological correlates of age and gender perception on human faces. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 900–910.
Munte, T. F., Brack, M., Grootheer, O., Wieringa, B. M., Matzke, M., & Johannes, S. (1998). Brain potentials reveal the timing of face identity and expression judgments. Neuroscience Research, 30, 25–34.
Navon, D. (1977). Forest before the trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception. Cognitive Psychology, 9, 353–383.
Navon, D. (1981). The forrest revisited: More on global precedence. Psychological Research, 43, 1–32.
Ozonoff, S., & Strayer, D. L. (1997). Inhibitory function in nonretarded children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 32, 249–261.
Pelicano, E., & Rhodes, G. (2003). Holistic processing of faces in preschool children and adults. Psychological Science, 14, 618–622.
Pelphrey, K. A., Sasson, N. J., Reznick, J. S., Paul, G., Goldman, B. D., & Piven, J. (2002). Visual scanning of faces in autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 32, 249–261.
Plaisted, K., Swettenham, J., & Rees, L. (1999). Children with autism show local precedence in divided attention task and global precedence in a selective attention task. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 40, 733–742.
Prodan, C. I., Orbelo, D. M., Testa, J. A., & Ross, E. D. (2001). Hemispheric differences in recognizing upper and lower facial displays of emotion. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, & Behavioral Neurology, 14, 206–212.
Rinehart, N. J., Bradshaw, J. L., Moss, S. A., Brereton, A. V., & Tonge, B. J. (2000). Atypical interference of local detail on global processing in high-functioning autism and Asperger’s disorder. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 41, 769–778.
Roid, G. H., & Miller, L. J. (1997). The Leiter international performance scale-revised. Wood Dale, IL: Stoelting, Co.
Rossion, B., Caldara, R., Seghier, M., Schuller, A., Lazeyras, F., & Mayer, E. (2003). A network of occipito-temporal face-sensitive areas beside the right middle fusiform gyrus is necessary for normal face processing. Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 126, 2381–2395.
Santos, M., & Young, A. W. (2005). Exploring the perception of social characteristics in faces using the isolation effect. Visual Cognition, 12, 213–247.
Schopler, E., Reichler, R. J., & Renner, B. R. (1988). The childhood autism rating scale. Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
Schwarzer, G. (2002). Processing facial and nonfacial stimuli by 2–5-year-old children. Infant and Child Development, 11, 153–270.
Sergent, J., Ohta, S., MacDonald, B., & Zuck, E. (1994). Segregated processing of facial identity and emotion in the human brain: A PET study. In V. Bruce & G. W. Humphreys (Eds.), Object and Face Recognition. Special Issue of Visual Cognition, 1, 349–369.
Sigman, M. D., Kasari, C., Kwon, J. H., & Yirmiya, N. (1992). Response to the negative emotions of others by autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children. Child Development, 63, 796–807.
Smith, M. L., Cottrell, G. W., Gosseling, F., & Schyns, P. G. (2005). Transmitting and decoding facial expressions. Psychological Science, 16, 184–189.
Sparrow, S. S., Balla, D. A., Cichetti, D. V. (1984). The Vineland adaptive behavior scales. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.
Stiles, J., Delis, D. C., & Tada, W. L. (1991). Global–local processing in preschool children. Child Development, 62, 1258–1275.
Strauss, M. S. (1979). Abstraction of prototypical information by adults and 10-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5, 618–632.
Tantam, D., Monaghan, L., Nicholson, H., & Stirling, J. (1989). Autistic children’s ability to interpret faces – a research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 30, 623–630.
Tanaka, J. W., Kay, J. B., Grinnell, E., Stansfield, B., & Szechter, L. (1998). Face recognition in young children: When the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Visual Cognition, 5, 479–496.
Teunisse, J. P., & de Gelder, B. (2003). Face processing in adolescence with autistic disorder: The inversion and composite effects. Brain and Cognition, 52, 285–294.
Tranel, D., Damasio, A. R., & Damsio, H. (1988). Intact recognition of facial expression, gender, and age in patients with impaired recognition of face identity. Neurology, 38, 690–696.
Trepagnier, C., Sebrechts, M., & Peterson, R. (2002). Atypical face gaze in autism. Cyber Psychology & Behavior, 5, 213–217.
Wang, A. T., Dapretto, M., Hariri, A. R., Sigman, M., & Bookheimer, S. Y. (2004. Neural correlates of facial affect processing in children and adolescents with autistic spectrum disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 43, 487–490.
Wechsler, D. (1991). Wechsler intelligence scale for children-III. New York, NY: The Psychological Corporation.
Wechsler, D. (1989). Wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence-revised. New York, NY: The Psychological Corporation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gross, T.F. Recognition of Immaturity and Emotional Expressions in Blended Faces by Children with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities. J Autism Dev Disord 38, 297–311 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0391-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0391-3