A BASIC STUDY ON RECOGNITION OF FACLAL EXPRESSIONS BY PEOPLE WITH AUTISM

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1. Prior studies in which static pictures were used suggest that, in face recognition, children with autism rely on the mouth region more than on the eye region. However, it is not clear whether the same tendency exists in the case of autistic adults viewing the facial expressions of animated pictures. Therefore, the reactions of two autistic adults who took part in Wakamatsu's study (2002), in which the facial expressions of computer-generated animated pictures were conveyed by movement of the whole face, by movement in the eye region and by movement of the mouth, were employed as hypotheses, and then tested for 2 groups of autistic and intellectually disabled individuals. The autistic group comprised 13 individuals with ages ranging between 19 and 35, and the intellectually disabled group was made up of an equal number of people, with ages ranging between 18 and 32. The results indicated that the autistic individuals' reactions tended to be more similar to the hypotheses as compared to the reactions of the intellectually disabled individuals, and that autistic adolescents and adults also have the above-mentioned tendency to rely on the mouth region in face recognition.2. In this study, I report the development of a computer-based program to teach the ability to identify basic facially expressed emotions using computer-generated animated pictures. The treatment group comprised 11 autistic individuals with ages ranging between 9 and 28, and the no-treatment control group was made up of 16 autistic people, with ages ranging between 10 and 32. The training was conducted for 2-4 sessions. The trained individuals improved significantly on the affect recognition task. Results support the usefulness of the program to teach the detection of facial affect. On the other hand, a few changes demonstrated on parent and teacher ratings of recognition and production of facial expressions in everyday life.