Page 29 - SEN113 SEN Magazine July-August 2021-V3

Communication Aids Autistic people find it harder to identify anger in facial expressions – new study Autistic people’s ability to accurately identify facial expressions is affected by the speed at which the expression is produced and its intensity, according to new research at the University of Birmingham. In particular, autistic people tend to be less able to accurately identify anger from facial expressions produced at a normal ‘real world’ speed. The researchers also found that for people with a related disorder, alexithymia, all expressions appeared more intensely emotional. This new study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, uses new techniques to explore the different impacts of autism and alexithymia on a person’s ability to accurately gauge the emotions suggested by different facial expressions. Participants were asked to identify emotions from a series of moving images made up of dots representing the key dynamic points of a facial expression. The images were displayed at a range of emotional intensities by varying the amount of movement in each expression, and at a variety of speeds. This project was supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC, United Kingdom) MR/R015813/1 and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under ERC- 2017-STG Grant Agreement No. 757583. 29 senmagazine.co.uk SEN113