Differences in the Late Positive Potential and P300 to Emotional Faces in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
A quick EEG check can flag late-stage face-processing delays in adults with autism who are not responding to social interventions.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Dudley et al. (2019) showed emotional faces to adults with autism.
Faces were low or high intensity.
The team recorded EEG to catch two brain waves: P300 and Late Positive Potential.
What they found
Adults with more autism traits gave a bigger P300 to strong faces.
The same adults showed a flipped Late Positive Potential to mild faces.
The pattern says the brain needs extra time to work out softer feelings.
How this fits with other research
Van der Donck et al. (2023) saw no ERP gap between autistic and typical adults during quick face swaps.
The two studies seem to clash.
The gap fades when you see speed: M et al. used slow, graded faces that allow extra thought; Stephanie et al. used rapid swaps that do not.
Goulardins et al. (2013) had already found weaker emotion coding and gaze-ERP uncoupling in autistic teens watching faces.
M et al. now shows the late-stage hitch can last into adulthood.
Why it matters
If your social-skills program is stalling, EEG can show whether the learner needs more time to read subtle faces.
Try giving longer pauses on mild expressions during video modeling or role play.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Despite evidence suggesting differences in early event-related potential (ERP) responses to social emotional stimuli, little is known about later stage ERP contributions to social emotional processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Adults with and without ASD completed a facial emotion recognition task involving stimuli that varied by emotional intensity while electroencephalograms were recorded. Principal components analysis was used to examine P300 and late positive potential (LPP) modulation by emotional intensity. Results indicated that greater ASD symptomatology evinced heightened P300 to high relative to low intensity faces, then heightened LPP to low relative to high intensity faces. Findings suggest that adults with greater ASD symptomatology may demonstrate a lag in engagement in elaborative processing of low intensity faces.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2019 · doi:10.1007/s10803-019-04207-6