Patterns of Sensitivity to Emotion in Children with Williams Syndrome and Autism: Relations Between Autonomic Nervous System Reactivity and Social Functioning.

Järvinen et al. (2015) watched three groups of kids: autism, Williams syndrome, and typically developing.

They showed each child happy, angry, sad, and neutral faces while sensors tracked heart and skin signals.

The team then asked parents how well the child plays, talks, and makes friends in real life.

Kids with autism stayed highly aroused to every face, no matter the emotion.

Their bodies did not calm down for neutral faces, while other kids did.

Across all groups, the calmer a child’s body was to neutral faces, the better their everyday social skills.

Golan et al. (2018) also saw face-emotion trouble in autism, but they added voice cues and found the kids scored better.

Guy et al. (2014) used a different body measure (RSA) and still linked lower calm signals to poorer social play, matching Anna’s pattern.

Kose et al. (2025) later showed that empathy scores, not body arousal, best predict teen social skills—seemingly opposite until you note Anna tested younger kids and used live faces while Sezen used surveys.

Ikeda et al. (2024) kept the same three-group design and showed autistic and Williams kids can learn which words fit which listener, but they miss how tone upsets people—extending Anna’s finding that both groups need extra social coaching.

Your student’s sweaty palms during calm faces may flag social risk more than their emotion-label score.

Try pairing neutral-face practice with biofeedback or simple breathing drills; lowering that baseline arousal could free up bandwidth for real play.

Track both body signals and friendship goals—you may spot progress the data sheets miss.