Reduced accuracy and sensitivity in the perception of emotional facial expressions in individuals with high autism spectrum traits.

Ervin and colleagues asked healthy adults to look at faces.

Each face showed anger, disgust, sadness, or other feelings at low, medium, or high strength.

People rated the emotion and how sure they were.

The team also gave everyone a short autism-trait questionnaire.

Adults who scored higher on autistic traits needed stronger facial cues.

They were less accurate and needed higher intensity to spot anger, disgust, and sadness.

The effect was small but steady across the whole group.

Song et al. (2018) later saw the same pattern in kids with ASD.

Those children also needed stronger anger and disgust faces before they got them right.

Georgopoulos et al. (2022) looked at diagnosed autistic adults and found only tiny differences.

That study seems to clash with Ervin, but Antonia tested people already diagnosed and used simpler answer choices.

The gap shrinks when tasks are easier and samples are clinical, not just high-trait.

Lui et al. (2026) backs this up: autistic people look worse when tests give too many response options.

If your client struggles to read faces, try showing clearer, stronger examples first.

Use fewer response choices during assessment to avoid masking real skill.

Match face intensity to the learner’s current level, then fade to subtler cues.