Using the circumplex model of affect to study valence and arousal ratings of emotional faces by children and adults with autism spectrum disorders.
Autistic learners often label emotional faces as "flat" and close together—give them bigger, labeled examples and tie the feeling to their own body cues.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Fabio et al. (2014) asked kids and adults with autism to rate emotional faces.
They used the circumplex model. It maps feelings on two lines: pleasant-unpleasant and calm-excited.
Each person moved a joystick to show how a face made them feel. The team compared answers to typical peers.
What they found
The autism group gave flatter, narrower ratings. They saw less difference between happy, sad, and angry.
Their excitement scores stayed close to the middle. The range of feelings looked squeezed.
How this fits with other research
Åsberg Johnels et al. (2017) saw the same squeeze in a different way. Their eye tracker showed kids with autism looking less at smiling mouths. Less mouth time can shrink felt happiness, backing up the flat ratings.
Pan et al. (2025) watched preschoolers view social cartoons. Kids with autism kept steady heart rates and short eye dwells. Flat body arousal matches the flat joystick scores, just in younger children.
Gonzaga et al. (2021) seems to disagree. They found bigger heart-rate chaos in autistic kids during face tasks. The gap fades when you note age mix: Angela blended kids and adults, Nunes looked only at children. Kids may show more body noise while still calling the feeling "meh" on a rating scale.
Why it matters
Flat ratings mean your client may not notice small mood shifts in others. Teach feeling words in clear steps. Use big, high-intensity faces first, then fade to mild ones. Add heart-rate or eye-gaze checks if you need an objective cue. Label the arousal out loud: "This face is super excited, my heart is racing." Help them map body signals to the circumplex lines until the circle feels wider.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The affective circumplex model holds that emotions can be described as linear combinations of two underlying, independent neurophysiological systems (arousal, valence). Given research suggesting individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulty processing emotions, we used the circumplex model to compare how individuals with ASD and typically-developing (TD) individuals respond to facial emotions. Participants (51 ASD, 80 TD) rated facial expressions along arousal and valence dimensions; we fitted closed, smooth, 2-dimensional curves to their ratings to examine overall circumplex contours. We modeled individual and group influences on parameters describing curve contours to identify differences in dimensional effects across groups. Significant main effects of diagnosis indicated the ASD-group’s ratings were constricted for the entire circumplex, suggesting range constriction across all emotions. Findings did not change when covarying for overall intelligence.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2014 · doi:10.1007/s10803-013-1993-6