Brief Report: Reduced Prioritization of Facial Threat in Adults with Autism.
Adults with autism lose the quick-spot-angry-face edge, so social-threat cues need explicit teaching.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked adults with autism to find an angry face hidden among happy faces on a screen.
Typical adults spot the angry face faster than the happy ones. The study checked if this speed boost was missing in autism.
What they found
Adults with autism did not show the usual fast-find-angry-face effect. They searched just as slowly for angry as for happy faces.
This means the brain’s quick social-threat alarm is quieter in autism.
How this fits with other research
Faja et al. (2009) already showed autistic adults are less accurate at reading whole-face layouts. The new result adds speed to the problem list.
García-Blanco et al. (2017) found autistic children actually avoid looking at angry faces longer. Together, the two studies trace a line: kids avoid, adults don’t prioritize—both slow down threat learning.
Becker et al. (2021) looked at neurotypical adults with high autism traits. They rated neutral faces as threatening, the opposite of what Faso et al. (2016) found in diagnosed adults. The clash is only on the surface: Casey used self-report traits, J used full ASD diagnosis and a search task, so the two groups process threat differently.
Why it matters
If your client with autism walks into a busy room, they may not pick up angry faces as fast as peers. Don’t assume they are ignoring you on purpose. Teach them to scan for eye-region cues and give extra time to respond in social drills.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Typically-developing (TD) adults detect angry faces more efficiently within a crowd than non-threatening faces. Prior studies of this social threat superiority effect (TSE) in ASD using tasks consisting of schematic faces and homogeneous crowds have produced mixed results. Here, we employ a more ecologically-valid test of the social TSE and find evidence of a reduced social TSE in adults with ASD (n = 21) relative to TD controls (n = 28). Unlike TD participants, the ASD group failed to show the normative advantage for detecting angry faces faster than happy faces, either within crowds of neutral or emotional faces. These findings parallel prior work indicating a reduced sensitivity in ASD to facial cues of untrustworthiness, and may reflect a vulnerability for evaluating social harm.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2016 · doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2664-6