Decoding of emotion through facial expression, prosody and verbal content in children and adolescents with Asperger's syndrome.

Lecavalier et al. (2006) watched kids and teens with Asperger’s try to read feelings. They used still photos, short video clips, and voice recordings. Each showed happy, sad, angry, or afraid cues.

The kids pointed to a feeling word after each cue. A same-age group without autism did the same tasks. Scores were compared.

The Asperger group scored lower on every task. They missed feelings in faces and in tone of voice. The gap stayed large for both still and moving faces.

Kuusikko et al. (2009) saw the same deficit in a broader autism sample, so the trouble is not just for Asperger’s. Doi et al. (2013) later repeated the test with adults and added softer, stronger versions of each feeling; deficits stayed, showing the problem lasts after high school.

Root et al. (2017) seems to disagree at first. They found that only very mild angry faces tripped up low-functioning kids, while L et al. saw wide trouble across all feelings. The gap is likely about group severity: L et al. studied higher-IQ Asperger students who still missed every emotion, whereas R et al. looked at kids with more language delay who mainly slipped on subtle cues.

O'Connor (2007) extended the idea to cross-modal checks. Her adults with Asperger’s could read a face or a voice alone, yet failed when the two cues clashed. Together the papers say: teach emotion in every channel, then teach how channels can disagree.

If you run social-skills groups, do not assume clients are “getting” faces or tone. Probe each channel—photo, video, voice—separately. Add lessons on mixed signals (smiling face + flat voice). Start with clear, high-intensity examples; fade to mild ones only after mastery. Embed quick checks during natural play: “How does my voice sound? How does my face look? Do they match?” These steps close a silent gap that standard social stories often miss.