Normal physiological emotions but differences in expression of conscious feelings in children with high-functioning autism.
High-functioning autistic kids feel emotions in their bodies like peers but need extra help naming and sharing those feelings.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Gadow et al. (2006) showed emotional pictures to kids with high-functioning autism and to typical peers. They measured skin conductance to see if the body reacted. They also asked each child how they felt.
The team wanted to know if autistic kids have different body emotions, different conscious feelings, or both.
What they found
Skin response was the same in both groups. The children's bodies reacted to happy, scary, and sad pictures alike.
But when kids told the team how they felt, the answers did not match. Autistic children gave fewer or odd labels for their feelings.
How this fits with other research
Bölte et al. (2008) ran the same picture task with adults and got a similar split: bodies matched, words did not. The pattern holds past childhood.
Legiša et al. (2013) swapped pictures for smells. Again, faces and body signals looked typical, yet verbal reports were off. The disconnect is not tied to one sense.
Allen et al. (2013) tested music and added an alexithymia score. Once they removed alexithymia, the verbal gap vanished. This points to trouble naming feelings, not feeling them.
Why it matters
Do not trust a blank face or quiet "I'm fine" as proof of calm. Check heart rate, skin sweat, or breathing first. Then give feeling words: "Your heart is racing. That might be excitement or worry." Model the label and let the child practice. Over time you build their emotion dictionary instead of guessing wrong.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
To provide insight into what aspects of the emotional circuit might be affected in high-functioning autism, we measured indices of physiological emotions and of the expression of conscious feelings in 10 children with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome and 10 comparison participants. Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures were presented while skin conductance responses were measured. Self-report ratings of pleasantness and interestingness were taken between pictures. Skin conductance responses did not differ between the groups. Self report ratings were different, with the children with autism giving more similar answers to the two questions than the comparison children. Impairments in socio-emotional expression in autism may be related to deficits in perception and/or expression of conscious feelings; physiological emotions may be relatively preserved.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2006 · doi:10.1007/s10803-006-0077-2