Recognition of 'fortune of others' emotions in Asperger syndrome and high functioning autism.

Laties (2008) asked adults with Asperger or high-functioning autism to name photos of faces. The faces showed envy and gloating. These are "fortune-of-others" emotions. You only feel them when you compare yourself to someone else.

Typical adults also took the test. The team then compared the two groups.

The AS/HFA group missed envy and gloating far more often. The worse they scored, the lower they rated their own perspective-taking skills.

In short, they did not catch subtle social-comparison cues.

Sawyer et al. (2014) saw the same kind of trouble. Their adults with Asperger could tell when an emotion guess was right, but still could not use that feeling to guide next steps. Together the two papers show the problem is not raw sight; it is using the feeling in real life.

Black et al. (2019) seems to disagree. They tracked eyes and found adults with ASD spotted regret and relief just as fast as typical adults. The gap is method. Jo watched quiet eye moves; G asked people to speak the label. Implicit viewing can look fine while explicit naming still fails.

Gold et al. (2010) add another piece. They showed the same group also struggles with fresh metaphors. Envy, gloating, and metaphors all need rapid right-hemisphere links. The same brain route may be the bottleneck.

If your client can label happy and sad but misses envy or gloating, social mishaps follow. Add these two emotions to your social-skills lessons. Use clear photos, video clips, and think-alouds like "He got the prize, I didn’t — that is envy." Practice until clients say the emotion without prompts. Then role-play how to respond once they notice it.