The role of emotion perception in adaptive functioning of people with autism spectrum disorders.
Poor emotion reading partly explains social gaps in autism—train it directly for peer issues, but look elsewhere for chores or self-care.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested 63 people with autism and 58 without. Ages ranged from kids to adults.
They gave two tests. One measured how well people read faces for happy, sad, angry, and scared. The other measured daily living skills like cooking, shopping, and talking to others.
Then they used stats to see if poor emotion reading explained why social skills were weak.
What they found
The autism group scored lower on both emotion reading and daily living skills.
Only socialization skills were linked to emotion reading. Communication and daily living were not.
This means poor emotion reading partly explains why socializing is hard, but not why chores or talking are hard.
How this fits with other research
van Timmeren et al. (2016) found the same emotion deficit in adults. This backs up the result across age groups.
Myers et al. (2018) and Austin et al. (2015) show executive function, not emotion, predicts daily living skills. These papers extend the story by pointing to a different skill set for chores and self-care.
Goldfarb et al. (2024) adds that motor skills plus executive function and theory of mind explain most social skills. This suggests emotion reading is just one of several paths to better social life.
Why it matters
If a client struggles with peers, check emotion reading first. Add quick drills like naming feelings in photos or videos. If daily living is the main gap, shift to executive-function supports like checklists and task breakdowns.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Cognitive functioning has historically been used to predict adaptive outcomes of people with autism spectrum disorders; however, research shows that it is not a complete predictor. The current study explored whether emotion perception was a predictor of adaptive outcomes, and more specifically, hypothesized that emotion perception (Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2 error scores) would mediate adaptive functioning of people with autism spectrum disorder (Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Second Edition). People with autism spectrum disorders demonstrated significantly lower adaptive functioning and emotion perception skills compared to typically developing individuals. Emotion perception acted as a significant mediator for socialization, but not communication or daily living skills, highlighting that in people with autism spectrum disorders, lower socialization abilities is the result, in part, of emotion perception deficits. It was unexpected that emotion perception was not a mediator for communication skills. This may be related to sample restrictions, or the narrow focus on emotion perception. Future research should involve a larger, more inclusive autism spectrum disorder sample, broaden approaches to exploring relationships between social perception and adaptive outcomes, and relate findings to brain mechanisms underlying emotion perception.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2015 · doi:10.1177/1362361313512725