Otizm Spektrum Bozukluğu Tanısı Almış Çocuklarda Farklı Hazırlayıcı Türlerinin Duygu Tanıma Üzerindeki Etkisi

Abstract

This study examines the effect of the congruency of different prime modalities (visual and aural) and facial emotion, which is the fundamental component of social communication, in the facial affective recognition decision. Experiment 1 was carried out with 13 children with ASD (14 boys, 1 girls; x̄ age = 8.23, SD. = 1.87) and 15 healthy children (8 boys, 7 girls; x̄ age = 9.00, SD. = 1.81). The second experiment was carried out with 12 children with mild ASD (11 boys, 1 girls; x̄ age = 9.25, SD = 1.71) and 16 healthy children (8 boys, 8 girls; x̄ age = 10.06, SD. = 1.73). The participants of the current study attend primary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Ankara. The healthy participants were children getting standard education, while participants with ASD were getting inclusive education and receiving special needs education support. The studies were composed of three stages implemented in different sessions: Semi-structured psychiatric interview and assessment (K-SADS-PL), screening tests (CARS, RSPM, PPVT), and experiment. In the Facial Affective Decision Task (FADT), first the visual (Experiment 1) or aural (Experiment 2) emotion priming was employed. Then, the participants were asked to decide “YES / NO” in whether the presented human faces contain emotions. In the analysis of the data obtained from Experiments 1 and 2, two separate 2 (Group: ASD and Healthy) x 3 (Priming Type: Happy, Sad, Neutral) x 2 (Target Type: Happy, Sad) three-factor mixed ANOVAs (one between- and two within-subjects factors) were conducted. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that the participants with ASD had longer reaction time and lower accuracy rate than the healthy participants on the FADT. In both groups, when the target face was happy, the reaction was faster and more accurate than the sad face. Also, the expected congruency effect was not observed when the emotion of the stimulus and target stimulus was the same. In Experiment 2, as observed in Experiment 1, the difference between groups and the advantage of the happy face was repeated. The longest response time in ASD participants was seen when the sad aural stimulus was used as priming. The congruency effect was not found in Experiment 2, either. In conclusion, emotional priming did not affect the emotional facial recognition performance of healthy children and children with ASD who have emotion recognition difficulties. On the other hand, aural priming affects facial emotion recognition performance, negatively, in children with ASD.