Facial emotion recognition in children with autism spectrum disorder: Are emotional primes effective?

Objective: This study investigated the facial emotion recognition problems in children with autism spectrum disorder and how different emotional primes (visual and vocal primes) affected this deficiency. Method: Two separate experiments using the prime task were conducted in which only the prime modality was differentiated. Visual (Experiment-1) or vocal (Experiment-2) emotion primes were presented in the task. Then the participant decided whether the faces presented after primes had emotion. Results: In both experiments, children with autism spectrum disorder showed impaired performance compared to healthy peers, and a happy face advantage was seen in both experiments independent of the group. Reaction time increased in autism spectrum disorder when the sad vocal prime was given. However, the priming effect was not seen in any modality in either group. Discussion: Emotional priming has no effect on the recognition performance of healthy control and children with autism spectrum disorder. Sad vocal prime has a negative impact on children with autism spectrum disorder's ability to recognize faces. Happy and neutral tones as much as possible should be employed in the training and intervention programs for autism spectrum disorder, considering the effects of sad vocals.