Facial expression aftereffect and its association with autistic traits in obscured faces

Abstract

Objects we see in daily life are often occluded and rarely appear in full form. The present study investigates how people recognize emotions from partially occluded faces. Previous studies have shown that prolonged exposure to a complete emotional face biases the perception of emotion of subsequent faces, the facial expression aftereffect (FEA). However, less is known about the influences of an obscured emotional face to the perception of subsequent facial emotions. People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been found to suffer from compromised ability to process facial emotions. Autistic traits typically exhibited in people with ASD are also demonstrated in neurotypical individuals (NT) to milder degrees, however, the association between autistic traits and the perception of facial emotion in NT is understudied. The present thesis aims to bridge the gap by addressing the following questions: (1) Can the perception of facial emotion be biased by prolonged exposure to partially obscured emotional faces? (2) How autistic traits are associated with the perception of facial emotion from these faces? (3) What are the possible neural mechanisms of the association between autistic traits and FEAs. Three studies were carried out to address these questions.