Social Anxiety Symptoms Predict Poorer Facial Emotion Recognition in Autistic Male Adolescents and Young Adults Without Intellectual Disability

Let’s face it! The role of social anxiety and executive functions in recognizing others’ emotions from faces: Evidence from autism and specific learning disorders

“…However, the relationship between the ability to recognize facial emotions and levels of social anxiety in children and adolescents with ASD has not been extensively investigated yet. The few studies on the topic revealed that social anxiety might be related to poorer FER in young adults and adolescents with ASD (Antezana et al, 2023), and to poorer fear recognition in autistic adults (Corden et al, 2008). Research on social attention in autism revealed that self-reported fears of negative evaluation predict greater gaze duration to social threat stimuli (White et al, 2015), and that autonomic reactivity to eye gaze negatively correlates with face recognition performance in autistic children (Bal et al, 2010;Joseph et al, 2008).…”

“…Concerning our second aim, we expect a statistically significant association between FER ability and the reported social anxiety in both clinical groups (ASD, SLD). In children with ASD, higher levels of social anxiety might be consistent with a poorer recognition of other people's emotional expressions because of their widely recognized social challenges and discomfort within the social contexts (Antezana et al, 2023;Corden et al, 2008;Kleinhans et al, 2010). Similarly, children and adolescents with SLD with higher levels of social anxiety might display worse FER ability, as a result of avoidance toward others' emotions which they find difficulties to interpret (Bögels & Mansell, 2004;Mansell et al, 1999).…”