The perception of emotion through static and dynamic facial expression in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The current project examined the ability of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to perceive and judge emotional information conveyed in facial expression when compared to typically developing peers. The purpose of this study was to (a) compare how children with ASD and children with typical development (TD) differ in their ability to perceive and judge the emotional information conveyed by happy, sad, angry, and scared static facial expression; (b) compare how static decoding abilities relate to decoding abilities of integrated dynamic facial expressions, prosody, and verbal content; (c) measure the ability of children with ASD and children with TD to perceive and judge emotional information based on the perceptual features of the speaker (cartoon vs. human); and (d) examine the role of timing in the perception and judgment of emotional information in children with ASD and children with TD.