Page 176 - Demo

Chapter 6174assumption that individuals on the autism spectrum would have a more noisy integration of physiological signals in higher level processing (Van de Cruys et al., 2017), we expected to observe a weaker link between emotion recognition accuracy and facial mimicry in autism, while, at the same time, both emotion recognition accuracy and facial mimicry would be reduced compared to the matched neurotypical controls. In those lines, we also explored if the link between emotional intensity judgments and autonomic arousal, indexed by changes in skin conductance, would be less strong in individuals on the autism spectrum compared to neurotypical controls. In individuals with social anxiety, in contrast, we did not expect to see differences in the magnitude of physiological responses and in emotion recognition accuracy, and neither in their link, compared to the control group, as we did not provide a real social setting. Yet, as reflection of negative beliefs about one%u2019s social skills, confidence in emotion recognition was expected to be overall reduced in individuals with social anxiety compared to controls, and especially negative and neutral facial expressions were expected to be judged more emotionally intense, in line with the negativity bias. Here, we aimed to explore whether the link between confidence and/or intensity judgments and physiological responses might be modulated, which might be linked to known misperceptions of physiological arousal. On top of that, by including selfreported interoception in our study, we could further explore whether individuals on the autism spectrum or with social anxiety also report differential accuracy in sensing their bodily signals, or differences in attention towards them, in daily life, potentially accounting for observed effects in our emotion processing context. MethodsParticipantsIn total, the sample comprised 107 participants (65 women) within the age of 19-62 years (Mage = 34.82, SD = 12.31) who were divided in three subgroups: 40 individuals were on the autism spectrum (AS group, 28 women, Mage = 36.90, SD = 12.52), 27 individuals were diagnosed with clinically relevant social anxiety (SA group, 15 women, Mage = 31.89, SD = 10.43) and the remaining 40 neurotypical individuals had no history of Axis I DSM-5 diagnoses (NC group, 22 women, Mage = 34.73, SD = 13.12). All participants were native speakers of German living in Germany. Exclusion criteria for all groups were history of illegal drug use, alcohol abuse or addiction,