Page 203 - Demo

General Discussion2017indexed as changes in skin conductance, were only examined in Chapter 6, and no significant differences between individuals on the autism spectrum and controls were observed. In previous research, individuals on the autism spectrum showed reduced physiological arousal in response to others%u2019 emotion displays compared to controls specifically when the observed emotions had to be judged, and not only passively viewed (Hubert et al., 2009). Thus, not spontaneous, but rather, physiological arousal responses in the context of (instructed) facial emotion recognition might differ between individuals on the autism spectrum and nonautistic individuals. This could reflect different mechanisms used in the deliberate interpretation of emotional expressions. One could speculate that physiological responses in non-autistic individuals may be reinforced in an emotion recognition context but this requires further experimental investigation. Novel perspectives on altered facial emotion perception (Arnaud, 2020; Keating et al., 2023; Rutherford & McIntosh, 2007) indeed propose that different paths to emotion recognition, rather than simply %u201cdeficits%u201d, would explain worse performance in emotion recognition tasks in autism. Across my studies, I also found lower emotion recognition accuracies in both individuals on the autism spectrum and individuals with higher autistic trait levels. Accuracy for fearful expressions was particularly affected (Chapter 4 and Chapter 6), in line with some previous findings (Uljarevic & Hamilton, 2013). In my studies with non-clinical samples, perceived intensity of emotional expressions as well as confidence in their recognition was inconsistently reduced or increased for specific emotions as a function of autistic trait levels. The study with a clinical population (Chapter 6), however, showed a clear reduction in both being confident in the recognition of all facial expressions (including neutral) as well as in the level of perceived emotional intensity of most emotional expressions (angry, fearful, sad), in individuals on the autism spectrum compared to controls. This could be seen as another indicator of qualitative rather than quantitative differences in processing other%u2019s facial emotions in individuals on the autism spectrum compared to individuals with relatively higher autistic trait levels in the non-autistic population. One component in which individuals might differ in processing others%u2019 emotions is the degree to which changes in one%u2019s own physiology, as a reflection of observed emotional states, are integrated in the subjective experience of others%u2019 emotions. I addressed this idea by linking the strength of facial muscle activity changes (Chapter 4-6), indexing facial mimicry, and of changes in skin conductance