Short report: Social processing in non-emotional contexts by children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

BACKGROUND: Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been reported to show social-processing deficits in forced-choice social judgment or story interpretation tasks. However, these methods may limit examination of social-processing within a set of acceptable answers. In this pilot study, we propose a novel method predicated on the premise that language carries social information and validate this method to measure social perception in ASD. METHOD: 20 children with ASD and 20 typically developing (TD) children matched-pairwise on age (5-12 years), gender, and non-verbal IQ, described pictures of people in everyday situations varying on extent of social engagement. Their social language production was examined in high- and low-social picture conditions. RESULTS: The TD group produced significantly more social language in high-social than low-social picture conditions, with a large effect size (d = 3.15). The TD group produced significantly more social language than the ASD group under high-social conditions (p< .001, η2p = 0.24), but were not significantly different under low-social conditions (p < .05). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The study presents proof-of-concept that expressed language carries social information. The findings indicate that social language may be used to measure social perception and examine differences in ASD, with potential applications for other clinical groups with social-processing challenges.

Brief Report: Emotional Picture and Language Processing in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

There is currently limited research and a lack of consensus on emotional processing impairments among adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present pilot study sought to characterize the extent to which adults with ASD are impaired in processing emotions in both words and pictures. Ten adults with ASD rated word and picture stimuli on emotional valence and arousal. Their ratings were compared to normative data for both stimuli sets using item-level correlations. Adults with ASD rank-ordered stimuli similarly to typically developing individuals, demonstrating relatively typical understanding of emotional words and pictures. However, they used a narrower range of the scales which suggests more subtle impairments affecting emotion-processing. Future directions arising from the findings of this pilot study are discussed.

Effects of Physical Exercise Interventions on Stereotyped Motor Behaviours in Children with ASD: A Meta-Analysis.

Studies have reported that physical exercise reduces maladaptive stereotyped motor behaviours (SMB) in children with ASD, but these intervention studies vary in design and outcome. The present systematic review and meta-analysis included 22 studies, involving 274 children with ASD, to quantify the effect of exercise on SMB and its potential moderators. Multi-level modelling revealed a large overall effect, Hedges' g = 1.16, with significant heterogeneity across participant, treatment, and study levels. Further, a more appropriate model using between-case estimation for within-subject effects to improve comparability between single-case and group-design studies, yielded a smaller but still significant effect, g = 0.51. Lastly, higher exercise intensity, but not age, exercise duration or settings, reliably predicted treatment effectiveness. Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.

Emotional Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Effects of Age, Emotional Valence, and Social Engagement on Emotional Language Use.

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show deficits in reporting others' emotions (Lartseva et al. in Front Hum Neurosci 8:991, 2015) and in deriving meaning in social contexts (Klin et al. in Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders, Wiley, Hoboken, 2005). However, researchers often use stimuli that conflate salient emotional and social information. Using a matched-pairs design, the impact of emotional and social information on emotional language in pre-school and school-age children, with and without ASD, was assessed with a picture description task comprising rated stimuli from the Pictures with Social Contexts and Emotional Scenes database (Teh et al. in Behav Res Methods, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-017-0947-x , 2017). Results showed both groups with ASD produced fewer emotional terms than typically developing children, but the effects were moderated by valence, social engagement, and age. Implications for theory and clinical practice are discussed.

PiSCES: Pictures with social context and emotional scenes with norms for emotional valence, intensity, and social engagement.

Picture databases are commonly used in experimental work on various aspects of emotion processing. However, existing standardized facial databases, typically used to explore emotion recognition, can be augmented with more contextual information for studying emotion and social perception. Moreover, the perception of social engagement, i.e., the degree of interaction or engagement inferred between the people in target pictures, has not been measured. In this paper, we describe the development of a database comprising 203 black-and-white line drawings depicting people within various situational contexts, and normed on perceived emotional valence, intensity, and social engagement, a new construct. Analyses of ratings collected from 62 young adults (30 females, 32 males; mean age 22 years) revealed the typical quadratic relationship between valence and intensity, i.e., stimuli that are more emotionally charged, whether positively or negatively valenced, are more intense than emotionally-neutral stimuli. Moreover, the results showed significant linear and quadratic relationships between valence and social engagement ratings, indicating that emotionally-charged social scenes were perceived as more engaging than emotionally-neutral social scenes. This new database will facilitate investigations of how people perceive and interpret social and emotional information in everyday interactions, and is offered as a resource to experimenters involved in social and/or emotional processing research.

Continuity and Change in, and Child Predictors of, Caregiver Reported Anxiety Symptoms in Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Follow-Up Study.

Little is known about continuity, change and predictors of anxiety in ASD. This follow-up study investigated changes in caregiver-reported anxiety in 54 non-referred youth with ASD after 10-19 months. Earlier child predictors of later anxiety were also examined. Anxiety scores were generally stable. Time 1 ASD repetitive behavior symptoms, but not social/communication symptoms, predicted Time 2 total anxiety scores, over and above child age, gender and adaptive functioning scores, but this predictive relationship was fully mitigated by Time 1 anxiety scores when these were included as a covariate in the regression model. Exploring bi-directionality between autism and anxiety symptomatology, Time 1 anxiety scores did not predict Time 2 ASD symptoms. Preliminary clinical implications and possible future directions are discussed.