A new study found that angry facial expressions produced by people with autism at real-world speeds are more difficult to recognize than other facial expressions.

The intensity and speed of expression will affect the understanding of facial expressions of autistic patients, rResearchers at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom discovered.

“We found that people with autism have special difficulties in recognizing anger, and we began to think that this may be related to the differences in these expressions between autistic and non-autistic patients,” Say Connor Keating, a researcher at the University of Birmingham’s School of Psychology and Center for Human Brain Health.

“If this is true, it may not be accurate to refer to autistic patients as having’handicap’ or’deficiencies’ in recognizing emotions-more often than not, autistic and non-autistic faces when conveying information May speak different languages ??and feelings.”

Researchers also found that people with related diseases, Alexithymia, Tends to interpret all types of expressions as more emotional than they actually are.

“One idea is that people with alexithymia are less able to measure the intensity of emotional expression, and are more likely to be confused by the emotions presented,” Keating said.

Autism Spectrum Disorder It is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects social skills, behavior, speech, and communication. About one-fifth of American children have autism.it Tends to run in the family, But the genetic risk factors are not yet fully understood. Previous studies have shown that most people with autism have serious expression recognition deficits.

People with alexithymia tend to be less aware of the emotions of themselves and others. Experts say that they also lack social attachment and have difficulty communicating with others.

This LearnPublished in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, it included 31 participants with autism and 29 participants without autism. They were asked to recognize emotions from a series of moving images composed of points depicting specific facial expressions. The images are displayed in various intensities and speeds.

The performance of autistic participants was similar to that of non-autistic participants, except for the angry facial expressions produced at normal speed and intensity.

“When we studied participants’ ability to recognize angry expressions, we found that it was definitely autistic characteristics that contributed, not alexithymia characteristics,” Conner said. “This shows that recognizing anger is a unique difficulty in autism.”

“Everyone will know or meet someone with autism at some point in their lives,” Keating added. “By better understanding how people with autism perceive and understand the world, we can begin to develop training and other interventions for people with autism and non-autism to overcome some of the barriers to successful interaction.”