ArticleJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2021
Examining the bidirectional association between emotion recognition and social autistic traits using observational and genetic analyses.
Article in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pupil Dilation to Dynamic Audiovisual Emotional Speech Reflects Autistic-Trait Variation in Neurotypical Adults.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Testing the relationships between facial emotion recognition, levels of Autistic traits, and eye gaze patterns.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Phenotypic Correlates of the Autism Polygenic Score.JAACAP open · 2025Article
- EEG during dynamic facial emotion processing reveals neural activity patterns associated with autistic traits in children.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- EEG During Dynamic Facial Emotion Processing Reveals Neural Activity Patterns Associated with Autistic Traits in Children.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Assessing the effectiveness of online emotion recognition training in healthy volunteers.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Emotional dysregulation in childhood and disordered eating and self-harm in adolescence: prospective associations and mediating pathways.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2023Article
- Multimodal Evidence of Atypical Processing of Eye Gaze and Facial Emotion in Children With Autistic Traits.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Three decades of ASD genetics: building a foundation for neurobiological understanding and treatment.Human molecular genetics · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThere is mixed evidence for an association between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and emotion recognition deficits. We sought to assess the bidirectionality of this association using phenotypic and genetic data in a large community sample.
methodsAnalyses were conducted in three stages. First, we examined the bidirectional association between social autistic traits at age 8 years and emotion recognition task (ERT) responses at age 24 years (Study 1; N = 3,562); and between Diagnostic Analysis of Non-Verbal Accuracy (DANVA) emotion recognition responses at age 8 years and social autistic traits at age 10 years (Study 2; N = 9,071). Next, we used genetic analyses (Study 3) to examine the association between polygenic risk scores for ASD and outcomes for the ERT and DANVA. The genetic correlation between ASD and ERT responses at age 24 was also estimated. Analyses were conducted in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
resultsSocial autistic traits at age 8 years were negatively associated with later total correct responses on ERT in Study 1 (b = -0.18; 95% CI: -0.27 to -0.09). We also found evidence of an association in Study 2 (b = -0.04; 95% CI: -0.05 to -0.03). We found the opposite association, that is positive, between the ASD polygenic risk score and ERT (b = 0.40; 95% CI: 0.10 to 0.70); however, this association varied across different p-value thresholds and would not survive multiple testing, so should be interpreted with caution. We did not find evidence of a genetic correlation between ASD and ERT.
conclusionWe found an observational association between poorer emotion recognition and increased social autistic traits. Our genetic analyses may suggest a shared genetic aetiology between these or a potential causal pathway; however, future research would benefit from using better powered GWAS to examine this further. Our results may inform interventions targeting emotion recognition.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.