ArticleJournal of neurodevelopmental disorders2024
Physiological and communicative emotional disconcordance in children on the autism spectrum.
Article in Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Wearable Solutions Using Physiological Signals for Stress Monitoring on Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A Systematic Literature Review.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Pooled it
- Electrodermal Activity, Behavior, and Context in Autistic People with High Support Needs: A Retrospective Ecological Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Beyond the Outburst: Charting a New Frontier for Understanding and Treating Irritability in Autistic Adults.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Review
- Smart sensing the spectrum: cutting-edge biosensor and biomarker approaches for early autism detection.Metabolic brain disease · 2026Review
- "I Feel Like They Were Made in a Very Neurotypical World": Autistic Adult Experiences and Perceptions of Social Rules, Instruction, and Laws.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Sex differences in compulsive alcohol drinking phenotypes: implications for decision-making and social behavior in a preclinical model.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Review and Developmental Model: Early Childhood Emotion Regulation and Co-Regulation in Autism.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2026Review
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundIndividuals on the autism spectrum commonly have differences from non-autistic people in expressing their emotions using communicative behaviors, such as facial expressions. However, it is not yet clear if this reduced expressivity stems from reduced physiological reactivity in emotional contexts or if individuals react internally, but do not show these reactions externally to others. We hypothesized that autism is characterized by a discordance between in-the-moment internal psychophysiological arousal and external communicative expressions of emotion.
methodsForty-one children on the autism spectrum and 39 non-autistic, typically developing (TD) children of two age groups (2-4 and 8-12 years) participated in a low-level stress task whilst wearing a wireless electrocardiogram. Children's negative emotional expressions (facial, vocal, bodily) were coded following standardized protocols. Alexithymia traits were assessed using the Children's Alexithymia Measure with school-aged children only. Data analyses involved ANOVAs, correlations, and sensitivity analyses.
resultsThere were no group differences in physiological arousal (heart rate) or in communicative expressions of stress to the stress task. For TD preschoolers, physiological arousal during the stress task was associated with vocal expressions and for TD school-aged children, they were associated with facial and bodily expressions. By contrast, for children on the autism spectrum, physiological arousal during the stress tasks was not associated with communicative expressions across age groups.
conclusionsOur findings suggest that children on the autism spectrum might experience emotional disconcordance, in that their physiological arousal does not align with their communicative expressions. Therefore, the internally experienced stress of children on the autism spectrum may be inadvertently missed by teachers and caregivers and, consequently, learning opportunities for teaching emotional communication and regulation may be also missed. Our results support the use of wearable biosensors to facilitate such interventions in children on the autism spectrum.
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