Naming emotion in faces and voices: Abilities and disabilities in autism and mental retardation

Abstract

Groups of autistic and non‐autistic retarded adolescents and young adults, individually matched for CA and verbal MA, together with a group of normal young children individually matched for verbal MA, were tested for their ability to name photographs of emotionally expressive faces and emotion‐unrelated photographs of objects, and to name corresponding sounds recorded on audiotape. The results indicated that although BPVS‐matched autistic and non‐autistic retarded subjects were not significantly different when the emotion tasks were considered in isolation, autistic subjects differed from non‐autistic retarded and normal subjects in being relatively poor at naming feelings vis‐à‐vis naming non‐personal objects. On the other hand, there was evidence that group differences between non‐autistic mentally retarded and normal subjects were not specific to the task of naming emotions. This raises doubt about claims that non‐autistic mentally retarded individuals have specific deficits in emotion recognition.