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Emotion Recognition and Visual-Scan Paths in Fragile X Syndrome

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Abstract

This study investigated emotion recognition abilities and visual scanning of emotional faces in 16 Fragile X syndrome (FXS) individuals compared to 16 chronological-age and 16 mental-age matched controls. The relationships between emotion recognition, visual scan-paths and symptoms of social anxiety, schizotypy and autism were also explored. Results indicated that, compared to both control groups, the FXS group displayed specific emotion recognition deficits for angry and neutral (but not happy or fearful) facial expressions. Despite these evident emotion recognition deficits, the visual scanning of emotional faces was found to be at developmentally appropriate levels in the FXS group. Significant relationships were also observed between visual scan-paths, emotion recognition performance and symptomology in the FXS group.

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Notes

  1. ‘Normal’ was included rather than ‘neutral’ on the written response list due to a large number of young controls reading neutral as normal during piloting. Verbal task instructions, however, were given to all participants prior to beginning the emotion recognition task explaining the four choices as: happy, scared, angry, and neutral—a normal or blank face with no expression.

  2. 65 % of all participants (FXS: 68.8 %; CA-matched controls: 56.3 %; MA-matched controls: 73.3 %, p = 0.536) failed to correctly label this image as neutral; over 90 % of errors judged the face to be angry.

  3. The analysis was conducted with males excluded and the pattern of results was similar. The only modification to results was that the difference between the FXS and CA-matched controls for sensitivity in recognizing neutral expressions now failed to reach significance (p = 0.101).

  4. Descriptive analyses revealed one outlier in each of the CA and MA matched groups. Analyses were performed with both the outliers removed and retained. The pattern of results was the same for both analyses; as such these data points were retained in the analysis.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the participants and their families for their time and enthusiasm. Thanks also to the Fragile X Association of Australia and Hunter Genetics at Hunter New England Health for their continued support of this research. We would also like to acknowledge Robyn Langdon and Samantha Baggott for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper, as well as Alan Taylor for his statistical expertise.

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  1. Department of Cognitive Science, and the ARC Centre for Cognition and Its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Tracey A. Shaw

  2. Department of Psychology, and the ARC Centre for Cognition and Its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Melanie A. Porter

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  1. Tracey A. Shaw
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Correspondence to Tracey A. Shaw.

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Shaw, T.A., Porter, M.A. Emotion Recognition and Visual-Scan Paths in Fragile X Syndrome. J Autism Dev Disord 43, 1119–1139 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1654-1

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