A quarterly publication of the Autism Research Institute
Fall, 2024 | Number 4, Volume 38
Two new studies offer clues about the connections between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and social anxiety.
The first study, from the United Kingdom, suggests that poor face recognition—an issue that affects between 15% and 30% of people with ASD—plays a significant role in social anxiety. In the study, Bayparvah Kaur Gehdu and colleagues asked 60 individuals with ASD and varying degrees of face recognition ability to complete two tests of face recognition as well as a measure of social anxiety. In addition, participants completed a survey inquiring about their experiences involving face recognition and social interactions.
The researchers report, “Relative to autistic individuals with average or above-average face recognition, autistic individuals with poor face recognition described significantly higher levels of social anxiety. More over, more than half our participants felt that poor face recognition hampered their social interaction, while more than a third thought that poor face recognition had undermined their efforts to make friends.”
The researchers note that the majority of their study participants were female, and say that their findings need to be replicated in a sample more representative of the ASD population. However, they say, “These findings suggest that face recognition difficulties may contribute to social anxiety among autistic individuals.”
The second study, by researchers in the United States, found that young individuals with ASD who have high levels of social anxiety spend less time looking at faces than those with lower levels of social anxiety.
Cassandra J. Franke and colleagues asked 54 autistic and 35 non-autistic children and adolescents to view faces that dynamically expressed happy or fearful expressions contingent on the eye contact of participants. The researchers measured social attention by calculating the average percentage of time participants looked at the face and eye regions of each emotional expression. They also calculated participants’ levels of social anxiety using self-report and parent-report measures.
The researchers found that autistic participants spent less time looking at faces than non-autistic participants, and that higher self-reported social anxiety was associated with less gazing at eyes in both autistic and non-autistic participants. They conclude, “Social anxiety features affect social attention similarly in autistic and non-autistic youth, highlighting the importance of considering co-occurring psychiatric characteristics when assessing social attention and eye contact in autistic individuals.”
“Poor face recognition predicts social anxiety in autism: A short report,” Bayparvah Kaur Gehdu, Katie L.H. Gray, and Richard Cook, Autism, August 18, 2024 (free online). Address: Richard Cook, School of Psychology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom, [email protected].
—and—
“Social anxiety reduces visual attention to the eyes of emotional faces in autistic youth,” Cassandra J. Franke, Jason W. Griffin, Adam J. Naples, Julie M. Wolf, and James C. McPartland, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, November 18, 2024 (online). Address: James C. McPartland, [email protected].
