In this study, we investigated whether the difficulties in body motion (BM) perception may led to deficit in emotion recognition in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To this aim, individuals with high-functioning ASD were asked to recognise fearful, happy, and neutral BM depicted as static images or dynamic point-light and full-light displays. Results showed slower response times in participants with ASD only in recognising dynamic stimuli, but no group differences in accuracy. This suggests that i) a deficit in action chaining mechanism in ASD may prevent the recognition of dynamic BM automatically and rapidly, ii) individuals with ASD and high cognitive resources can develop alternative-but equally successful-strategies to recognise emotional body expressions. Implications for treatment are discussed.
Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder; Biological motion; Emotion recognition; Emotional body movement; Static and dynamic body stimuli.
© 2021. The Author(s).