Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to identify the emotions of others in social situations. More specifically, this study examined whether there were accuracy differences in identification of emotion in a speaker’s voice within multisensory matched or discrepant social contexts between children 5- 16-years-old with a diagnosis of ASD and children with typical development. The results of this study revealed that children with ASD exhibited impairment relative to children with typical development on both matched and discrepant condition tasks. Children with ASD also exhibited impairment in emotion understanding regardless of age. However, children who were reported by their parents as participating in at least one mainstream class and/or extracurricular activity performed better on emotion perception tasks than those who did not report participation in these naturalistic social contexts.

Advisor

Furey, Joan

Department

Communication Studies

Disciplines

Child Psychology | Communication Sciences and Disorders | Developmental Psychology | Psychology | School Psychology | Social Psychology | Speech Pathology and Audiology

Keywords

autism spectrum disorder, emotion perception, social understanding, multisensory

Publication Date

2015

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2015 Brittany Ann Cook