بازنمایی عاطفی در حالت صورت و اسکریپت: مقایسه بین کودکان عادی و مبتلا به اوتیسم

Abstract The paper explored conceptual and lexical skills with regard to emotional correlates of facial stimuli and scripts. In two different experimental phases normal and autistic children observed six facial expressions of emotions (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and disgust) and six emotional scripts (contextualized facial expressions). In the second place, the effect of emotional domain (different emotions) in decoding was explored. A semantic grid was applied to conversational line, including two levels of data: the lexical adequacy index (correct decoding of emotion) and the emotional vocabulary (such as the causal representation and the hedonic valence of the stimulus). Log–linear analysis showed different representations across the subjects, as a function of emotion, task and pathology. Specifically, childrens’ lexical competence was well developed for some emotions (such as happiness, anger, and fear), and as a function of type of task, that is script was better represented than face. Between the main linguistic indexes, causal relation was a prototypical index for emotional conceptualization. Finally, pathology affected children's performance, with an increased “facilitation effect” for autistic children in the script condition.

. Introduction In the last two decades, developmental psychology has seen an increasing interest in the emotion comprehension. Emotional face recognition and understanding represents a primary social competence, because it contributes to social interactions and social management (Balconi & Lucchiari, 2006). Several researchers suggested that autistic children present a dysfunction in this emotional domain (Kanner, 1943). They are characterized by an impairment of the ability to express their emotional internal states and to decode and understand others’ emotion. Moreover, they show an inattentiveness and an apparent indifference towards the face of other people. Indeed, several studies (Celani, Battacchi, & Arcidiacono, 1999) have found that, for autistic children, facial emotions have a weak salience, if compared with other non-emotional cues. They tend to ignore emotional expressions, unless they are explicitly required to do it. Nonetheless, the extent of the deficit in facial expression understanding varies (Gepner, de Gelder, & de Schonen, 1996). In an experimental review about face recognition in subjects with mental retardation, Rojahn, Lederer, and Tassé (1995) observed that, when the cognitive functioning level diminishes, the ability to decode emotions from facial expression diminishes. Even in the more specific case of autism, it is attested that the developmental level plays a central role in determining the ability to decode and understand facial expression of emotions. Low-functioning autistic individuals present an underdeveloped decoding ability, while some high-functioning subjects show a level of performance similar to normals (Rojahn et al., 1995). An overview of the available literature allows us to conclude that, autistic people perform worse than normals, but how great is this impairment? This difficulty suggests the presence of a circumscribed and specific deficit, weakening the hypothesis of a damage of the whole ability to decode the emotional face (Bormann-Kischkel, Vilsmeier, & Baude, 1995). Another main factor related to decoding competences is the type of emotions they have to recognize ( Bormann-Kischkel et al., 1995). Autistic subjects shown to be competent in the decoding of the primary or simple emotions (e.g. happiness and sadness), show more difficulties in processing secondary or complex emotions, such as pride and embarrassment ( Balconi & Lucchiari, 2005; Balconi & Pozzoli, 2003a; Capps, Yirmiya, & Sigman, 1992). To identify these emotions more time and more informational cues must be analyzed. Moreover, as regard to the secondary emotion, a more accentuated difficulty in understanding causal antecedents (the events that caused the emotion expressed by face) and contextual relations (the social situations in which the emotion is produced) emerges ( Hillier & Allinson, 2002). Bormann-Kischkel et al. (1995) observed a specific difficulty in understanding the emotions that present a lack of correspondence between people expectations and environment events. These emotions have an external and social origin, such as surprise, dismay, and astonishment. In parallel, Capps et al. (1992) observed a greater impairment in recognizing the expression of those emotions that have an external locus of control and, simultaneously, that require a wide knowledge of the social scripts and of their social consequences. Bormann-Kischkel, Amorosa, and von Benda (1993) suggested that the comprehension of emotional expressions that are explained by external events constitutes a precursor of the theory of mind. In line with this hypothesis, Baron-Cohen, Spitz, and Cross (1993) suggested that the comprehension is more difficult for emotions that imply the activation of some cognitive functions, such as mentalization and metarepresentation. Another main concern is represented by contextual and situational elements that cause emotion (Fein, Lucci, Braverman, & Waterhouse, 1992). Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the role of a wider socializing context. Emotion recognition is allowed by the development and the generalization of an emotional script, that is, a child can recognize a specific emotion by verifying the presence of several prototypical elements that are arranged in precise causal and temporal sequences. These scripts include not only facial expressions, but also the representation of causal factors, physical and social context, several actions and their consequences, as well as the cognitive appraisal of the situation and the subjective experience (Bullock & Russell, 1986). Among these cues, the representation of the causal bonds, that is a set of causal events and of their behavioral consequences, has a remarkable significance, because they constitute the more explicative elements of the emotional experience (Want & Harris, 2001). Therefore, the concept of emotional context, considered as a complex and multidimensional representation of situational events, is relevant in facial expression processing. As Russell and Widen (2002) underlined, in everyday experience children use facial expressions in order to infer emotions. On the other hand, the facial cues are always located in an interactive context. A hypothesis that might account for autistic people difficulties is that the emotional and the social scripts are scarcely developed. Bullock and Russell (1986) proposed a model in which children acquire a system to represent and classify emotions which is based on a limited number of wide categories. The most important of them are the two dimensional axes of the hedonic value and the arousal level. This model was tested by some empirical studies which found that at the first time children interpret facial expressions in terms of pleasure–displeasure (bipolar hedonic value) and intensity (arousal level). Only in a second time they use more articulated and wider conceptual categories (Widen & Russell, 2003). Through a progressive process of script generalization, a “situated” comprehension of emotions arises. This process is well illustrated by the use of adequate emotional linguistic labels. Indeed, emotional labels, initially few and more inclusive, progressively become more specific and articulated. Emotional labels constitute the final step of a developmental process that goes through a “dimensional attribution” (characterized by the presence of pleasure–displeasure correlate) to a “situational attribution” (the script representation). Emotional labels belong to a more abstract level. To conclude, it is possible to maintain that the analysis of the processes underlying emotional expression decoding could provide important information regarding the conceptualization and lexicalization of facial expressions. This should be taken into consideration in studying the development of emotional decoding in autistic children, because these competences seem to be bound not only to cognitive but, above all, to social and communicative deficits, which have an influence on emotion conceptualization and lexicalization.

Data analysis and results In order to analyze the effect of pathology (normal/autistic children), stimulus type (facial expression/script) and lexical category (presence/absence), a log–linear hierarchical analysis with satured model was applied to each linguistic variable (see Areni, Ercolani, & Scalisi, 1994). A log–linear analysis was conducted for each emotion. We report the statistical data relative to the main effects of pathology (2), task (2) and the presence/absence of the lexical category (2). Moreover, we report the interaction effects only when they are significant to the analysis ( Table 1). Table 1. Significant effects for log–linear analysis “fit model” (in order to simplify, principal effect and interactions referred to the variable “presence of the category” are omitted) Disgust Happiness Fear Anger Surprise Sadness Label relevance Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 10.614, p = .0011 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 4.738, p = .0295 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 5.131, p = .0235 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 30.658, p < .001 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 6.062, p = .0138 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 14.455, p = .0001 Feelings Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 6.338, p = .0118 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 21.372, p < .001 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 17.676, p < .001 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 14.815, p = .0001 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Eliciting causes Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 7.987, p = .0047 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 36.782, p < .001 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 19.887, p < .001 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 35.462, p < .001 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 30.658, p < .001 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 4.464, p = .0346 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 20.118, p < .001 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 4.458, p = .0347 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 10.741, p = .0010 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 26.593, p < .001 Physical or mental state Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 19.696, p < .001 Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 5.948, p = .0147 Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 6.653, p = .0099 Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 7.075, p = .0078 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 4.409, p = .0357 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 121.372, p < .001 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 19.685, p < .001 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 21.372, p < .001 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.642, p = .0006 Hedonic value Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 16.161, p = .0001 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 19.887, p < .001 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 13.863, p = .0002 Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.917, p = .0006 Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 5.549, p = .0185 Task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 19.685, p < .001 p < .001 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 17.805, p < .001 Pathology, χ2(1, n = 33) = 7.361, p = .0067 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 13.500, p = .0002 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 11.971, p = .0009 Pathology × task, χ2(1, n = 33) = 10.238, p = .0031 Table options In Table 2 we report the percentage values for each linguistic category. Table 2. Percentage values for each verbal category (script and face) Disgust Happiness Fear Anger Surprise Sadness Script Face Script Face Script Face Script Face Script Face Script Face Label relevance Normal 18.5 18.5 96.1 88.5 96.1 61.5 80.8 73.1 30.8 26.9 65.4 80.8 Autistic 57.1 14.3 85.7 100.0 85.7 71.4 71.4 85.7 14.3 57.1 100.0 85.7 Feelings Normal 96.1 100.0 100.0 84.6 100.0 92.3 92.3 88.5 96.1 84.6 84.6 84.6 Autistic 57.1 42.9 85.7 100.0 85.7 100.0 71.4 85.7 85.7 71.4 100.0 85.7 Eliciting causes Normal 61.5 65.4 92.3 3.8 3.8 30.8 88.5 7.7 92.3 18.5 96.1 15.4 Autistic 57.1 0 71.4 0 85.7 0 100.0 0 100.0 0 100.0 0 State Normal 96.1 100.0 11.5 84.6 80.8 11.5 30.8 15.4 92.3 18.5 34.6 11.5 Autistic 100.0 28.6 57.1 0 28.6 14.3 28.6 0 57.1 14.3 71.4 14.3 Hedonic value Normal 76.9 76.9 96.1 80.8 88.5 65.4 88.5 76.9 88.5 69.2 84.6 61.5 Autistic 0 0 14.3 0 0 0 0 0 14.3 0 0 0 Table options 4.1. Happiness In both recognition tasks (emotional face and script), happiness was largely recognized by the subjects, normals and autistics. Also the emotional correlate was referred by almost all the sample. Above all it was used by normals in the script decoding task. Also, causal antecedents, especially in the case of normal children, were frequently produced in the script decoding. They were rarely reported in the face description. In particular, in this task no autistic child cites causal bonds. As regard to physical or mental states, in the script description it was often represented by autistic children, while on the contrary in face recognition only normals frequently make reference to them. Finally, taking into account the variable of “pathology”, it is interesting to note a significant difference in the representation of the hedonic value: many normal children reported this semantic category, which instead was ignored by all autistic participants. 4.2. Fear Fear was correctly identified by the whole sample. Emotional correlate was largely used in both conditions. Indeed, all normals make use of this category in the script recognition, while in the face decoding all autistic children explicited the emotional label. In general, the causal antecedent for fear was scarcely reported, even if it is noticeable that in the script recognition almost all autistics described the causes of the emotion. Physical or mental states were broadly used by normals to describe the emotional script, while it was rarely present in autistics’ report. In the face recognition task, both normal and autistic children made few references to the state. Finally, hedonic value was sometimes reported by normals, while no autistic child mentioned this category. 4.3. Anger Anger was largely recognized, especially by autistic children. Also, the emotional correlates were frequently expressed, above all by normal children. Anger causal antecedents were largely present in the script decoding task, while they were less frequently used to describe facial expression. This trend was more evident for autistics: all the subjects employed this conceptual category to characterize script, while none of them knew the causes in the case of face recognition. The state was rarely reported in both tasks. In particular, no autistic person described the physical or mental state related to facial expression. Finally, the hedonic value was never reported by autistics, but it was frequently named by normals, mainly during the script description. 4.4. Surprise On the contrary, surprise was scarcely labelled, especially as regard to the script comprehension. In this task normals showed a better performance in recognizing the emotions, while in the face decoding task autistic people revealed an improved ability over normals (more than 50%). Emotional correlates were often expressed, above all in the script representation. Both normals and autistics frequently made use of some causal antecedents in describing the script, while they rarely cited the causes for the facial expression. This trend was particularly accentuated in the case of autistic subjects. Finally, almost all of the normal subjects described the hedonic value of emotions, while no autistic child used this category. 4.5. Sadness In both of the recognition tasks, this emotion was largely labeled by almost all of the subjects, normal and autistic. The emotional correlates for sadness were expressed by the subjects, mainly by the autistics. In general, causal bonds were largely described as regard to the script but not to the face. Particularly, all autistic children described the causes for the script, while none of them used causal cues for facial expression. Moreover, state category was scarcely represented, especially in the facial expression recognition, even if almost all autistic children used it in describing the script. Finally, hedonic value was absent in autistic children verbalization, while it was frequently referred to by normals, mainly during the script decoding. 4.6. Disgust Disgust was scarcely recognized by the participants, with a worse performance for facial expression than for script, and this difficulty was more accentuated for autistics. On the contrary, emotional correlates were frequently reported, above all by normals. Emotional script was more often described in terms of causal antecedents. In particular, normals made use more frequently of the causal cues, which were never mentioned by autistics. Conversely, only autistic children made reference to the causes that determined the emotional script. Finally, hedonic value was never used by autistics, while it was widely reported by normals in both of the tasks.