Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social interaction and communication. While many studies suggest that individuals with ASD struggle with emotion processing, the association between emotion processing and autistic traits in non-clinical populations is still unclear. We examine whether neurotypical adults' facial emotion recognition and expression imitation are associated with autistic traits. We recruited 32 neurotypical adults; each received two computerized tasks, the Dynamic Emotion Recognition and Expression Imitation, and two standardized measures: the Chinese version AQ and the Twenty-Item Prosopagnosia Index (PI-20). Results for the dynamic emotion recognition showed that happiness has the highest mean accuracy, followed by surprise, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. For expression imitation, it was easiest to imitate surprise and happiness, followed by disgust, while the accuracy of imitating sadness, anger, and fear was much lower. Importantly, individual AQ scores negatively correlated with emotion recognition accuracy and positively correlated with PI-20. The AQ imagination, communication sub-scores, and PI-20 positively correlated with the expression imitation of surprise. In summary, we found a significant link between recognizing emotional expressions and the level of autistic traits in non-clinical populations, supporting the concept of broader autism phenotype.
Keywords: autism quotient (AQ); broader autism phenotype (BAP); dynamic emotion recognition; expression imitation; face processing.