Erkennung und Imitation von Gesichtsausdrücken bei Jugendlichen mit Autismus-Spektrumstörung sowie bei gesunden Kindern und Jugendlichen im Entwicklungsverlauf
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The present dissertation is about the ability to recognize and imitate facial expressions. Because we assume that an exact face recognition is a requirement for an appropriate imitation. On the one hand we examined how these abilities develop from childhood to adolescence (developmental study), on the other hand we tested if there are differences between adolescents with autistic spectrum disorders (ASS) and healthy control subjects (clinical study). To test for a possible developmental delay we compared the ability to recognize and imitate facial expressions of adolescents with ASS with the ability of younger healthy control subjects. The dissertation tests for the following hypotheses: We assume that the ability to recognize unfamiliar and emotional faces improves with increasing age. We expect no differences between persons with ASS and healthy control subjects for the recognition of unfamiliar faces and emotional faces which show simple emotions (sad, happy), but we expect differences for more complex emotions (angry, fear) in the sense of worse performances by adolescents with ASS. Additionally we assume that the ability of imitation improves with increasing age and that there is a difference between adolescents with ASS and control subjects for the spontaneous and the voluntary imitation of facial expressions. The developmental study examined 28 healthy boys and adolescents at the age of 8 to 17 years. A correlation of the subjects’ IQ and their age was ruled out. In the clinical study 13 adolescents with ASS aged 13 to 17 years and 13 healthy adolescents participated. The groups were comparable considering age and IQ. Two tasks of a neuropsychological assessment program and one task to test the imitation of emotional expressions (spontaneous and voluntary imitation of facial expressions) were used for both clinical and developmental study. The tasks of the neuropsychological assessment program tested the recognition of unfamiliar faces and the recognition of facial expressions (happy, sad, angry and fear). During the test of the imitation ability the subjects were filmed while their spontaneous and voluntary imitation of facial expressions and afterwards their reactions were encoded using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). The results show that the ability to recognize unfamiliar as well as emotional faces improves with increasing age. Persons with ASS differentiate from healthy adolescent control subjects regarding the recognition of unfamiliar and emotional faces but they show accordances with the results of younger control subjects. We could not observe an improvement with increasing age for the ability of spontaneous and voluntary imitation of facial expressions. Furthermore there was also no group difference detectable between the persons with ASS and the healthy control subjects (younger as well as same age).
Source: RWTH Publications (RWTH Aachen)
Language: German
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W654715339