An Examination Of Performances On Facial Recognition, Emotional Recognition, And Visuospatial Tasks Across Individuals With Autism Spectrum Condition, Unaffected Siblings, And Typically Developing Individuals

Abstract

Autism spectrum condition (ASC) is a prevalent developmental disorder which is characterized as having repetitive behavior and deficits in both communication and social skills. There is evidence that first degree relatives such as unaffected siblings of individuals with ASC share some of these traits too. Within ASC literature there is conflicting results concerning whether individuals with ASC and unaffected siblings perform poorly on tasks that require facial and emotional recognition and whether these individuals are able to perform visuospatial tasks significantly better than typically developing individuals. The purpose of our study is to determine whether individuals with ASC and unaffected siblings have similar performances on tasks such as the Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT), Reading the Mind and the Eyes Test (RMET), Weschler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, second edition (WASI-II), and Embedded Figures test (EFT) which test facial recognition, emotional recognition, IQ, and visuospatial manipulation respectively. In addition we wanted to examine whether there were any patterns on task performances that are associated with individuals with ASC, unaffected siblings, and typically developing individuals. We found that individuals with ASC perform significantly worse than typically developing individuals on the BFRT. In addition we found that unaffected siblings outperformed individuals with ASC on both verbal IQ and full IQ of the WASI-II. We found no clear relationships between group and task performance. iii