Naming emotion in faces and voices: Abilities and disabilities in autism and mental retardation

Groups of autistic and non-autistic retarded adolescents and young adults, individually matched for CA and verbal MA, together with a group of normal young children individually matched for verbal MA, were tested for their ability to name photographs of emotionally expressive faces and emotion-unrelated photographs of objects, and to name corresponding sounds recorded on audiotape. The results indicated that although BPVS-matched autistic and non-autistic retarded subjects were not significantly different when the emotion tasks were considered in isolation, autistic subjects differed from non-autistic retarded and normal subjects in being relatively poor at naming feelings vis-a-vis naming non-personal objects. On the other hand, there was evidence that group differences between non-autistic mentally retarded and normal subjects were not specific to the task of naming emotions. This raises doubt about claims that non-autistic mentally retarded individuals have specific deficits in emotion recognition.