Computerized assessment of emotional expressiveness in children with autism using conditional discrimination

Abstract

The present study aimed to evaluate the emotional expressivity of children with ASD through a computerized conditional discrimination procedure involving spoken basic emotions, facial expressions in drawings, and video situations. Two children diagnosed with ASD participated in the study. Three sets of stimuli were used (dictated words, emotions in figures, and videos) related to the basic emotions of joy, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, and dis­gust/aversion. The experimental tasks were administered by Special Education professionals in a computerized format, evaluating conditional discriminations between spoken emotions-facial expression figures and spoken emotions-videos of scenes involving emotions. In the er­ror analysis, one participant responded incorrectly in the first two trials containing figures and videos, while the other child showed a higher number of errors (n=5) in the video tasks com­pared to those using figures (n=2). The use of figures, videos, and conditional discrimination tasks in teaching emotional expressivity within the context of Special Education is discussed.