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Updated: Mar 6, 2026
Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
[Event-related potential of working memory on emotional faces in children with autism spectrum disorder]
Cai-Juan Xu1, Ling Zhang, Ning Pan
1Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510080, China. jinyu@mail.sysu.edu.cn.
Objective:
To investigate the characteristics of working memory ability on emotional faces and related event-related potential (ERP) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Methods:
The Chinese Facial Affective Picture System was used as test material, and the event-related potential system was used to record the electroencephalographic data when 16 ASD children aged 6-12 years (ASD group) and 14 normal children matched for age (control group) were completing the facial emotion delayed match-to-sample task. The characteristics of P3b component were analyzed for both groups.
Results:
Compared with the control group, the ASD group had a significantly longer reaction time (1 527 ms vs 1 060 ms; P<0.05) and a significantly lower accuracy rate (76% vs 88%; P<0.01) in the facial emotion delayed match-to-sample task. There was a difference in the amplitude of P3b component during the encoding stage between the two groups. In the ASD group, the P3b component on the left side electrode had a higher amplitude than that on the right side electrode (P<0.05), while the control group had no such characteristics.
Conclusions:
There is a difference in P3b component during the encoding stage between school-aged ASD children and normal children. In ASD children, working memory on emotional faces may depend more on the related neural pathway in the left hemisphere.
