Measuring change in facial emotion recognition in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review

Children and adults with autism spectrum disorder show difficulty recognizing facial emotions in others, which makes social interaction challenging. While there are many treatments developed to improve facial emotion recognition, there is no agreement on the best way to measure such abilities in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. The purpose of this review is to examine studies that were published between January 1998 and November 2019 and have measured change in facial emotion recognition to evaluate the effectiveness of different treatments. Our search yielded 65 studies, and within these studies, 36 different measures were used to evaluate facial emotion recognition in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Only six of these measures, however, were used in different studies and by different investigators. In this review, we summarize the different measures and outcomes of the studies, in order to identify promising assessment tools and inform future research.