Face processing in young adults with autism and ADHD: An event related potentials study

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Face and emotion processing atypicalities are common in autism and ADHD across development.
• Young adulthood is a critical period for understanding adult outcomes of autism and ADHD.
• Investigating face processing in young adults provides insights into neurodevelopmental trajectories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine event-related potentials (ERPs) in visual face processing for autism, ADHD, and co-occurring conditions.
• To analyze ERPs during passive viewing of faces varying in orientation, gaze, and emotion in young adults.
• To identify neural markers associated with face processing in autism and ADHD during young adulthood.

Main Methods:

• Utilized event-related potentials (ERPs) in a large sample (N=566) of young adults (18-25 years).
• Employed diagnostic tools including the Diagnostic Interview for ADHD in Adults 2.0 (DIVA-2) and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2 (ADOS-2).
• Analyzed ERPs from two passive viewing tasks: upright/inverted faces with direct/averted gaze, and faces with varying emotions.

Main Results:

• Autism group showed reduced N170 amplitude and longer latency, longer P1 latencies for emotional faces, and longer P3 latencies for upright faces.
• ADHD group exhibited longer N170 latencies specifically in the face-gaze task.
• Combined autism and ADHD group displayed additional gaze modulation alterations and a diminished face inversion effect (delayed N170).

Conclusions:

• Findings confirm measurable socio-functional atypicalities in face processing for young adults with autism.
• N170 alterations in autistic young adults align with previous research in both children and adults.
• Distinct ERP patterns highlight specific face processing challenges in autism and ADHD during young adulthood.