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Updated: Aug 1, 2025

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Autistic traits and self-conscious emotions in early childhood
Shanna van Trigt1,2, Cristina Colonnesi3, Eddie Brummelman3
1Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Abstract:
Self-conscious emotions arise from evaluating the self through the eyes of others. Given that children with autistic traits may experience difficulties with understanding others' minds, they might show less attuned self-conscious emotions. Two-to-five-year-old children's (N = 98, Mage = 48.54 months, 50% girls, 92% White) self-conscious emotions (guilt, embarrassment, and shame-like avoidance) were observed after children "broke" the experimenter's favorite toy. Data were collected from March 2018 till June 2019. Children with more autistic traits showed less theory of mind (ToM), and more shame-like avoidance, but associations were not mediated by ToM. This provides initial evidence that children with more autistic traits may show disturbances in some but not all self-conscious emotions, which could hinder their social functioning.
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