Recognition of basic affective prosody in children with autism spectrum conditions: A three-level meta-analysis based...

The recognition of basic affective prosody in children with autism spectrum condition (ASC) was investigated using a three-level meta-analysis. The analysis focused on emotional dimensions-namely, the three core attributes of emotion (arousal, valence, and dominance)-as well as experimental factors such as chronological age, sample size, stimulus presentation (stimuli with pure prosody or neutral semantic content), and semantic presentation (words and sentences). We examined how these features influenced affective prosody recognition in children with ASC. The meta-analysis comprised 16 empirical studies. A random effect model revealed a small but significant effect size (Hedges' g = -0.277). Egger's test and fail-safe N indicated an absence of publication bias. Heterogeneity analysis revealed a significant between-study variability, and no significant within-study heterogeneity was detected. Age, stimulus presentation and semantic presentation method did not significantly account for the observed between-study heterogeneity. However, significant group differences between ASC and typically developing (TD) children emerged when the semantic content was presented in a sentence form. Moreover, valence was a significant moderator. The difference between ASC and TD children was greater for positive-valence than negative-valence emotional expressions. Additionally, group differences were more pronounced for emotional expressions characterized by high arousal and high dominance. Furthermore, children with ASC exhibited greater difficulty recognizing affective prosody embedded in semantically complex contexts. In basic affective prosody recognition, children with ASC appear particularly sensitive to emotional valence. This finding is consistent across cultures. Moreover, the results of the meta-analysis were discussed in relation to the impacts of cue integration, information overload, impaired social cognition, abnormal neural system activation, and the development and accumulation of social experiences on children with ASC.