Altered Affective Egocentricity in Autism: Implications for Facial Emotion Perception

Affective egocentricity, the tendency to project one's own affect onto others, appears reduced in those with alexithymia, a condition often linked to autism. This study investigated the relationship between self-reported affectivity (implicit and explicit) and emotion perception (accuracy, perceived intensity) as well as facial muscle responses (corrugator supercilii, zygomaticus major) in autism.

Autistic adults (N = 40) and a non-autistic comparison group (N = 40) watched facial expressions whilst recorded (fEMG) and judged the stimuli afterwards.

For explicit affect, non-autistic participants showed affective egocentricity, with positive state affect linked to lower accuracy in recognizing angry expressions. In contrast, autistic participants showed an altered pattern, where positive state affect was associated with improved recognition of angry and fearful faces. For implicit affect, autistic participants showed an affect-incongruent link between negative affect and lower perceived intensity of fearful faces. When controlling for alexithymia, explicit state affect differences became more pronounced, but non-significant for implicit affect.

These findings offer new insights into how affect shapes social perception in autism differently and highlight the need to better understand the mechanisms underlying these differences and their potential strengths.