Demystifying emotion-processing: autism, alexithymia, and the underlying psychological mechanisms

Keating, Connor Tom ORCID: 0000-0001-5906-1789 (2024). Demystifying emotion-processing: autism, alexithymia, and the underlying psychological mechanisms. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

Despite extensive research, the mechanisms underpinning successful emotion recognition remain unclear. Constructionist, template-matching, and signal detection theories illuminate several emotion-related psychological processes that may be involved – namely the conceptualisation, experience, visual representation, and production of emotion – however, this requires empirical verification. Therefore, across the six empirical chapters described here, I developed and applied several novel experimental paradigms to assess the way in which individuals conceptualise, experience, visualise, produce and recognise emotion, and created new mathematically plausible, mechanistic models that shed light on the processes involved in emotion recognition. In doing so, I identified several candidate mechanisms that may underpin the emotion recognition difficulties seen in a range of clinical conditions, including autism spectrum disorder, and I (1) determined whether there are differences between autistic and non- autistic individuals in these emotion-related psychological processes, and (2) ascertained whether differences therein underpin emotion recognition challenges for autistic people.

Ten years ago, it was theorised that the emotion-related difficulties of autistic individuals do not stem from autism per se, but rather alexithymia – a subclinical condition highly prevalent in the autistic population characterised by difficulties identifying and describing emotions. Since its inception, this theory has gained empirical support, with multiple studies documenting that alexithymia, and not autism, is associated with emotion- processing differences. However, to date, this evidence has largely been confined to the domain of emotion recognition. As such, it is unclear whether there are differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals in the conceptualisation, experience, visual representation, and production of emotion, after controlling for alexithymia. Here, I resolved this ambiguity, discerning the explanatory scope of the “alexithymia hypothesis”: there were no differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals in the understanding or differentiation of emotion concepts (Chapter 6), the precision or differentiation of emotional experiences (Chapter 6), and the speed (Chapter 3) or differentiation of visual emotion representations (Chapter 5), after controlling for alexithymia. Nevertheless, there were differences between groups with respect to the precision of visual representations (Chapter 5), the production of emotional facial expressions (Chapter 7), and recognition of specific emotions (Chapter 2), even after accounting for this confound.

Despite suggestions that autistic individuals adopt alternative strategies to recognise the emotions of others, very few studies have examined mechanistic differences in emotion recognition between autistic and non-autistic people. Therefore, here I aimed to compare the processes involved in emotion recognition for these groups. Across multiple empirical chapters, I identified that there are similarities and differences in the processes implicated in emotion recognition for autistic and non-autistic people (Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7), with autistic individuals relying on fewer emotion-related psychological processes. By elucidating several candidate mechanisms underpinning superior emotion recognition, my doctoral work paves the way for future supportive interventions to help both autistic and non-autistic individuals to accurately interpret other people’s emotions, thus ultimately fostering more successful and fluid social interactions.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):