Autism Traits in Typical Individuals Moderate Mimicry Responses to Happy, But Not Angry, Expressions Larissa C. D'Abreu, Daniel N. McIntosh Department of Psychology, University of Denver Corresponding Author: IntroductionResultsMethods Results Many thanks to the research assistants of the Emotion and Coping Lab for their hard work and dedication to the project. Conclusions and Future Work * * * People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) tend not to mimic emotional expressions as often as typically-developing controls (McIntosh, 2006). People high on autism traits also seem to show some similarities with the clinical ASD population, including preliminary research showing reduced mimicry (Hermans, 2009). Typical individuals mimic people they like more than those they do not like, but the mechanism underlying this process is not well understood (Stel et al, 2010). People might be more motivated to orient their attention to someone they like, thereby increasing in mimicry. This relative increase in mimicry could also be related to motivation to empathize more with liked individuals than disliked. While most nonverbal displays are expressed during face-to-face conversation, including both verbal and nonverbal channels of communication, most research on mimicry has not incorporated listening to emotional stories along with viewing emotional faces in their procedures. People who scored low on autism traits listening to stories from positive characters displayed more zygomaticus activity (M =.059, SE =.037) than those listening to stories from negative individuals (M = -.060, SE =.044), t(40) = 2.28, p =.035. Participants scoring low on autism traits also displayed more corrugator activity while listening to stories from actors they had developed a negative attitude toward (M =.084, SE =.053) compared to a positive attitude (M = -.136, SE =.044), t(40) = 3.18, p =.005. Figure 1. Interaction between attitude toward actor, muscle, and self- reported autism traits; F(2,39) = 6.94, p =.003. Figure 2. Interaction between expression, muscle, and self-reported autism traits, F(4,37) = 4.43, p =.005. Within-Subject Factor: -Social orienting (baseline control, detail attention, intent understanding). Participants were asked before each story to attend to specific details, for a deeper understanding of the character’s intent, or just to attend as they typically would. Between-Subject Factors: -Attitude toward actor (positive, negative). Each participant listened to either all positive or all negative descriptions of three actors, matched to the self-reported gender of the participant. - Self-reported level of autism traits, as measured by the Autism Quotient (AQ) The aim of the study was to explore whether ASD traits moderate the influence of attitude toward characters on mimicry. I hypothesized that people low on autism traits would mimic positive characters more than negative characters, and that participants high on autism traits would not differentiate mimicry responses based on attitude to character.. Electromyography (EMG) measured muscle activation over the zygomaticus, corrugator, and frontalis muscles. Participants in the low AQ group had higher activity across the zygomaticus muscle in response to happy faces compared to neutral faces, t(40) = 2.55, p =.04 and displayed significantly more zygomaticus activity to happy faces than people in the High AQ group, t(40) = 2.96, p =.016. Manipulations of attitude interact with ASD traits on mimicry of emotional expressions. People scoring low on autism traits show predicted mimicry patterns and also display facial expressions aligning with their attitude towards the character on screen. Future work will investigate how autism traits in typical individuals might moderate mimicry of subliminally- presented expressions and categorization of those expressions. Aims and Hypotheses