1. Ali Fay, B.S. Ed. Valdosta State University
The Effects of Emotion Recognition Using Emoticons in Children with Autism
Ali Fay, B.S. Ed.
Valdosta State University

2. Disclosure statement
No authors had any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest associated with the content of this presentation.

3. Background Information
Autism and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are terms used for a group of complex neurodevelopment disorders.
Autism is characterized by difficulty in social interactions, verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviors.
Most children will not be diagnosed with autism until months of age.
Some children with autism will develop normally until the second year of life.

4. Background Information
Pragmatic ability depends on social knowledge and skill as well as linguistic knowledge and skill.
Typically, pragmatic skills develop within first 8 years of life
Theory of mind is when a person understands or identifies the thoughts and feelings of others.
Children with autism can have problems recognizing and processing the feelings that others have.
Recent evidence suggests that emotion recognition impairments in children with autism are due to alexithymia.
Alexithymia is difficulty in experiencing, expressing, and describing emotional responses.

5. Research Question and Hypothesis
What is the effect of using emoticons on emotional recognition in children with autism?
It is hypothesized that children with autism will have better emotional recognition with an actual human face versus an emoticon showing emotion.
Humans should identify better with a face showing emotion because it is a familiarity.

6. Methods The participants consisted of two children with autism.
One male, one female; 4 years old
5 different emotions were presented by pictures of human faces: happy, sad, mad, embarrassed, and confused
Same 5 emotions were represented by pictures of emoticons.
Examiner prompted child to point to each emotion.
Started with human faces, then emoticons

7. Results
Both participants scored relatively low on each section of the study (below 60 percent in all areas).
Both participants scored higher on recognizing emoticon’s emotions than human face’s.
The female participant scored 20 percent better on the study than the male participant.
Refer to Figure 1 for average scores of emotion recognition

8. Results Participant one scored:
20 percent on recognizing human facial expressions
40 percent on recognizing emoticons.
Participant two scored:
40 percent on recognizing human facial expressions
60 percent on recognizing emoticons.

9. Results- Figure 1

10. Discussion
The findings show that children with autism exhibited better facial recognition with emoticons versus actual human faces.
Both participants scored 20 percent higher
The findings of the study did not support the hypothesis that children with autism would demonstrate better emotional recognition with an actual human face versus an emoticon showing emotion.

11. Implications
Speech-language pathologists can first teach these clients emotions using emoticons or cartoons.
Then transfer that knowledge to teach facial expressions using actual human faces.
Doing this technique could possibly give the client a better understanding of emotions and/or have them learn this skill more quickly.

12. References
Age, B. (n.d.) What Is Autism? Retrieved from autism
American Speech- Language Association. (1997). Autism. Retrieved from
Ibertsson, T. (2009). Cognition and communication in children/adolescents with cochlear implant. PhD Thesis, Department of Logopedics, Phonetics and Audiology, Lund University.
Kumari, S., Pyata, R., K., Bushari, A., & Paithankar, P. S. (2016). Pragmatic skills in children with different types of learning disability: A comparative study. Language in India, 16(9),
Oakley, B. M., Brewer, R., Bird, G., & Catmur, C. (2016). Theory of mind is not theory of emotion: A cautionary note on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125(6),