The perception of emotional prosody between children with high functioning autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children

In this study, we compared the ability of children with high- functioning autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children to recognize emotions using recorded words and sentences, while they had to choose the image displaying the emotion and indicate the correct answer verbally. A descriptive analysis was performed and the results demonstrated that typically developing children had similar performance in recognizing the emotional state through image selection and in recognizing the emotional state and expressing it through verbal production. Also, these children performed better compared to children with autism. Children with high- functioning autism showed a reduced ability to recognize emotions as expressed by changes in the recordings compared to typically developing children. Children with high - functioning autism scored low scores on both tests, but performed better on the test where a response with an image selection was required. Therefore, the expression of the recognition of the emotional state of the speaker seemed to be assisted by some visual stimuli.