Abstract

Background: Individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA), despite preserve IQ and language skills, have significant deficits in social communication, and often experiencing bullying by their peers (Sterzing et al. 2012). Many of these social communication deficits are based on an inability to use non-verbal cues, such as reading others’ facial expressions (Klin et al. 2002, Wang et al. 2007), or producing expressions that are unusual (Yirmiya et al. 1989, Grossman et al. 2008), and are perceived as awkward by TD individuals after just one second (Grossman 2014). Despite this clear deficit in the quality of facial expression production, we do not yet understand the underlying mechanisms for this perceived awkwardness.
Objectives: To quantify facial expression awkwardness by analyzing the dynamic movement patterns of facial expressions in children with HFA and how they differ from the more canonical movement …

Date

December 19, 2025

Authors

R Grossman, T Guha, Z Yang, D Hedley, SS Narayanan

Journal

Proc. Int. Meeting for Autism Research