A Self-Determination Theory Approach to Work Motivation of Autistic Adults: A Qualitative Exploratory Study.

The study explores work motivation of autistic adults through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Twelve autistic employees (ages 28-47; 3 females) participated in semi-structured qualitative interviews about their work experience. Analysis combined inductive and deductive approaches, identifying motivational themes emerging from the interviews, and analyzing them according to SDT concepts. Two major themes emerged: (1) work motivation factors positioned on the self-determination continuum: income and self-reliance; a daily routine; social/familial internalized norms; meaning and contribution; and job interest; and (2) satisfaction of psychological needs at work, postulated by SDT: competence, social-relatedness, and autonomy and structure. Findings are discussed in relation to current literature, and practical applications are suggested for meeting the motivational needs of autistic employees and promoting employment stability

The Cambridge Mindreading Face-Voice Battery for Children (CAM-C): complex emotion recognition in children with and without autism spectrum conditions.

BACKGROUND: Difficulties in recognizing emotions and mental states are central characteristics of autism spectrum conditions (ASC). However, emotion recognition (ER) studies have focused mostly on recognition of the six 'basic' emotions, usually using still pictures of faces. METHODS: This study describes a new battery of tasks for testing recognition of nine complex emotions and mental states from video clips of faces and from voice recordings taken from the Mindreading DVD. This battery (the Cambridge Mindreading Face-Voice Battery for Children or CAM-C) was given to 30 high-functioning children with ASC, aged 8 to 11, and to 25 matched controls. RESULTS: The ASC group scored significantly lower than controls on complex ER from faces and voices. In particular, participants with ASC had difficulty with six out of nine complex emotions. Age was positively correlated with all task scores, and verbal IQ was correlated with scores in the voice task. CAM-C scores were negatively correlated with parent-reported level of autism spectrum symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Children with ASC show deficits in recognition of complex emotions and mental states from both facial and vocal expressions. The CAM-C may be a useful test for endophenotypic studies of ASC and is one of the first to use dynamic stimuli as an assay to reveal the ER profile in ASC. It complements the adult version of the CAM Face-Voice Battery, thus providing opportunities for developmental assessment of social cognition in autism.OG was supported by the Wingate Foundation, the Corob Charitable Trust and B’nai B’rith Scholarships. SBC was supported by the Shirley Foundation, the Medical Research Council (MRC) UK, the Wellcome Trust and the Autism Research Trust. This study was conducted in association with the NIHR CLAHRC-EoE, EU ASC-Inclusion, and EU-AIMS.This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://www.molecularautism.com/content/6/1/22#ack

Emotion Word Comprehension from 4 to 16 Years Old: A Developmental Survey

Background: Whilst previous studies have examined comprehension of the emotional lexicon at different ages in typically developing children, no survey has been conducted looking at this across different ages from childhood to adolescence. Purpose: To report how the emotion lexicon grows with age. Method: Comprehension of 336 emotion words was tested in n = 377 children and adolescents, aged 4–16 years old, divided into 6 age-bands. Parents or teachers of children under 12, or adolescents themselves, were asked to indicate which words they knew the meaning of. Results: Between 4 and 11 years old, the size of the emotional lexicon doubled every 2 years, but between 12 and 16 years old, developmental rate of growth of the emotional lexicon leveled off. This survey also allows emotion words to be ordered in terms of difficulty. Conclusions: Studies using emotion terms in English need to be developmentally sensitive, since during childhood there is considerable change. The absence of change after adolescence may be an artifact of the words included in this study. This normative developmental data-set for emotion vocabulary comprehension may be useful when testing for delays in this ability, as might arise for environmental or neurodevelopmental reasons

Working Together: Integrating Computational Modeling Approaches to Investigate Complex Phenomena

Complex systems are made up of many entities, whose interactions emerge into distinct collective patterns. Computational modeling platforms can provide a powerful means to investigate emergent phenomena in complex systems. Some research has been carried out in recent years about promoting students' modeling practices, specifically using technologically advanced tools and approaches that allow students to create, manipulate, and test computational models. However, not much research had been carried out on the integration of several modeling approaches when investigating complex phenomena. In this paper, we describe the design principles used to develop a middle school unit about ants' collective behavior that integrates three modeling approaches: conceptual drawn models, agent-based models, and system dynamics models. We provide results from an initial implementation of an 8th grade curricular unit, indicating that students engaged with several aspects of the modeling practice. Students' conceptual knowledge about ant pheromone communication increased following learning the unit. We also found gains in students' metamodeling knowledge about models as tools for investigating phenomena. We discuss the affordances and challenges of engaging students with several modeling approaches in science classroom

Keeping in time with social and non-social stimuli: synchronisation with auditory, visual, and audio-visual cues

Everyday social interactions require us to closely monitor, predict, and synchronise our movements with those of an interacting partner. Experimental studies of social synchrony typically examine the social-cognitive outcomes associated with synchrony, such as affiliation. On the other hand, research on the sensorimotor aspects of synchronisation generally uses non-social stimuli (e.g. a moving dot). To date, the differences in sensorimotor aspects of synchronisation to social compared to non-social stimuli remain largely unknown. The present study aims to address this gap using a verbal response paradigm where participants were asked to synchronise a ‘ba’ response in time with social and non-social stimuli, which were presented auditorily, visually, or audio-visually combined. For social stimuli a video/audio recording of an actor performing the same verbal ‘ba’ response was presented, whereas for non-social stimuli a moving dot, an auditory metronome or both combined were presented. The impact of autistic traits on participants’ synchronisation performance was examined using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Our results revealed more accurate synchronisation for social compared to non-social stimuli, suggesting that greater familiarity with and motivation in attending to social stimuli may enhance our ability to better predict and synchronise with them. Individuals with fewer autistic traits demonstrated greater social learning, as indexed through an improvement in synchronisation performance to social vs non-social stimuli across the experiment

Basic and complex emotion recognition in children with autism: cross-cultural findings.

BACKGROUND: Children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have emotion recognition deficits when tested in different expression modalities (face, voice, body). However, these findings usually focus on basic emotions, using one or two expression modalities. In addition, cultural similarities and differences in emotion recognition patterns in children with ASC have not been explored before. The current study examined the similarities and differences in the recognition of basic and complex emotions by children with ASC and typically developing (TD) controls across three cultures: Israel, Britain, and Sweden. METHODS: Fifty-five children with high-functioning ASC, aged 5-9, were compared to 58 TD children. On each site, groups were matched on age, sex, and IQ. Children were tested using four tasks, examining recognition of basic and complex emotions from voice recordings, videos of facial and bodily expressions, and emotional video scenarios including all modalities in context. RESULTS: Compared to their TD peers, children with ASC showed emotion recognition deficits in both basic and complex emotions on all three modalities and their integration in context. Complex emotions were harder to recognize, compared to basic emotions for the entire sample. Cross-cultural agreement was found for all major findings, with minor deviations on the face and body tasks. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the multimodal nature of ER deficits in ASC, which exist for basic as well as complex emotions and are relatively stable cross-culturally. Cross-cultural research has the potential to reveal both autism-specific universal deficits and the role that specific cultures play in the way empathy operates in different countries.The research leading to this work has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) under grant agreement no. [289021]. SvB was supported by the Swedish Research Council (Grant No. 523-2009-7054), and SBC was supported by the Autism Research Trust, the MRC, the Wellcome Trust, and the NIHR CLAHRC EoE during the period of this work

Basic and complex emotion recognition in children with autism: cross-cultural findings

Background: Children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have emotion recognition deficits when tested in different expression modalities (face, voice, body). However, these findings usually focus on basic emotions, using one or two expression modalities. In addition, cultural similarities and differences in emotion recognition patterns in children with ASC have not been explored before. The current study examined the similarities and differences in the recognition of basic and complex emotions by children with ASC and typically developing (TD) controls across three cultures: Israel, Britain, and Sweden. Methods: Fifty-five children with high-functioning ASC, aged 5–9, were compared to 58 TD children. On each site, groups were matched on age, sex, and IQ. Children were tested using four tasks, examining recognition of basic and complex emotions from voice recordings, videos of facial and bodily expressions, and emotional video scenarios including all modalities in context. Results: Compared to their TD peers, children with ASC showed emotion recognition deficits in both basic and complex emotions on all three modalities and their integration in context. Complex emotions were harder to recognize, compared to basic emotions for the entire sample. Cross-cultural agreement was found for all major findings, with minor deviations on the face and body tasks. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the multimodal nature of ER deficits in ASC, which exist for basic as well as complex emotions and are relatively stable cross-culturally. Cross-cultural research has the potential to reveal both autism-specific universal deficits and the role that specific cultures play in the way empathy operates in different countries

The EU-Emotion Voice Database.

In this study, we report the validation results of the EU-Emotion Voice Database, an emotional voice database available for scientific use, containing a total of 2,159 validated emotional voice stimuli. The EU-Emotion voice stimuli consist of audio-recordings of 54 actors, each uttering sentences with the intention of conveying 20 different emotional states (plus neutral). The database is organized in three separate emotional voice stimulus sets in three different languages (British English, Swedish, and Hebrew). These three sets were independently validated by large pools of participants in the UK, Sweden, and Israel. Participants' validation of the stimuli included emotion categorization accuracy and ratings of emotional valence, intensity, and arousal. Here we report the validation results for the emotional voice stimuli from each site and provide validation data to download as a supplement, so as to make these data available to the scientific community. The EU-Emotion Voice Database is part of the EU-Emotion Stimulus Set, which in addition contains stimuli of emotions expressed in the visual modality (by facial expression, body language, and social scene) and is freely available to use for academic research purposes