Contributions of the Alexithymia Hypothesis to Emotion Recognition and the impact of a Novel Mimicry Task for Therapeutic Benefit

Firstly, participants will partake in a baseline assessment. This involves a task of facial emotion recognition ability using a computer. The emotion recognition baseline task will begin with a short description of seven listed emotions. The baseline assessment will be comprised of 21 trials. Each trial will begin with a neutral expression image from an emotional expression database displayed on the screen. After this image has been displayed for 3 seconds, it will quickly swap over to another image from the same model, except this image will be of an emotional expression (e.g., angry, sad). After 500ms, this image will then be replaced with the original neutral image. Seven buttons will then be displayed with labels for each of the emotions to choose. After pressing a button, the next trial will begin. This task is the same as the experimental exposure, however, the facial mimicry element has been removed. Following the baseline task, participants will be immediately randomised to either a control or Instructed Facial Mimicry Exposure task and begin this task within approximately 1-3 minutes after the baseline assessment. Instructed Facial Mimicry Exposure: The aim of this task is to improve facial emotion recognition in people who have an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), with high or low levels of Alexithymia, a personality trait. Prior research has found instructed facial mimicry to improve facial emotion recognition in people with high levels of Autism traits (Lewis & Dunn, 2017) however this has not been assessed in people with an ASD. Additionally, the Alexithymia hypothesis (Bird & Cook, 2013) suggests that emotion processing problems observed in ASD are instead due to Alexithymia which is prevalent in people with ASD, however, no studies have assessed if instructed facial mimicry improves emotion recognition in Alexithymia. This task will be delivered in-person at the FedUni Clinic in Ballarat, Australia by the primary researcher Joshua Caine. Participants will take part in the task one participant at a time based on a mutually agreed upon time and date. Participants will only undergo this task once and it is expected to last roughly 30 minutes. Participants will sit in front of a computer screen. On the screen, a brief description of the visual appearance of seven emotions and how to identify them will be displayed (Fear, surprise, sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, contempt). Following this, participants will be verbally advised by the experimenter, and also in on-screen text that a series of emotion recognition trials will begin shortly and that after each emotion is displayed, they should try their best to mimic (copy) the facial expression that they saw with their face. Once they have mimicked the expression, they should then use the seven labeled buttons on the right-hand side to choose which emotion was displayed. After selecting the answer using one of the seven buttons, a 5-point Likert scale on the computer screen will ask the participant “How well did you mimic the expression?” with responses ranging from 1 "not very well" to 5 "very well". This will repeat for each of the 56 trials. The trials will include various models of both male and female, depicting the 7 emotions. Each trial will begin with a neutral expression image from an emotional expression database displayed on the screen. After this image has been displayed for 3 seconds, it will quickly swap over to another image from the same model, except this image will be of an emotional expression (e.g., angry, sad). After 500ms, this image will then be replaced with the original neutral image and the seven buttons with the seven emotion labels will appear on the right-hand side. References: Bird, G., & Cook, R. (2013). Mixed emotions: the contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of autism. Transl Psychiatry, 3, e285. Lewis, M. B., & Dunn, E. (2017). Instructions to mimic improve facial emotion recognition in people with sub-clinical autism traits. The Quarterly Jn.of Experimental Psychology, 70(11), 2357-2370.