| This study examined whether autistic children are better at interpreting emotion stimuli when they view a picture of themselves or of someone else. Body temperature was also measured to identify whether it would be associated with better performance in autistic children. The normal children (n = 9) displayed a ceiling effect of perfect identification of emotion across both references. The autistic children (n = 9) displayed a significant deficit in identifying the emotion displayed by others, but had near-normal performance on emotion identification of their own face. Compared to the normal children, autistic children held a lower body temperature and also demonstrated a positive correlation between emotion identification and body temperature. The results support the idea that theory of mind is a deficit found in autistic children. In addition, empirical data for body temperature promises to be a fruitful line of research. |
