Social approach and emotion recognition in fragile X syndrome

Tracey A. Williams, Melanie A. Porter, Robyn Langdon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Evidence is emerging that individuals with Fragile X syndrome (FXS) display emotion recognition deficits, which may contribute to their significant social difficulties. The current study investigated the emotion recognition abilities, and social approachability judgments, of FXS individuals when processing emotional stimuli. Relative to chronological age-(CA-) and mental age-(MA-) matched controls, the FXS group performed significantly more poorly on the emotion recognition tasks, and displayed a bias towards detecting negative emotions. Moreover, after controlling for emotion recognition deficits, the FXS group displayed significantly reduced ratings of social approachability. These findings suggest that a social anxiety pattern, rather than poor socioemotional processing, may best explain the social avoidance observed in FXS.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)133-150
Number of pages18
JournalAmerican Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Volume119
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2014

Keywords

  • Emotion
  • Fragile X syndrome
  • Social approach
  • Social avoidance

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