Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often find it hard to recognise and control emotions. But their skills in the area of emotional development can be improved, which in turn can help them understand and respond more appropriately to other people.
According to koodakpress، Humans have six basic emotions – happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, fear and disgust. We also experience more complex feelings like embarrassment, shame, pride, guilt, envy, joy, trust, interest, contempt and anticipation.
The ability to understand and express these emotions starts developing from birth.
From around two months, most babies will laugh and show signs of fear. By 12 months, a typically developing baby can read your face to get an understanding of what you’re feeling. Most toddlers and young children start to use words to express feelings – although you might see a tantrum or two when their feelings get too big for their words!
Throughout childhood and adolescence, most children continue building empathy, self-regulation and skills in recognising and responding to other people’s feelings. By adulthood, people are usually able to quickly recognise subtle emotional expressions.
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often find it hard to:
Recognising emotions
Babies who are later diagnosed with ASD can recognise feelings in a similar way to typically developing babies. But these children are slower to develop emotional responses than typically developing children.
By 5-7 years, these children can recognise happy and sad, but they have a harder time with subtle expressions of fear and anger.
By adolescence, teenagers with ASD still aren’t as good at recognising fear, anger, surprise and disgust as typically developing teenagers.
As adults, they continue to have trouble recognising some emotions.
Showing emotions
Babies who are later diagnosed with ASD can show feelings in a similar way to typically developing babies.
By school age, children with less severe ASD tend to show their feelings in a similar way to typically developing children, but can find it hard to describe their feelings. They might say that they don’t feel a particular emotion. At the same age, many children with more severe ASD seem to have less emotional expression than typically developing children.
It might look like children with ASD don’t respond emotionally, or their emotional responses might sometimes seem over the top – for example, they might get very angry very quickly.
Responding to and interacting with others
From an early age, children with ASD often pay less attention to other people’s emotional behaviour and faces.
They don’t tend to point out interesting things to other people, or respond to interesting things that others point out to them. This is called social or joint attention, and the lack of it is one of the early warning signs for ASD. Preschoolers with ASD continue to find shared attention difficult and often won’t use words to direct someone else’s attention.
Children with ASD often also find it hard to use emotion to manage social interactions. They might show less concern for others and less ability to comfort others or share emotions. They might misread situations and respond with emotions that are off the mark.
For example, a child with ASD might not comfort a sibling who falls over, or might laugh because he doesn’t recognise that the child is hurt.
Face perception
Children with ASD might have trouble understanding other people’s emotions because of the way they scan faces.
People with ASD tend to scan faces in a more random way than typically developing people. They spend less time looking at the eyes and more time focusing on the mouth. This means the information they get from a person’s face tells them less about what that person is feeling.
You can use everyday interactions to help your child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) learn about feelings and improve her ability to express and respond to emotions.
Here are some ideas:
You might also find the following tools useful:
It helps to have realistic expectations. Children with ASD can learn to be more emotionally responsive, but even when they have these skills, they tend to use them less than other children.