Leiden University Student Repository

Jong, Linda de (2016)

De rol van alexithymie bij het effect van arousal op de emotieherkenning van vrouwen met ASS

Master thesis | Education and Child Studies (MSc)

Many studies have already focused on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, few studies have focused on specifically women with ASD. In practice, evidence is provided for the fact that women with ASD show different symptoms than men with ASD, especially as regards to social skills. These different symptoms sometimes make these women hard to distinguish from women without ASD, with wrong diagnosis and treatments as a result. Therefore, information about these differences between women with and without ASD is needed. The first purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between arousal and emotion recognition of women with ASD. The second purpose of this study is to investigate the role of alexithymia on this relationship. Emotion recognition was examined by two tasks, Prosody Task (vocal emotion recognition) and FERT (visual emotion recognition), in a group of 31 women with ASD and 32 women without ASD, controlled for educational level. The current study used heart...Show moreMany studies have already focused on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, few studies have focused on specifically women with ASD. In practice, evidence is provided for the fact that women with ASD show different symptoms than men with ASD, especially as regards to social skills. These different symptoms sometimes make these women hard to distinguish from women without ASD, with wrong diagnosis and treatments as a result. Therefore, information about these differences between women with and without ASD is needed. The first purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between arousal and emotion recognition of women with ASD. The second purpose of this study is to investigate the role of alexithymia on this relationship. Emotion recognition was examined by two tasks, Prosody Task (vocal emotion recognition) and FERT (visual emotion recognition), in a group of 31 women with ASD and 32 women without ASD, controlled for educational level. The current study used heart rate as a measure of physiological activity to relate arousal responses in rest to accuracy of emotion recognition. With the use of a Mediation Model is examined whether alexithymia is playing a mediating role on the relationship between the arousal and emotion recognition. Findings revealed that women with ASD do not differ from women without ASD in their ability to recognize emotions. In addition, no relationship was found between arousal and emotion recognition of women with ASD. Moreover, alexithymia did not play a mediating role. Although these findings are contrary to expectation, they support the hypothesis that women with ASD are hard to distinguish from women without ASD due to their (relatively) intact socio-emotional skills. This highlights the need to adapt current diagnostic and therapeutic protocols to meet the needs of these women. However, more research to social development of women with ASD is needed.Show less

Autisme

arousal

alexithymie

vrouwen

Author

Jong, Linda de

Faculty

Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Specialisation

Clinical Child and Adolescent Studies

Supervisors

Ketelaars, Mieke

ECTS Credits

20

Language

nl