Des difficultés dans les processus de traitement des stimuli faciaux et émotionnels ont été rapportées dans l’autisme. Ces anomalies pourraient expliquer le déficit social caractéristique de cette pathologie. Onze enfants autistes (âge de développement=sept ans 11mois) et 11 enfants témoins (sept ans neuf mois) ont participé à trois expériences. La première met en jeu une discrimination émotionnelle faciale globale. La seconde requiert une discrimination émotionnelle locale à partir d’éléments isolés du visage. Enfin, dans la troisième tâche, il est demandé aux enfants de créer un visage émotionnel, sous la forme d’un puzzle, en utilisant comme pièces des photographies d’éléments faciaux isolés (représentation globale nécessitant une discrimination locale). Nos données révèlent que les enfants témoins ont des difficultés de discrimination locale des émotions ; leurs performances augmentent lorsqu’une perception globale est possible. À l’inverse, les enfants avec autisme sont meilleurs que les contrôles pour discriminer une émotion à partir d’une information locale (yeux isolés) mais leurs performances chutent quand un processus de traitement global peut être réalisé. Ainsi, des habiletés supérieures pour les processus de traitements locaux de l’information pourraient expliquer l’incapacité à établir une perception cohérente de l’environnement social conduisant au retrait social caractéristique de l’autisme.

Autistic syndrome is defined by several abnormalities, mainly affecting social interaction skills. Disorders of the processes of processing facial and emotional stimuli, and particularly avoidance of gaze, have also been reported in this disorder. Some authors have suggested that these abnormalities may be explained, or at least contributed to, by the social disorder observed in this syndrome. The aim of this study was therefore to improve the understanding of the processes involved in perception AND the representation of faces expressing emotion in subjects with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).

Eleven children with ASDs (mean developmental age 7 years 11 months) and eleven normally developing children (mean age 7 years 9 months) took part in three experiments. The first involved overall discrimination of emotions using photographs of faces expressing six basic emotions, the second required local emotional discrimination on the basis of isolated elements of the face (photographs of eyes and mouths isolated from the rest of the face), and for the third the children were asked to create faces expressing emotions by means of a jig-saw puzzle format, using photographs of isolated elements of the face (overall representation necessitating local discrimination).

Our findings revealed that the normally developing children had difficulties with the process of local discrimination of emotions: their performance improved when overall perception was possible. In contrast, and astonishingly, the children with ASD were more able to discriminate isolated eyes expressing emotion than the controls, but their performance declined when overall processing was required.

Our results suggested that the emotional disorders observed in ASDs might be explained by greater skills in the processing of local information. This might explain the inability of children with ASDs to achieve coherent perception of their social environment and might also lead to the withdrawal that is characteristic of this disorder. These results also suggest that the gaze avoidance that is characteristic of individuals with ASDs is eliminated when eyes are presented alone. This gaze avoidance therefore seems to be related to the complexity and variability of this type of stimulus and not to the social nature of the stimulus.