{"id":1702,"date":"2019-01-08T10:42:32","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T10:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2019-01-08T12:01:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T12:01:55","slug":"adults-with-autism-can-read-complex-emotions-in-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/2019\/01\/08\/adults-with-autism-can-read-complex-emotions-in-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Adults with autism can read complex emotions in others"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>New research from psychologists at the University shows for the first time that adults with autism can recognise complex emotions such as regret and relief in others as easily as those without the condition.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The lead author\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/people\/fergusonh\/\">Professor Heather Ferguson<\/a>, from the University\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/index.html\">School of Psychology<\/a>, explained that the study\u00a0highlights a previously overlooked strength in adults with ASD.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers used\u00a0eye-tracking technology to monitor participants\u00a0as they read stories in which a character\u00a0made a decision then experienced a positive or negative outcome.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers found that adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were quickly able to think about how things might have turned out differently (either better or worse than reality),\u00a0then\u00a0judge whether the story character would feel regret or relief (known as counterfactual emotions).<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0adults with ASD were found to be just as good at recognising regret emotions in the character as adults without the condition, and even better at computing relief.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Ferguson said: \u2018Our study is unusual in using state-of-the-art eye-tracking methods to test how people understand emotions in real time.\u00a0We have shown that, contrary to previous research that has highlighted the difficulties adults with autism experience with empathy and perspective-taking, people with autism possess previously overlooked strengths in processing emotions.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Read the full story on the University&#8217;s News Centre <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/news\/science\/20716\/adults-with-autism-can-read-complex-emotions-in-others\">here<\/a>. The research, entitled\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/full\/10.1002\/aur.2056\"><em>Intact counterfactual emotion processing in autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from eye-tracking<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(Jo Black, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/people\/barzym\/index.html\">Mahsa Barzy<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/people\/williamsd\/\">David Williams<\/a> and Heather Ferguson, University of Kent) is published in the journal\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/journal\/19393806\"><em>Autism Research<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New research from psychologists at the University shows for the first time that adults with autism can recognise complex emotions such as regret and relief &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/2019\/01\/08\/adults-with-autism-can-read-complex-emotions-in-others\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55574,"featured_media":1703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[140631,3684,70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55574"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1706,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/1706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}