Facial Mimicry Essay

Studies reviewed by Bons, Rommelse, Scheepers, and Buitelaar (2010) and conducted by McIntosh, Reichmann-Decker, Winkielman and Wilbarger (2006) examined motor empathy in autism. Focusing on rapid facial mimicry, both studies found that autistic children showed a delayed reaction to the expression of emotion, yet they still were able to produce congruent facial expressions. Bons et al. (2010) suggest a voluntary facial mimicry system may explain how individuals with autism are able to mimic. McIntosh et al. (2006) also found similar results, suggesting that individuals with autism actually demonstrated superior performance on the voluntary mimicry assessment.

McIntosh et al. (2006) further suggest that the delay in mimicry was not due to …show more content…
Set across two time conditions (15ms and 30ms), the study discovered that individuals with autism struggled in the faster condition. By introducing the rapid process, Clark et al. (2008) sought to assess the emotional perception of individuals with autism without accessing alternative strategies, such as verbal intelligence or top-down processing.
Clark et al. (2008) suggest that the inability to access emotional states rapidly could interrupt social interactions, as conversations are fleeting and nuances of emotional content would be missed. The dynamic interaction of a conversation would be problematic if an individual relies upon social context, learned strategies, such as scripts or their own personal emotional state. In addition to potentially accounting for the awkward interactions displayed by individuals with autism, the recognition of rapid facial reactions is equally important to neurotypical individuals as it assists determining how the perceiver should behave. As expressions enable observers to read the possible behaviour of another person, facial recognition serves a vital role in determining who is friend or foe (Tracey & Robins,