Do children perceive features of real and cartoon faces in the same way? Evidence from typical development and autism.

In the current study, typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were presented with a facial-feature discrimination task including both real and cartoon faces, displayed either upright or inverted. Results demonstrated that typically developing children were more accurate at discriminating facial features from upright than from inverted faces and that this effect was specific to real faces. By contrast, children with ASD failed to show such a specific pattern of performance for processing facial features displayed in real faces.

Mr. Grimace or Ms. Smile: does categorization affect perceptual processing in autism?

This study compared the influence of categorization on perceptual processing in adults with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and normal control participants. Participants were asked to categorize hybrid faces (composed of two overlapped faces of different spatial bandwidths) by gender and emotion. Control participants exhibited a bias for low-pass information during gender categorization and a bias for high-pass information during emotion categorization.

Typical emotion processing for cartoon but not for real faces in children with autistic spectrum disorders.

This study evaluated whether atypical face processing in autism extends from human to cartoon faces for which they show a greater interest. Twenty children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) were compared to two groups of typically developing children, matched on chronological and mental age. They processed the emotional expressions of real faces, human cartoon and nonhuman cartoon faces.