Abnormal patterns of cerebral lateralisation as revealed by the Universal Chimeric Faces Task in individuals with autistic disorder.

A previous study by Workman, Chilvers, Yeomans, and Taylor (2006), using the "Universal" Chimeric Faces Task (UCFT) for six emotional expressions, demonstrated that an overall left hemispatial/right hemisphere (RH) advantage has begun to develop by the age of 7-8. Moreover, the development of this left hemispatial advantage was observed to correlate positively with the ability to read emotions in the faces of others. Adopting the UCFT, the current study compared autistic children (11-15) with unimpaired children of two age groups (5-6 and 7-8) from this previous study.

Development of cerebral lateralisation for recognition of emotions in chimeric faces in children aged 5 to 11.

In contrast to research into the development of language laterality, there has been relatively little research into the development of lateralisation of emotional processing. If language lateralisation begins in childhood and is complete by puberty (Lenneberg, 1967) it seems reasonable that the lateralisation of the perception of emotions might also occur during this period. In this study a split field chimeric faces test using the six universal facial expressions proposed by Ekman and Friesen (1971), an emotion in the eyes test, and a situational cartoon test were administered to three groups of children aged 5/6, 7/8, and 10/11.