Masters Thesis

Development of a new emotion recognition test with emoticons for adolescents with poor social skills

Traditional emotional interpretation scales rely on images of real faces to express basic and complex emotions, but individuals with High-Functioning Autism or poor social skills may have difficulty in processing these minute variations in features from face to face. Use of standardized, artificial faces has been shown to aid individuals with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) or Asperger's Disorder (AD) in interpreting emotions (Baron-Cohen, 2007). Thus, an emotional interpretation scale with standardized facial features is needed to account for this clinical population. The primary objective of this study was to develop a new emotion recognition test that could effectively measure the emotional interpretation skills of both normally developing individuals and individuals with poor social skills using emoticons instead of real faces. In the first phase of this project, 290 college students were recruited to complete the first version of Emotional Perception and Interpretation Questionnaire (EPIQ). This version of the scale consisted of 35 questions designed to measure an individual's ability to perceive basic and complex emotions in one or multiple emoticons. Based on the results, the EPIQ was revised by adding additional items to improve its internal consistency and reliability. The internal consistency of items on the revised EPIQ was good. In addition, participants' scores on the EPIQ were negatively correlated with social skills scale scores. This version of the EPIQ was administered to adolescents with HFA/AD/poor social skills to investigate whether these individuals score significantly lower than normally developing adolescents. There was no significant difference between adolescents with HFA/AD/poor social skills and normally developing adolescents for identifying basic emotions, but there was a significant difference in recognizing complex emotions between the groups. The significance and implications of the findings were discussed.

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