Skip Navigation


Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on November 30, 2008
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2009 4(1):93-100; doi:10.1093/scan/nsn041
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
4/1/93    most recent
nsn041v1
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Skwerer, D. P.
Right arrow Articles by Tager-Flusberg, H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Skwerer, D. P.
Right arrow Articles by Tager-Flusberg, H.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Autonomic responses to dynamic displays of facial expressions in adolescents and adults with Williams syndrome

D. Plesa Skwerer, L. Borum, A. Verbalis, C. Schofield, N. Crawford, L. Ciciolla and H. Tager-Flusberg

Boston University School of Medicine, 02118-2526, Boston, MA, USA

The behavioral phenotype characteristic of Williams syndrome (WS) is marked by strong interest in social interaction, manifested in attention to human faces, empathy, approach behavior and social disinhibition, often coexisting with generalized anxiety. Despite their heightened social interest, people with WS show deficits in explicit emotion recognition tasks similar to those of people with other developmental disabilities. In the current study we explored whether individuals with WS show distinctive autonomic responsiveness to social-emotional information, using skin conductance response and heart rate measures. Autonomic activation was investigated in response to facial expressions of emotion in adolescents and adults with WS, compared to age-matched normal controls and to age-, IQ- and language-matched individuals with learning or intellectual disabilities (LID). Overall participants with WS were less electrodermally responsive to dynamically presented face stimuli than the age- and IQ-matched LID group, and showed more heart rate deceleration when viewing emotional faces than the controls. These findings, indicating hypoarousal but increased interest in response to the dynamic presentation of facial emotions in WS, are consistent with the behavioral profile of high approachability toward social stimuli in this population.

Keywords: Williams syndrome; skin conductance response; heart rate; facial expressions; dynamic emotional displays

Correspondence should be addressed to Daniela Plesa Skwerer, PhD, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, 72 East Concord Street, L-814, Boston, MA, 02118-2526, USA. E-mail: dplesas{at}bu.edu

Received January 18, 2008. Accepted October 25, 2008.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.