Versions
- 2025-12-24 (2)
- 2025-12-19 (1)
Keywords
emotional dysregulation (ED)
linguistic processing
prosody–semantics congruence
Emotion Recognition
How to Cite
Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been associated with difficulties in recognizing emotions from nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions (Barrett et al., 2019). Less is known about linguistic aspects of emotional communication, particularly when prosody and semantics convey incongruent information. Clinical psychology suggests that such incongruences may trigger emotional dysregulation by creating internal conflict without impairing message comprehension (Mitchell, 2006). This study examined how prosody–semantics interaction influences emotion recognition in adolescents with ASD attending mainstream schools. Using an experimental task, participants listened to sentences with congruent or incongruent prosodic–semantic content. Results showed that adolescents with ASD performed similarly to neurotypical peers, with higher accuracy in congruent conditions. These findings indicate that prosody–semantics incongruence can affect emotional regulation and processing. Consistent with the Emotional Dysregulation Hypothesis (Mazefsky & White, 2014), mainstream integration and sustained social interaction may support compensatory strategies to manage conflicting emotional information.
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