Emotion recognition is an important part of social interaction, and difficulties in recognising others’ emotions can have a negative impact on this. In addition, these difficulties may subsequently impact social function and mental health. It is also possible that difficulties in this area e.g., social anxiety, could disrupt school attendance in children. Previous studies which have examined these relationships tend to be small and cross-sectional. We propose using a large existing cohort with data at multiple timepoints to overcome these limitations and allow the direction of association to be examined as well. It is important to further understand these relationships particularly given that poorer emotion recognition is observed in autistic individuals, or those with more autistic traits, and therefore these relationships will be particularly relevant for autistic individuals with emotion recognition difficulties.

We will examine the bidirectional association between emotion recognition and outcomes related to social traits, wellbeing/mental health and school attendance. Data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) will be used for this. Data will be used from different time points to attempt to understand the direction of any associations found. This work would be useful in informing what downstream effects there may be with interventions targeting emotion recognition, for example, in autistic individuals.