Neural Processing of Emotional Words in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Event-Related Potential Study

This ERP study compared 20 youth with autism spectrum disorder (ages 8.5–17.7 years) to 20 typically developing peers during emotional word processing tasks. Results showed intact early-stage neural responses but significantly reduced late positive component activity in autistic youth during emotional word categorization, suggesting differences in top-down evaluative processing of emotions.