How Emotional Processing Is Different In Autism

Autistic individuals may process emotions differently due to variations in sensory processing and how they interpret social cues, sometimes leading to delayed or intensified emotional responses.

Alexithymia, a trait that is common but not universal in autistic people, can also make it hard to identify and describe emotions.

How Emotional Processing Presents in Autistic Individuals

Emotional processing is how a person notices, identifies, interprets, times and expresses emotion, both their own and other people’s. In autism, sensory processing differences, alexithymia and variations in brain connectivity all shape this process.

Sensory Processing and Interoception

Autistic individuals often experience sensory information differently than neurotypical individuals.

They may be hypersensitive or hyposensitive to certain sensory inputs, such as sounds, lights, textures, and even internal bodily sensations.

Interoception is the sense of the body’s internal state. In one study, autistic participants felt highly sensitive to internal signals but detected their own heartbeat less accurately (Garfinkel et al., 2016). The size of that gap tracked anxiety and emotional difficulty.

Alexithymia may explain part of this. One study found that co-occurring alexithymia, not autism itself, was linked to the reduced accuracy (Shah et al., 2016).

These sensory processing differences can lead to emotional responses that seem delayed or disproportionate to the situation.

Crowds are a common example. An autistic person may feel intense anxiety there because of sensory overload, which is when noise, light or movement exceeds what they can process comfortably. A neurotypical person may not feel the same discomfort.

Many autistic people also prefer a fixed routine and value sameness over change.

Alexithymia

Alexithymia is a trait, not a diagnosis. It means difficulty identifying and describing one’s own emotions.

This can make it challenging for them to understand and express their own emotions, as well as recognize emotions in others.

A meta-analysis of 15 studies found alexithymia in about half of autistic participants and about one in twenty non-autistic participants (Kinnaird et al., 2019).

Bird and Cook (2013) proposed the alexithymia hypothesis. It says some emotional differences once attributed to autism, such as in emotion recognition and empathy, are due to co-occurring alexithymia instead. That matters for support. Autistic people with and without alexithymia may need different help.

Alexithymia can contribute to emotional dysregulation, leading to difficulties in managing and coping with emotions effectively.  

Many autistic people describe what this is like day to day. One autistic person quoted in our article on delayed emotional responses put it this way:

“One of the things I really dislike is being asked how I feel … I don’t always know, so when someone asks I’m scrambling to figure it out quickly, or I just make something up that sounds plausible.”

Brain Regions and Connectivity

Studies suggest potential differences in brain connectivity between autistic and neurotypical individuals.

An early brain-imaging study of sentence comprehension suggested weaker coordination between distant brain regions in autistic adults (Just et al., 2004). This became known as the underconnectivity theory.

Larger studies have not confirmed a simple pattern. Across four large autistic samples, connectivity was reduced in sensory-motor regions and increased in prefrontal and parietal hubs (Holiga et al., 2019).

The groups overlapped heavily, and links to clinical features were only moderate. Two brain regions feature in accounts of emotional intensity. The amygdala helps judge the emotional significance of what we perceive.

In one study, autistic adults’ amygdala responses faded less than non-autistic adults’ when they repeatedly viewed the same neutral face (Kleinhans et al., 2009).

Whether this means emotions feel more intense is unclear. The study did not measure felt emotion. A larger study found that anxiety and autistic characteristics pull amygdala activity in opposite directions (Herrington et al., 2016).

The anterior insula monitors internal states such as heartbeat and anxiety. In a meta-analysis of 39 functional imaging studies, its right side was less active in autistic participants during social tasks (Di Martino et al., 2009).

That fits the interoception findings. It does not show that the insula causes difficulty identifying emotions.

The proposed “broken mirror” account, which involves mirror neurons, is the least settled idea of all. Treat these brain findings as hypotheses, not established mechanisms.

Emotional Recognition and Contagion

Autistic individuals may have difficulty recognizing and interpreting emotions in others, particularly those expressed through nonverbal cues like facial expressions and body language.

This can lead to misunderstandings in social interactions and challenges in forming and maintaining relationships.

The research picture is mixed. A meta-analysis found that autistic groups scored lower on average at recognising facial expressions, and the gap grew with age (Lozier et al., 2014).

Co-occurring alexithymia appears to explain much of the gap (Cook et al., 2013; Gehdu et al., 2023). Not all of it, though. One study still found lower accuracy for anger from facial movement after matching groups on alexithymia (Keating et al., 2022).

They may also be more emotionally sensitive to arousing facial expressions than neurotypical individuals.

Some autistic people also describe emotional contagion: absorbing the emotions of people nearby, with no clear boundary between their feeling and one’s own. Research has not yet measured this directly in autism.

This can lead to feeling overwhelmed by the emotions of those around them, making it difficult to differentiate their own feelings from others’.  

Empathy: Cognitive and Affective

A common myth says autistic people lack empathy. Research on empathy in autism separates two kinds:

• Cognitive Empathy: Working out what someone else feels, which depends on reading subtle cues.
• Affective Empathy: Feeling concern once you know someone is suffering.

Autistic people may find the first harder. A friend’s sadness can go unnoticed when the cue is subtle. The second is often intact or even heightened. Some autistic people feel so much empathy that they need to withdraw.

A meta-analysis of 226 studies tested this (Cusson et al., 2025). Autistic participants showed a large average difference in cognitive empathy and only a small one in affective empathy.

The small difference was not significant in the higher-quality studies. In the same review, autistic participants reported lower empathic concern but higher personal distress.

That fits the empathy imbalance idea (Smith, 2009): some people feel another person’s distress so strongly that it overwhelms them.

Emotional Regulation and Delayed Responses

Emotional regulation, the ability to manage and respond to emotions effectively, can be challenging for autistic individuals.

They may experience intense emotional responses to seemingly minor situations or have difficulty calming down after becoming upset.

Intensity is not always a burden. A doctoral thesis at Dublin City University interviewed seven autistic women about their lived experiences (Wienand, 2021). One participant, given the pseudonym Illana, described her emotional intensity in affirming terms:

“I can get that emotional about something, I just really think it’s a gift”

This is one person’s account, not a rule for every autistic person.

Intense reactions can lead to emotional outbursts, meltdowns, or withdrawal.

Delayed Emotional Processing

Autistic individuals may also experience emotional processing delays, meaning they may take longer to process their emotions than neurotypical individuals.

This delay can affect their emotional responses and make it seem like they are not reacting appropriately to a situation.  

Four contributors are often suggested for delayed emotional responses. None has yet been tested directly as a cause of delay.

• Sensory Overload: Coping with overwhelming input may leave little room for emotional processing, so feelings are pushed aside until the person is calmer.
• Step-by-Step Processing: Some people analyse a situation intellectually first and feel the emotion afterwards. This comes from personal accounts and has not been tested.
• Alexithymia: If a feeling is hard to identify, a person may realise only later that they were upset. Once identified, it can arrive with sudden intensity.
• Masking: Hiding emotion in company can postpone the reaction until the person feels safe, so it appears later and seems out of sync.

In one analysis of autistic adults’ accounts of shutdowns, a participant described losing touch with their feelings. They noticed only much later that they had spent hours on autopilot (Paris et al., 2026).

Controlled studies that time the gap between an event and the first emotion are still lacking, so these reasons remain plausible but unproven.

Emotional Expression and Masking

Autistic individuals may express emotions differently than neurotypical individuals. Their facial expressions or tone of voice may not always align with their internal emotional state, leading to misinterpretations by others.

Research has looked at several ways emotion shows, and a neutral expression does not mean nothing is felt (see autism and expressing emotions).

• Face: Motion-capture work found that autistic and non-autistic adults use different facial features to show anger, happiness and sadness (Keating et al., 2026).
• Voice: Differences in pitch are modest on average and overlap heavily, so a flat voice is common, not defining (Fusaroli et al., 2017).
• Eye Contact: Gaze toward the eyes raised amygdala responses in one imaging study, which may explain why eye contact can be aversive (Tottenham et al., 2014).
• Stimming: Rocking or hand-flapping can express and regulate emotion, and many autistic adults object to attempts to eliminate it (Kapp et al., 2019).

It may look as though autistic individuals lack empathy. They may simply express it differently (see the double empathy problem).

Masking and Emotion

They may also engage in masking, which is the suppression of autistic traits to fit in with social expectations.

One autistic person quoted in our article on delayed emotional responses described how masking and timing interact:

“Sometimes I have to pretend I am experiencing an emotion because people would be seriously confused, perhaps even offended, if I did not. … I’ll think about it and get sad a week later or so.”

Masking can affect emotional expression and regulation, making it more challenging for autistic individuals to understand and communicate their true emotions.  

Double Empathy and Misreading Emotions

According to Milton (2012), the double empathy problem is a breakdown in understanding between two differently disposed people, not a one-sided deficit.

Both autistic and non-autistic people struggle to read each other.

Experiments support part of this. In one, non-autistic adults read the mental states in autistic people’s animated movements less accurately than in non-autistic people’s (Edey et al., 2016).

Autistic adults showed no such same-group advantage.

Non-autistic observers also formed less favourable first impressions of autistic people within seconds. The bias disappeared when they saw only the words, so style, not content, drove it (Sasson et al., 2017).

Not every study agrees. Across three studies with 632 non-autistic students, autistic-posed expressions were often recognised more accurately than non-autistic ones (Lampi et al., 2023). The Edey finding appeared in a British sample but not a Japanese one (Schuster et al., 2025).

The most defensible reading is a two-way mismatch. Autistic people’s expression and processing differ in real ways, but those differences are not a global deficit.

Comparison of Emotional Processing: Autistic vs Neurotypical Adults

The table below summarizes some key differences in how autistic adults versus neurotypical adults process and experience emotions:

Aspect	Autistic Individuals	Neurotypical Individuals
Emotional self-awareness	May struggle to identify their own emotions (alexithymia is common). Can feel emotions but not easily label them, leading to delayed or confused responses.	Generally understand and label their emotions with relative ease, using internal cues to know if they’re sad, angry, etc.
Empathy toward others	Often experience intense empathy, especially for others’ negative emotions (can feel others’ distress as their own). However, they might miss or misinterpret social cues (facial expressions, tone) due to different processing.	Typically recognize others’ emotional cues instinctively and respond appropriately. Empathy is felt, but usually regulated (they feel concern but don’t literally absorb all of another’s pain).
Intensity of emotions	Emotions can hit very strongly and quickly. Minor incidents might trigger extreme anxiety, anger, or sadness. Once upset, they can remain in a heightened emotional state for a long time and need longer to cool down.	Emotional reactions are usually proportional to the event. Upsetting events cause distress, but most people return to baseline emotional state more quickly. Intense, lingering emotional extremes are less frequent.
Emotional regulation	Challenging; prone to meltdowns or shutdowns if overwhelmed. Harder to use self-soothing in the moment. Some researchers suggest weaker prefrontal control plays a part, but this has not been directly tested. They may withdraw or use routines to cope when stressed.	Better developed regulation skills on average. Can often use coping strategies (like talking it out or distraction) automatically to prevent extreme outbursts. Full meltdowns are relatively rare in adulthood, except in high-stress situations.
Processing time	May require more time to process emotional information. The brain may be busy handling sensory input and details, so recognizing and reacting to an emotional situation can be slower. For instance, an autistic person might react to bad news a bit later, after they’ve had time to fully comprehend it.	Usually process emotional stimuli more rapidly. Thanks to efficient filtering of sensory input, they can focus on the main emotional cues and respond in real-time (e.g., immediate comfort to a crying friend, quick joy at good news).
Response to social rejection or criticism	Often hyper-sensitive to rejection. Perceived criticism can feel deeply personal and painful, sometimes leading to intense fear or avoidance of social situations. They may ruminate on small slights or constantly worry about offending others.	May be upset by rejection but to a lesser degree. A neurotypical person can usually brush off minor criticisms or see them in perspective. They dislike rejection but rarely experience the extreme dysphoria that some autistic people report.
Emotional expression	Expression might be atypical or subdued. Some autistic adults don’t show their feelings in expected ways (e.g., limited facial expression or unusual body language), so others might not realize when they’re anxious or sad. Emotions might instead come out through actions (pacing, or stimming: repetitive movements or sounds such as rocking or hand-flapping) or later bursts.	Follow common social norms for expression (smiling when happy, frowning when upset). Their body language and tone generally align with their internal state, making it easier for others to read their emotions in the moment.

Note: These are general trends and every individual is different. Autistic and neurotypical people all have unique emotional profiles; the above highlights common patterns reported in research.

Evidence Check: What the Research Shows

The strongest evidence is a review registered in advance that pooled 226 studies (Cusson et al., 2025). Cognitive empathy differed substantially (g = 0.85). Affective empathy differed only slightly (g = 0.17).

Here, g is an effect size: larger numbers mean bigger group differences. The affective difference was not significant in the high-quality subset.

In that review, four empathic-accuracy studies found no group difference when ratings were made continuously during a video.

The secure finding therefore concerns test scores. It says little about everyday ability to read feelings.

A smaller meta-analysis of 35 studies agreed on cognitive empathy but reported a medium affective difference (Fatima & Babu, 2023).

Co-occurring alexithymia accounts for much of the difficulty recognising facial expressions (Cook et al., 2013; Gehdu et al., 2023). Whether anything autism-specific remains is unsettled.

One study of 60 adults matched on alexithymia still found lower accuracy for anger from facial movement (Keating et al., 2022).

Cross-neurotype misunderstanding has a measurable two-way component. Autistic and non-autistic people express emotion differently, and non-autistic observers form less favourable first impressions (Sasson et al., 2017).

The size of any observer-side effect varies by task, sample and culture (Schuster et al., 2025; Lampi et al., 2023).

Two limits apply to all of this.

• Self-Report: Questionnaire gaps partly reflect self-description, because self-report cognitive empathy explains only about 1% of the variance in behavioural tests (Murphy & Lilienfeld, 2019).
• Small Samples: In one alexithymia test, the low-alexithymia group had only 20 participants, so a null result may reflect low power (Gehdu et al., 2023).

Delayed emotional responses, the link between amygdala activity and felt emotional intensity, and the benefits of communication-based support are not yet properly tested. Treat them as hypotheses.

Supporting emotional processing in autism

Everyone experiences and processes emotions differently, and this is especially true for autistic individuals. Support should not force neurotypical norms. It should help each person understand their own emotional landscape.

The suggestions below draw mainly on autistic people’s own accounts. Few have been tested in controlled studies.

1. Recognize that emotions are real. Delayed or different reactions do not mean autistic people feel less deeply.
2. Build emotional vocabulary. Emotion charts or an emotion journal can help connect internal sensations with specific emotions.
3. Tune into your body. Notice physical cues, such as a tight chest when anxious or a churning stomach when nervous. They can help you identify emotions earlier.
4. Explore different ways to express emotions. Journaling, drawing, music, talking it out or creative writing may suit you. Find what works best.
5. Create a sensory-friendly environment. Sensory overload can make emotional processing harder, so identify your triggers and create a calming space with sensory tools.
6. Practice mindfulness and self-awareness. Body scans and mindful breathing can help you notice your emotional state and physical sensations.
7. Seek support and connect with others. Other autistic people can offer community and shared understanding, and support groups or online communities add insight.
8. Remember that you’re not alone. Many autistic people face similar challenges, and it is okay to seek help from a neurodiversity-affirming therapist or counselor.
9. Embrace your unique emotional experience. Your emotional landscape is valid, even if it differs from neurotypical norms, so don’t suppress it to fit in.
10. Be patient with yourself. Learning to understand and process emotions takes time. Celebrate your progress and don’t be discouraged by setbacks.

How Others Can Support Emotional Processing

Support also depends on the people and settings around an autistic person. These steps follow from the evidence on timing, expression and mutual misreading.

• Validate the Emotion: Treat feelings as real whenever they surface, and avoid saying “That’s from days ago!”
• Allow Time: Check in gently the next day or week, and agree in advance that the person can return to the topic later.
• Ask Plainly: A neutral face does not reliably mean indifference, so ask directly and state your own feelings and needs explicitly.
• Accept Different Expression: Respect stimming, quiet withdrawal and avoiding eye contact. Accepting these outlets reduces the need to mask (Kapp et al., 2019).
• Adjust the Environment: Reduce background noise and light, and keep your own tone steady, because autistic people may absorb other people’s emotions.
• School and Work: Check understanding in words and offer a way back after a break. Give feedback in writing, with time to respond and a follow-up.

Most of this advice rests on autistic people’s own accounts, and controlled trials of these steps as a package in autistic adults are lacking.

The advice does follow from the evidence on mutual misreading, which means adjustment by non-autistic people is part of any solution.

References

Bird, G., & Cook, R. (2013). Mixed emotions: The contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of autism. Translational Psychiatry, 3(7), e285. https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2013.61

Cook, R., Brewer, R., Shah, P., & Bird, G. (2013). Alexithymia, not autism, predicts poor recognition of emotional facial expressions. Psychological Science, 24(5), 723–732. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612463582

Cusson, N. M., Meilleur, A. J., Bernhardt, B. C., Soulières, I., & Mottron, L. (2025). A systematic review and meta-analysis of empathy in autism: The influence of measures. Clinical Psychology Review, 120, Article 102623. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2025.102623

Di Martino, A., Ross, K., Uddin, L. Q., Sklar, A. B., Castellanos, F. X., & Milham, M. P. (2009). Functional brain correlates of social and nonsocial processes in autism spectrum disorders: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Biological Psychiatry, 65(1), 63–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.09.022

Edey, R., Cook, J., Brewer, R., Johnson, M. H., Bird, G., & Press, C. (2016). Interaction takes two: Typical adults exhibit mind-blindness towards those with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125(7), 879–885. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000199

Fatima, M., & Babu, N. (2023). Cognitive and affective empathy in autism spectrum disorders: A meta-analysis. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 11(4), 756–775. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-023-00364-8

Fusaroli, R., Lambrechts, A., Bang, D., Bowler, D. M., & Gaigg, S. B. (2017). Is voice a marker for autism spectrum disorder? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Autism Research, 10(3), 384–407. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.1678

Garfinkel, S. N., Tiley, C., O’Keeffe, S., Harrison, N. A., Seth, A. K., & Critchley, H. D. (2016). Discrepancies between dimensions of interoception in autism: Implications for emotion and anxiety. Biological Psychology, 114, 117–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.12.003

Gehdu, B. K., Tsantani, M., Press, C., Gray, K. L. H., & Cook, R. (2023). Recognition of facial expressions in autism: Effects of face masks and alexithymia. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76(12), 2854–2864. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218231163007

Herrington, J. D., Miller, J. S., Pandey, J., & Schultz, R. T. (2016). Anxiety and social deficits have distinct relationships with amygdala function in autism spectrum disorder. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(6), 907–914. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw015

Holiga, Š., Hipp, J. F., Chatham, C. H., Garces, P., Spooren, W., D’Ardhuy, X. L., Bertolino, A., Bouquet, C., Buitelaar, J. K., Bours, C., Rausch, A., Oldehinkel, M., Bouvard, M., Amestoy, A., Caralp, M., Gueguen, S., Ly-Le Moal, M., Houenou, J., Beckmann, C. F., … Dukart, J. (2019). Patients with autism spectrum disorders display reproducible functional connectivity alterations. Science Translational Medicine, 11(481), Article eaat9223. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aat9223

Just, M. A., Cherkassky, V. L., Keller, T. A., & Minshew, N. J. (2004). Cortical activation and synchronization during sentence comprehension in high-functioning autism: Evidence of underconnectivity. Brain, 127(8), 1811–1821. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awh199

Kapp, S. K., Steward, R., Crane, L., Elliott, D., Elphick, C., Pellicano, E., & Russell, G. (2019). ‘People should be allowed to do what they like’: Autistic adults’ views and experiences of stimming. Autism, 23(7), 1782–1792. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361319829628

Keating, C. T., Fraser, D. S., Sowden, S., & Cook, J. L. (2022). Differences between autistic and non-autistic adults in the recognition of anger from facial motion remain after controlling for alexithymia. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 52(4), 1855–1871. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05083-9

Keating, C. T., Sowden-Carvalho, S., O’Donoghue, H., & Cook, J. L. (2026). Mismatching expressions: Spatiotemporal and kinematic differences in autistic and non-autistic facial expressions. Autism Research, 19(2), Article e70157. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.70157

Kinnaird, E., Stewart, C., & Tchanturia, K. (2019). Investigating alexithymia in autism: A systematic review and meta-analysis. European Psychiatry, 55, 80–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2018.09.004

Kleinhans, N. M., Johnson, L. C., Richards, T., Mahurin, R., Greenson, J., Dawson, G., & Aylward, E. (2009). Reduced neural habituation in the amygdala and social impairments in autism spectrum disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, 166(4), 467–475. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.07101681

Lampi, A. J., Brewer, R., Bird, G., & Jaswal, V. K. (2023). Non-autistic adults can recognize posed autistic facial expressions: Implications for internal representations of emotion. Autism Research, 16(7), 1321–1334. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2938

Lozier, L. M., Vanmeter, J. W., & Marsh, A. A. (2014). Impairments in facial affect recognition associated with autism spectrum disorders: A meta-analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 26(4, Pt. 1), 933–945. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579414000479

Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008

Murphy, B. A., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2019). Are self-report cognitive empathy ratings valid proxies for cognitive empathy ability? Negligible meta-analytic relations with behavioral task performance. Psychological Assessment, 31(8), 1062–1072. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000732

Paris, K., Lodestone, A. “Z.”, Houser, M., & Lewis, L. F. (2026). “Shutdowns are like you’re stuck on the blue screen of death”: A metaphor analysis of autistic shutdowns. Autism in Adulthood, 8(4), 687–697. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2024.0193

Sasson, N. J., Faso, D. J., Nugent, J., Lovell, S., Kennedy, D. P., & Grossman, R. B. (2017). Neurotypical peers are less willing to interact with those with autism based on thin slice judgments. Scientific Reports, 7, Article 40700. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40700

Schuster, B. A., Okamoto, Y., Takahashi, T., Kurihara, Y., Keating, C. T., Cook, J. L., Kosaka, H., Ide, M., Naruse, H., Kraaijkamp, C., & Osu, R. (2025). A cross-cultural examination of bi-directional mentalising in autistic and non-autistic adults. Molecular Autism, 16(1), Article 29. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-025-00659-z

Shah, P., Hall, R., Catmur, C., & Bird, G. (2016). Alexithymia, not autism, is associated with impaired interoception. Cortex, 81, 215–220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2016.03.021

Smith, A. (2009). The empathy imbalance hypothesis of autism: A theoretical approach to cognitive and emotional empathy in autistic development. The Psychological Record, 59(2), 273–294. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395663

Tottenham, N., Hertzig, M. E., Gillespie-Lynch, K., Gilhooly, T., Millner, A. J., & Casey, B. J. (2014). Elevated amygdala response to faces and gaze aversion in autism spectrum disorder. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(1), 106–117. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst050

Wienand, L. (2021). An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lived experiences of women with autism spectrum disorder [Doctoral thesis, Dublin City University]. https://doras.dcu.ie/26241/