Exploring intervention strategies to enhance face recognition abilities in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder: assessing the impact of verbalization and Navon tasks

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of two intervention strategies – identifying the global letter of Navon letters and verbally describing a face – in improving face recognition abilities of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Design/methodology/approach A total of 15 adolescents with ASD and 15 typically developing (TD) adolescents participated in this study, which consisted of three experimental conditions: verbalization, Navon and control. Participants were presented with a target face for a short period of time, then completed a task specific to the condition in a counterbalanced order, followed by a face recognition task. Findings The results of this study showed no significant interaction effects between groups and conditions, either in accuracy or reaction time. However, TD adolescents performed better than ASD adolescents in terms of accuracy. In addition, the verbalization condition resulted in better performance with slower response times compared to the control condition. Originality/value These findings suggest that verbalization may be a useful strategy to enhance face recognition abilities in ASD and TD individuals.