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Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show impairments in response inhibition, especially in socio-emotional contexts. A single aerobic exercise session has the potential to temporarily reduce such impairments as findings from neurotypical children support acute benefits of this exercise type for inhibitory control and emotion recognition. In children with ASD, we therefore aimed to investigate the effects of an aerobic exercise bout on response inhibition in an emotional Go/NoGo task and gaze fixation as possible mechanism underlying changes in performance. Using a cross-over design, 29 patients completed a 20-min aerobic exercise bout at moderate intensity on a cycling ergometer and a control condition in a randomized order. An emotional Go/NoGo task was administered before and after both experimental conditions. Eye-tracking was performed during the cognitive task to assess the duration of gaze fixation of eyes and mouth parts of faces expressing happy or sad emotions. The results support no beneficial effect of exercise on performance on the emotional Go/NoGo task. Instead, patients showed a greater decrease in accuracy on Go trials displaying happy faces in the exercise compared to the control condition. This change was associated with a more pronounced decrease in the fixation duration of the eyes for faces expressing either happy or sad emotions. In conclusion, while a single session of moderately intense aerobic exercise does not affect response inhibition, it temporarily aggravates ASD-specific deficits in the processing of and response to facial emotions., (© 2024 The Author(s). Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Difficulties in face recognition contribute to social-cognitive problems in autistic children. Evidence on behavioral interventions targeting this cognitive domain is limited. In non-autistic individuals, a single exercise session is known to elicit temporary benefits for several cognitive functions. Our study investigates whether acute aerobic exercise influences face recognition in autistic children. In a randomized order, 29 participants completed a 20-min moderately-intense cycling bout on an ergometer and a control condition. Before and after each condition, participants categorized Mooney faces and instruments during a computerized cognitive task. Simultaneously, the N170 component of event-related potentials and pupil size were recorded using electroencephalography and eyetracking, respectively. As indicated by a greater increase of reaction time in the exercise compared to the control condition, the results revealed impaired face recognition following aerobic exercise. This effect was accompanied by a lower decrease of the positive N170 amplitude and a trend towards a greater constriction of the pupil size in the exercise compared to the control condition. Our findings highlight the interplay of the physiological state and face recognition in autistic children. Exercise-induced impairments in this social-cognitive ability may be due to an interference with the learning effect that is typically seen for the structural encoding of faces., (© 2023 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)