Spanish Explications of Emotions for Persons with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

The objective of this study was to propose a methodology of writing definitions of emotions for persons with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) within the framework of NSM. The current research was carried out in collaboration with the Neuroscience Department of the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). As the symptoms of ASD include difficulty expressing and understanding emotions, we created a glossary of emotions: a small set of explications with semantic primes and molecules. Our methodology was based on the discovery of a core meaning for related words based on data extracted from literary texts and corpora of collocations. After analyzing the semantic features specific to each word, we elaborated an explication and added examples of their usage. As a result, a list of forty-two definitions of emotions was compiled. Lack of space prevents us from showing all of them, therefore, only some of the definitions related to future expectations are presented: ilusionado, expectante, deseoso (“excited”, “expectant”, “eager”).