Absence of Predispositional Attentional Sensitivity to Angry Faces in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Isomura, Tomoko; Ito, Hiroyasu; Ogawa, Sei; Masataka, Nobuo

doi:10.1038/srep07525

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Indeed, children with ASD exhibit an attentional bias away from angry faces at long presentation rates with greater avoidance being associated with greater social communication di culties [72]. In ASD, the basic pre-dispositional mechanisms to allocate attention quickly towards angry faces may be weaker [73]. Our ndings therefore support evidence that autism is associated with altered responses to threatening (angry faces) emotional stimuli and reduced motivation to pay attention towards and avoid them.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Patterns of neural activity in response to threatening faces are predictive of autistic traits: modulatory effects of oxytocin receptor genotype

Kendrick,

Zheng,

Zhou

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Autistic individuals generally demonstrate impaired emotion recognition but it is unclear whether effects are emotion-specific or influenced by oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genotype. Here we implemented a dimensional approach using an implicit emotion recognition task together with functional MRI in a large cohort of subjects (N = 255) to establish associations between autistic traits and neural and behavioral responses to specific face emotions, together with modulatory effects of OXTR genotype. A searchlight-based multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) revealed an extensive network of frontal, basal ganglia, cingulate and limbic regions exhibiting significant predictability for autistic traits from patterns of responses to angry relative to neutral expression faces. Functional connectivity analyses revealed a genotype interaction (rs2254298, rs2268491) for coupling between the orbitofrontal cortex and mid-cingulate during angry expression processing, with a negative association between coupling and autistic traits in the risk-allele group and a positive one in the non-risk allele group. Overall, results indicate extensive emotion-specific associations primarily between patterns of neural responses to angry faces and autistic traits in regions processing motivation, reward and salience but not in early visual processing. Functional connections between these identified regions were not only associated with autistic traits but also influenced by OXTR genotype. Thus, altered neural responses to threatening faces may be a potential biomarker for autistic symptoms although modulatory influences of OXTR genotype need to be taken into account.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Patterns of neural activity in response to threatening faces are predictive of autistic traits: modulatory effects of oxytocin receptor genotype

Kendrick,

Zheng,

Zhou

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…This result suggests that children with ASD who have a more severe autistic symptomatology tend to look for a shorter duration on angry facial expressions in comparison to other facial expressions. Children with ASD show atypical responses to angry faces on a visual search task [ 39 ], although adults with ASD show a similar response to those with a typical development [ 40 , 41 ]. It is possible that both the autism severity and the participant ages may affect the atypical response to an angry facial expression.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaze Behavior of Children with ASD toward Pictures of Facial Expressions

Matsuda

Minagawa

Yamamoto

2015

Autism Research and Treatment

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Atypical gaze behavior in response to a face has been well documented in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Children with ASD appear to differ from typically developing (TD) children in gaze behavior for spoken and dynamic face stimuli but not for nonspeaking, static face stimuli. Furthermore, children with ASD and TD children show a difference in their gaze behavior for certain expressions. However, few studies have examined the relationship between autism severity and gaze behavior toward certain facial expressions. The present study replicated and extended previous studies by examining gaze behavior towards pictures of facial expressions. We presented ASD and TD children with pictures of surprised, happy, neutral, angry, and sad facial expressions. Autism severity was assessed using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS). The results showed that there was no group difference in gaze behavior when looking at pictures of facial expressions. Conversely, the children with ASD who had more severe autistic symptomatology had a tendency to gaze at angry facial expressions for a shorter duration in comparison to other facial expressions. These findings suggest that autism severity should be considered when examining atypical responses to certain facial expressions.

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“…Fearful and angry facial expressions communicate threatening stimuli and attract attention faster than emotionally positive facial expressions. 41,42 Numerous studies have proved that the eyes are the core organs of the face that convey emotions, and they are the central features of a threatening face, as they can communicate social and threatening messages. [43][44][45] Our conclusions suggested that eye-avoidance among parents of children with ASD occurred when viewing the eyes of a threatening face, and the reasons for this observation may include the following: (1) Parents of children with ASD may be less alert, and this manifests in the form of insufficient attention and an inability to respond quickly to threat-related information in the environment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye Avoidance of Threatening Facial Expressions in Parents of Children with ASD

Yang¹,

Li²,

Zhang³

et al. 2021

NDT

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Previous research found that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was characterized by eye avoidance of threatening facial expressions. However, it still remains unclear as to whether these abnormalities are present in parents of children with ASD. Our study aimed to investigate the gaze patterns of parents of children with ASD in the threatening facial expressions. Methods: Thirty-four parents of children with ASD and 35 parents of typically developing (TD) children participated in our study. We investigated the total fixation time of participants when they viewed different facial expression (eg, happy, fearful, angry, sad) videos and examined changes in the fixation duration over time. Results: We observed the following: a) the total fixation time of the parents of children with ASD on the eyes of fearful faces was significantly shorter than that of the normal group, and the difference lasted for five seconds (four to six seconds, eight to nine seconds) throughout the process; and b) The parents of children with ASD avoided the eyes of angry expression faces at around five seconds after the stimulus onset. Conclusion:We concluded that parents of children with ASD tended to avoid the eyes of threatening expression faces while viewing the dynamic emotions video.

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Absence of Predispositional Attentional Sensitivity to Angry Faces in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Cited by 11 publications

References 41 publications

Patterns of neural activity in response to threatening faces are predictive of autistic traits: modulatory effects of oxytocin receptor genotype

Patterns of neural activity in response to threatening faces are predictive of autistic traits: modulatory effects of oxytocin receptor genotype

Gaze Behavior of Children with ASD toward Pictures of Facial Expressions

Eye Avoidance of Threatening Facial Expressions in Parents of Children with ASD

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