Access to awareness of direct gaze is related to autistic traits

Madipakkam, Apoorva Rajiv; Rothkirch, Marcus; Dziobek, Isabel; Sterzer, Philipp

doi:10.1017/s0033291718001630

Cited by 17 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(65 reference statements)

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…In line with previous studies [ 39 – 42 , 88 ], our neurotypical participants displayed a marked preference for direct gaze. By contrast, no preference, either for direct or averted gaze, emerged in our autistic participants, in line with previous studies [ 42 , 88 ]. Whereas some authors have suggested that autistic individuals have trouble identifying subtly averted gaze [ 37 , 38 ], in our study, the manipulation between subtle and obvious averted gaze seemed to influence neither the neurotypical participants’ preference for direct gaze nor the absence of any preference in autistic participants.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…This interpretation, anchored in the ability–propensity [ 93 , 94 ] and the compensatory strategies [ 95 , 96 ] debates, is congruent with three trends in the literature. First, several studies indicate that, contrary to neurotypicals, autistic adults do not have any unconscious preference for direct gaze [ 40 , 42 , 88 ]. Second, the absence of spontaneous processing of social cues in autism is amply documented in the literature and can plausibly be extended to gaze processing [e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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No preference for direct versus averted gaze in autistic adults: a reinforced preferential looking paradigm

2020

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Background With the overarching objective to gain better insights into social attention in autistic adults, the present study addresses three outstanding issues about face processing in autism. First, do autistic adults display a preference for mouths over eyes; second, do they avoid direct gaze; third, is atypical visual exploration of faces in autism mediated by gender, social anxiety or alexithymia? Methods We used a novel reinforced preferential looking paradigm with a group of autistic adults (n = 43, 23 women) pairwise matched on age with neurotypical participants (n = 43, 21 women). Participants watched 28 different pairs of 5 s video recordings of a speaking person: the two videos, simultaneously displayed on the screen, were identical except that gaze was directed at the camera in one video and averted in the other. After a 680 ms transition phase, a short reinforcement animation appeared on the side that had displayed the direct gaze. Results None of the groups showed a preference for mouths over eyes. However, neurotypical participants fixated significantly more the stimuli with direct gaze, while no such preference emerged in autistic participants. As the experiment progressed, neurotypical participants also increasingly anticipated the appearance of the reinforcement, based on the location of the stimulus with the direct gaze, while no such anticipation emerged in autistic participants. Limitations Our autistic participants scored higher on the social anxiety and alexithymia questionnaires than neurotypicals. Future studies should match neurotypical and autistic participants on social anxiety and alexithymia and complement questionnaires with physiological measures of anxiety. Conclusions The absence of preference for direct versus averted gaze in the autistic group is probably due to difficulties in distinguishing eye gaze direction, potentially linked to a reduced spontaneous exploration or avoidance of the eye region. Social attention and preference for direct versus averted gaze correlated with alexithymia and social anxiety scores, but not gender.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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No preference for direct versus averted gaze in autistic adults: a reinforced preferential looking paradigm

2020

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“…Its disruption can lead to social dysfunction, evidenced by reports of abnormal eye contact perception in conditions often accompanied by social deficits, including autism-spectrum disorder (ASD) [5], social anxiety [6][7][8], schizophrenia [9][10][11], and bipolar disorder [12]. A relation between gaze processing and the strength of autism, social anxiety, schizotypal traits has also been found in subclinical populations [13][14][15]. These findings suggest that gaze perception is a functional dimension cutting across categories of mental disorders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deconstructing eye contact perception: Measuring perceptual precision and self-referential tendency using an online psychophysical eye contact detection task

et al. 2020

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Eye contact perception-the ability to accurately and efficiently discriminate others' gaze directions-is critical to understanding others and functioning in a complex social world. Previous research shows that it is affected in multiple neuropsychiatric disorders accompanied by social dysfunction, and understanding the cognitive processes giving rise to eye contact perception would help advance mechanistic investigations of psychopathology. This study aims to validate an online, psychophysical eye contact detection task through which two constituent cognitive components of eye contact perception (perceptual precision and selfreferential tendency) can be derived. Data collected from a large online sample showed excellent test-retest reliability for self-referential tendency and moderate reliability for perceptual precision. Convergence validity was supported by correlations with social cognitive measures tapping into different aspects of understanding others. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that perceptual precision and self-referential tendency explained unique variance in social cognition, suggesting that they measure unique aspects of related constructs. Overall, this study provided support for the reliability and validity of the eye contact perception metrics derived using the online Eye Contact Detection Task. The value of the task for future psychopathology research was discussed.

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“…Inter-individual variability in breakthrough time depends on individual factors related to the stimuli that compete for perceptual dominance. For example, the advantage for faces with direct gaze in gaining access to awareness is reduced in individuals with autistic traits (Madipakkam et al, 2018). Similarly, suppression times are reduced for sad faces in patients with major depression (Sterzer et al, 2011) and for spider stimuli in individuals with spider phobia (Schmack et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overly strong priors for socially meaningful visual signals in psychosis proneness

Stuke

Kress

Weilnhammer

et al. 2018

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Predictive coding accounts of psychosis state that an overweighing of high-level priors relative to sensory information may lead to the misperception of meaningful signals underlying the experience of auditory hallucinations and delusions. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized overweighing of priors (1) represents a pervasive alteration that also affects the visual modality, and,(2) takes already effect at early automatic processing stages.Here, we addressed these questions by studying visual perception of socially meaningful stimuli in healthy individuals with varying degrees of psychosis proneness (n=39). In a first task, we quantified participants' prior for detecting faces in visual noise. In a second task, we measured participants' prior for detecting direct gaze stimuli that were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression. We found that the prior for detecting faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (rho=0.50, p=0.001) as well as delusion proneness (rho=0.44, p=0.005). Similarly, the prior for detecting invisible direct gaze was significantly associated with hallucination proneness (rho = 0.42, p = 0.010) and trend-wise with delusion proneness (rho = 0.29, p = 0.087). Our results provide evidence for the idea that overly strong high-level priors for automatically detecting socially meaningful stimuli might constitute a generic processing alteration in psychosis.

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Access to awareness of direct gaze is related to autistic traits

Cited by 17 publications

References 45 publications

No preference for direct versus averted gaze in autistic adults: a reinforced preferential looking paradigm

No preference for direct versus averted gaze in autistic adults: a reinforced preferential looking paradigm

Deconstructing eye contact perception: Measuring perceptual precision and self-referential tendency using an online psychophysical eye contact detection task

Overly strong priors for socially meaningful visual signals in psychosis proneness

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