Looking, seeing and believing in autism: Eye movements reveal how subtle cognitive processing differences impact in the social domain

Abstract

LOOKING, SEEING AND BELIEVING IN AUTISM 2 Lay AbstractAdults with High Functioning Autism (ASD) viewed scenes with people in them, whilst having their eye movements recorded. The task was to indicate, using a button press, whether the pictures were normal, or in some way weird or odd. Oddities in the pictures were categorized as violations of either perceptual or social norms. Compared to a Typically Developed (TD) control group, the ASD participants were equally able to categorise the scenes as odd or normal, but they took longer to respond. The eye movement patterns showed that the ASD group made more fixations and revisits to the target areas in the odd scenes compared to the TD group.Additionally, when the ASD group first fixated the target areas in the scenes, they failed to initially detect the social oddities. These two findings have clear implications for processing difficulties in ASD for the social domain, where it is important to detect social cues on-line, and where there is little opportunity to go back and recheck possible cues in fast dynamic interactions. Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Typically Developed (TD) adult participants had to decide whether scenes were 'odd', 'unusual' or 'weird'. All scenes contained people, with 'oddness' operationally defined as either perceptual or social. There were no group differences in accuracy, but the ASD group were slower overall to respond manually. Eye movements revealed that the ASD group made more fixations overall and more re-fixations into the target regions of the pictures, for both conditions. Importantly, as indexed by the first fixation duration the ASD group failed to 'pick up' immediately on what was 'odd' for the social violations. The propensity to 'go back' and re-fixate targets, coupled with a failure to initially detect social violations, has obvious significance for ASD in fast dynamic social communication.Key phrases: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Eye movements, On-line cognitive processing, Social and Perceptual Oddities. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 High functioning adults with ASD are similar to typically developed (TD) adults in terms of performance on pencil and paper and IQ tests, however in the social domain evidence suggests an inability to process social information in a typical fashion. Eye movement studies report unusual gaze behaviour for faces appearing on their own (Dalton et al., 2005), in social scenes or in dynamic movie clips .Research consistently reports a lack of spontaneous gaze fixation towards the eyes (Jones et al., 2008;Pelphrey et al., 2002). However, where one study reports impairments, say for face processing , another study does not ). Moreover, lack of attentional modulation for social stimuli (Bird et al., 2006) may be overridden, as when cued, attention may be allocated to faces in a more 'typical' manner (Ba...

What Can Eye Movements Tell Us about Subtle Cognitive Processing Differences in Autism?

“…Since imitation has been reported to be reduced in autism for direct eye gaze conditions, but not for averted eye gaze conditions [60], it could be inferred that the use of direct gaze may hinder imitation in ASD. The relationship of atypical visual processing for salient social cues (direct eye gaze or head turning) and poorer imitation performance in autism, as revealed in these two studies [59,60], support the hypothesis that subtle differences in social processing have the potential to impact in social interaction behaviours in everyday communication in autism, and that hypothesis is also supported by many other studies [61,62,63].…”

“…The results from the eye-movement studies reported so far are not entirely consistent and the eye-movement measures reported suggest that there are both similarities and differences in social processing in autism. There are, however, very subtle differences in visual processing of social stimuli in different social contexts [61,113,114]. For example, Benson et al [61] revealed that, compared to TD adults, when deciding whether a social scene is weird or normal, high-functioning adults with autism fail to recognize the socially weird information during their initial fixation on that information (see Figure 4 and Figure 5).…”

“…There are, however, very subtle differences in visual processing of social stimuli in different social contexts [61,113,114]. For example, Benson et al [61] revealed that, compared to TD adults, when deciding whether a social scene is weird or normal, high-functioning adults with autism fail to recognize the socially weird information during their initial fixation on that information (see Figure 4 and Figure 5). This study showed that the ASD group needed more look backs and longer total fixation time to confirm detection of a socially weird target in the scenes.…”

“…Example of social normal ( A ), social weird ( B ), physical normal ( C ), and physical weird ( D ) stimuli from Benson et al’s experiment [61]. Reproduced with permission from John Wiley and Sons.…”

“…The interaction between oddity type and group for first fixation duration (FFD) detected in Benson et al’s [61] experiment, indicating a temporal delay in the initial detection of social, but not physical/perceptual, oddities for autistic adults. Reproduced with permission from John Wiley and Sons.…”