Perspective influences eye movements during real-life conversation: Mentalising about self versus others in autism

Abstract

<jats:p> Social-communication is profoundly impaired among autistic individuals. Difficulties representing others’ mental states have been linked to modulations of gaze and speech, which have also been shown to be impaired in autism. Despite these observed impairments in ‘real-world’ communicative settings, research has mostly focused on lab-based experiments, where the language is highly structured. In a pre-registered experiment, we recorded eye movements and verbal responses while adults ( N = 50) engaged in a real-life conversation. Using a novel approach, we also manipulated the perspective that participants adopted by asking them questions that were related to the self, a familiar other, or an unfamiliar other. Results replicated previous work, showing reduced attention to socially relevant information among autistic participants (i.e. less time looking at the experimenter’s face and more time looking around the background), compared to typically developing controls. Importantly, perspective modulated social attention in both groups; talking about an unfamiliar other reduced attention to potentially distracting or resource-demanding social information and increased looks to non-social background. Social attention did not differ between self and familiar other contexts, reflecting greater shared knowledge for familiar/similar others. Autistic participants spent more time looking at the background when talking about an unfamiliar other versus themselves. Future research should investigate the developmental trajectory of this effect and the cognitive mechanisms underlying it. </jats:p><jats:sec><jats:title>Lay abstract</jats:title><jats:p> Previous lab-based studies suggest that autistic individuals are less attentive to social aspects of their environment. In our study, we recorded the eye movements of autistic and typically developing adults while they engaged in a real-life social interaction with a partner. Results showed that autistic adults were less likely than typically developing adults to look at the experimenter’s face, and instead were more likely to look at the background. Moreover, the perspective that was adopted in the conversation (talking about self versus others) modulated the patterns of eye movements in autistic and non-autistic adults. Overall, people spent less time looking at their conversation partner’s eyes and face and more time looking at the background, when talking about an unfamiliar other compared to when talking about themselves. This pattern was magnified among autistic adults. We conclude that allocating attention to social information during conversation is cognitively effortful, but this can be mitigated when talking about a topic that is familiar to them. </jats:p></jats:sec>

Reduced social attention in autism is magnified by perceptual load in naturalistic environments

“…First, we employed a novel active viewing eyetracking paradigm, which allowed us to approximate the real‐world conditions where individuals actively engage, and where autistic individuals experience difficulty in daily life. Notably, a handful of previous studies have used mobile eyetracking to measure attention in immersive, real‐world environments with individuals with autism (Barzy et al, 2020 ; Noris et al, 2012 ; Yurkovic et al, 2021 ). However, VR offers key benefits over mobile applications, including experimental control over factors like timing and stimulus order, and the ability to immerse participants in a diverse set of complex environments.…”

Moving beyond the lab: investigating empathy through the Empirical 5E approach

“…The use of head-mounted eye trackers has been widely used to assess eye behavior in participants actively engage in natural contexts, such as various sports and naturalistic interactions ( Land et al, 1999 ; Pelz and Canosa, 2001 ; Vickers, 2007 ; Hayhoe et al, 2012 ; Wohltjen and Wheatley, 2021 ). In social interaction, the study of eye movement has allowed the understanding of the attentional focus, the perception of affective values of another agent ( Weng et al, 2018 ), and the eye movement coordination between embodied agents ( Franchak et al, 2011 ; Barzy et al, 2020 ). Nevertheless, few empathy studies have explored visual behavior in a natural environment.…”

“…Nevertheless, few empathy studies have explored visual behavior in a natural environment. In natural interaction have been examined visual behavior in mother-infant interaction during free play ( Franchak et al, 2011 ), and in real-life conversations involving subjects with autism ( Barzy et al, 2020 ). On the other hand, lab-based studies have assessed eye movement responses to people suffering ( Klin et al, 2002 ; Joshua and Rossell, 2009 ; George et al, 2011 ; Cowan et al, 2014 ; Weng et al, 2018 ; Picó et al, 2020 ).…”

Topic maintenance in social conversation: What children need to learn and evidence this can be taught

“…However, caution is needed before assuming that a lack of eye contact means that the conversation partner is either not listening or not interested. There is a great deal of variability even among neurotypical, British English speaking adults in this regard (Barzy et al, 2020: see Figure 2). Furthermore, some autistic adults self-report that averting the gaze helps them to process what someone is saying (Robledo et al, 2012).…”