Reactivity to fearful expressions of familiar and unfamiliar people in children with autism: an eye-tracking pupillometry study

Abstract

BackgroundIndividuals with autism are often reported to have difficulty with emotion processing. However, clinical and experimental data show that they are sensitive to familiarity; for example, they show normative attachment to familiar people, and have normative brain activity in response to familiar faces. To date, no study has measured their reactivity to the emotions of familiar vs. unfamiliar people. Thus, our aim was to determine whether individuals with autism would show normative reactivity to emotion in familiar people.MethodsParticipants were 21 children with autism and 21 children with typical development, aged two to five years, matched on age and gender. The children observed videos of familiar people (their child-care teachers) and unfamiliar people expressing fear, whilst their visual attention and pupillary reactions were recorded (the latter as an index of emotional reactivity), using eye tracking technology.ResultsThe children with autism showed normative pupillary reactions (peak magnitude) to fear expressed by familiar people, but a reduced response to fear expressed by unfamiliar people. However, across familiarity conditions, the children with autism had longer latency peak responses than the typically developing children. This pattern of findings was independent of cognitive factors or visual attention as visual attention by group was not related to familiarity condition. The children with autism had reduced visual attention to neutral faces; however, on fearful faces there were no group differences. Abnormalities in pupillary reactivity in the autism group were related to less prosocial behaviour and more severe play and communication deficits.ConclusionsChildren with autism were less atypical in their responses to fearful expressions of people they know, arguing against a pervasive emotional impairment in autism, but rather one that may be mediated by familiarity.

No Evidence of Emotional Dysregulation or Aversion to Mutual Gaze in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Pupillometry Study

“…Although the TD children were expected to have greater pupil dilation to unfamiliar compared to familiar people based on previous findings (Nuske et al 2014a;Stephan and Stephan 1985), we did not confirm this hypothesis. The children with ASD, however, did show greater pupil dilation to unfamiliar people than familiar people, across gaze conditions, which is consistent with the idea that unfamiliar people create more anxiety than familiar people in some groups of people (Stephan and Stephan 1985).…”

“…Nuske et al (2014a) found that typically-developing (TD) children have greater pupil dilation (increased emotional arousal) to emotional facial expressions in unfamiliar people compared to familiar people, but this was not the case for children with ASD. Conversely, in the only published study that has measured emotional arousal to mutual versus averted gaze in familiar and unfamiliar people, Kylliäinen et al (2012) found that both children with ASD and TD children had greater SCRs to familiar compared to unfamiliar people.…”

Others’ emotions teach, but not in autism: an eye-tracking pupillometry study

“…Since then, pupillometry has been used to examine a number of questions in ASD (and children at risk for ASD) including those related to resting-state physiology [46–48], sensory-processing [49, 50], eye-gaze processing [51] and general face processing [52]. Pupillometry findings on emotion processing in ASD are consistent with findings from on older, more-able children and adults, including finding reduced and delayed emotional responses in the population [24, 30, 53–55]. …”

Anxiety and Attentional Bias in Preschool-Aged Children: An Eyetracking Study

“…However, there was a clear gaze preference for angry over neutral faces at the 500 ms point in both groups of participants, suggesting that a dot-probe version of this task would also have indicated a significant attentional preference towards angry faces for both groups. Finally, we removed fixations with a duration shorter than 100 ms to be consistent with previous eyetracking research in clinical psychology (e.g., Gamble and Rapee 2009) and eyetracking research with preschool aged children (Nuske, Vivanti, and Dissanayake 2014). However, it is not clear how much information children of this age can extract in 100 ms; a shorter or longer fixation duration cut-off may be more appropriate for this age-group.…”