STORMy Interactions: Gaze and the Modulation of Mimicry in Adults on the Autism Spectrum

Abstract

Mimicry involves unconsciously imitating the actions of others and is a powerful and ubiquitous behavior in social interactions. There has been a long debate over whether mimicry is abnormal in people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and what the causes of any differences might be. Wang and Hamilton’s (2012) social top-down response modulation (STORM) model proposed that people with ASC can and do mimic but, unlike neurotypical participants, fail to modulate their mimicry according to the social context. This study used an established mimicry paradigm to test this hypothesis. In neurotypical participants, direct gaze specifically enhanced congruent hand actions as previously found; in the ASC sample, direct gaze led to faster reaction times in both congruent and incongruent movements. This result shows that mimicry is intact in ASC, but is not socially modulated by gaze, as predicted by STORM.

Conditional effects of gaze on automatic imitation: the role of autistic traits

“…However, this explanation is unlikely as gaze direction had an overall influence on reaction times, such that participants responded faster following direct gaze than averted gaze. This main effect of gaze has been observed in previous studies 6 , 11 , 19 , and is thought to reflect the attention reorienting properties of gaze cues. As shown by eye-tracking data collected in a previous automatic imitation study with gaze clips, direct gaze triggers participants to look at the face region more than averted gaze 12 .…”

“…Importantly, this reduced contextual modulation of imitation could not be completely attributed to insensitivity to gaze cues, as direct gaze elicited alerting responses in both ASC and control samples. This and other evidence of atypical imitative behaviour in response to social signals 19 , 20 may seem in conflict with studies showing intact automatic imitation in individuals with autistic traits 17 , 21 . In an attempt to integrate these findings, motivational accounts such as the STORM theory have proposed that, although the basic mechanisms of imitation seem to be preserved, individuals with ASC may be impaired in adjusting their imitative behaviour to the social context 4 .…”

“…Sixty participants (31 females, 28 males, 1 non-binary; M age = 26.6, SD age = 4.80; 58 right-handed, 2 ambidextrous) took part in this study. An a-priori power analyses using G*Power 3 27 estimated a sample of 35 to 63 participants (alpha = 0.05, power = 0.9, within-subject repeated-measures analysis of variance) for a ηp 2 reported between 0.35 (Gaze × Automatic imitation effect in Experiment 1 6 ) and 0.23 (Gaze × Automatic imitation effect in the control sample 19 ).…”

“…Second, we tested whether autistic traits modulate how gaze cues influence automatic imitation. A previous study found that individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) tend to automatically imitate others’ actions, but the strength of their imitative responses is not regulated according to the gaze direction of the observed agent 19 . Importantly, this reduced contextual modulation of imitation could not be completely attributed to insensitivity to gaze cues, as direct gaze elicited alerting responses in both ASC and control samples.…”

The way others move can influence what we choose

“…STORM predicts that there is less modulation of imitation by social cues in participants with autism. For example, eyegaze (Forbes, Wang, & Hamilton, 2017;Vivanti & Dissanayake, 2014), prosocial priming (Cook & Bird, 2012), and emotional facial expressions (Grecucci et al, 2013) After the presentation of the pictures the question "Which picture do you prefer?" stayed on the screen until participants indicated their preference by pressing the appropriate key on the keyboard.…”