The importance of the eye area in face identification abilities and visual search strategies in persons with Asperger syndrome

Falkmer, Marita; Larsson, Matilda; Bjällmark, Anna; Falkmer, Torbjörn

doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2010.01.011

Cited by 10 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…This strategy may be more flexible or underdeveloped in childhood and only impact performance once it is established in adulthood. Studies examining face perception with eye-tracking methods have found that children and adults with ASD use atypical local and global strategies (e.g., Albrecht et al, 2014;Falkmer, Larsson, Bjällmark, & Falkmer, 2010). Specifically, compared to TD children, some studies have shown that children with ASD fixate more on individual features, such as the eyes and mouths, but show no differences in recognition accuracy (Albrecht et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, compared to TD children, some studies have shown that children with ASD fixate more on individual features, such as the eyes and mouths, but show no differences in recognition accuracy (Albrecht et al, 2014). In contrast, others have demonstrated that adults with ASD fixate more on irrelevant facial features than eyes and perform poorer than neurotypical adults (Falkmer et al, 2010). These findings may be evidence that individuals with ASD continue to use a local strategy from childhood through to adulthood and as a result, perform poorer than TD individuals in tasks that limit access to local information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Face perception develops similarly across viewpoint in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder

et al. 2017

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Atypical face perception has been associated with the socio-communicative difficulties that characterize autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Growing evidence, however, suggests that a widespread impairment in face perception is not as common as once thought. One important issue arising with the interpretation of this literature is the relationship between face processing and a more general perceptual tendency to focus on local rather than global information. Previous work has demonstrated that when discriminating faces presented from the same view, older adolescents and adults with ASD perform similarly to typically developing individuals. When faces are presented from different views, however, they perform more poorly-specifically, when access to local cues is minimized. In this study, we assessed the cross-sectional development of face identity discrimination across viewpoint using same- and different-view conditions in children and adolescents with and without ASD. Contrary to the findings in adults, our results revealed that all participants experienced greater difficulty identifying faces from different views than from same views, and demonstrated similar age-expected improvements in performance across tasks. These results suggest that differences in face discrimination across views may only emerge beyond the age of 15 years in ASD.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Face perception develops similarly across viewpoint in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder

et al. 2017

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“…Visual search of objects depends critically on the processing strategy of the searching items. It is well known that processing of faces is mostly holistic [e.g., Falkmer, Larsson, Bj€ allmark, & Falkmer, 2010;Jemel, Mottron, & Dawson, 2006;Maurer, Le Grand, & Mondloch, 2002], while local details are important for the recognition of simple visual features [e.g., Poiese, Spalek, & Di Lollo, 2008;Van Eylen, Boets, Steyaert, Wagemans, & Noens, 2015]. Therefore, the detailed-focused cognitive style in ASD [Dakin & Frith, 2005;Frith, 1989;Simmons et al, 2009] may facilitate their visual search for simple features, but less likely for the visual search for faces.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reward learning modulates the attentional processing of faces in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

Wang

Pan

et al. 2017

Autism Research

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In our study, we tested whether the face processing of individuals with ASD could be changed when the faces were associated with different social meanings. We found no effect of social meanings on face recognition, but both groups responded faster in the visual search task when one of the distractor faces was associated with positive or negative values than when the neutral face. The findings suggest that children with ASD could efficiently process faces associated with different values like typical children.

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“…Facial recognition difficulties in ASD may be due to sub-optimal strategies for facial processing and recognition (Sasson, 2006). When participants with ASD and controls view faces during facial recognition tasks, both groups spend more time fixating on the eyes (or eye regions) compared to other regions of the face (Falkmer, Larsson, Bjällmark, & Falkmer, 2010;Hernandez et al, 2009;Sterling et al, 2008). The eyes, in combination with the nose and mouth regions, form the core components of the "face information triangle" and receive the most attention during face perception (Yarbus, Haigh, & Rigss, 1967).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One method of examining whether featural or configural processing is being used during facial recognition tasks is to manipulate prominent features of facial stimuli (e.g., by segmenting a photograph of a face into pieces of facial puzzles; Falkmer et al, 2010). We previously demonstrated that adults with ASD displayed greater difficulties in facial recognition during a task where training stimuli were segmented into a number of pieces (Falkmer et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual search strategies during facial recognition in children with ASD

Albrecht

Foster

Joosten

et al. 2014

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Facial recognition is a complex skill necessary for successful human interpersonal and social interactions. Given that the most prevalent disorder of social interaction is autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a number of studies have investigated and found impaired facial recognition abilities in people with ASD. Further, this impairment may be critically involved in mediating the deficits in interpersonal and social interactions in people with ASD. We sought to address the question of whether face processing is impaired in children with ASD in the current study. While there were a number of differences in visual search behaviours between the 19 children with ASD and the 15 controls, this did not manifest in deficits in facial recognition accuracy. In addition, there were notable differences with respect to eye fixation behaviours and recognition accuracy in this study compared to the findings in a previous similar study conducted in adults with ASD. These differences suggest a performance enhancing developmental trajectory in facial processing in controls that may not be present in individuals with ASD.

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The importance of the eye area in face identification abilities and visual search strategies in persons with Asperger syndrome

Cited by 10 publications

References 24 publications

Face perception develops similarly across viewpoint in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder

Face perception develops similarly across viewpoint in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder

Reward learning modulates the attentional processing of faces in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

Visual search strategies during facial recognition in children with ASD

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