Adaptation to different communicative contexts: an eye tracking study of autistic adults

Autor: Edward S. Brodkin, Brenna B. Maddox, Julia Parish-Morris, Robert T. Schultz, Juhi Pandey, Alison Pomykacz, Leat S. Perez, Ashley A. Pallathra, Leila Bateman, Emily F Ferguson
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Adult
Male
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Cognitive Neuroscience
Context (language use)
Fixation
Ocular
lcsh:RC321-571
Pathology and Forensic Medicine
Young Adult
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Social skills
Social cognition
Adaptation
Psychological
medicine
Humans
Adults
Attention
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Social Communication Disorder
lcsh:Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Eye Movement Measurements
Research
05 social sciences
Social environment
Middle Aged
medicine.disease
Social learning
Gaze
Face processing/perception
Social Perception
Autism spectrum disorder
Pediatrics
Perinatology and Child Health
Visual Perception
Eye tracking
Female
Neurology (clinical)
Psychology
Facial Recognition
Eye gaze
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
050104 developmental & child psychology
Cognitive psychology
Zdroj: Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders
Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2019)
ISSN: 1866-1955
1866-1947
Popis: Background Learning through social observation (i.e., watching other people interact) lays the foundation for later social skills and social cognition. However, social situations are often complex, and humans are only capable of attending to one aspect of a scene at a time. How do people choose where to allocate their visual resources when viewing complex social scenarios? For typically developing (TD) individuals, faces are often given priority. Depending upon context, however, it may be more useful to attend to other aspects of the environment, such as hands, tools, or background objects. Previous studies reported reduced face looking in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but modulation of visual attention in response to contextual differences (e.g., according to social richness, or the presence/absence of communicative behaviors between two people) has only briefly been explored. In this study, we used eye-tracking technology to test the extent to which ASD adults and TD adults use social context to guide their gaze behavior. Methods Fifty-five adults participated (28 with ASD). The location and duration of participants’ gaze were recorded while they watched a series of naturalistic social videos. Half of the videos depicted two people engaging in non-verbal communication (rich social scenes) while playing with toys. The other half depicted two people playing with toys separately, not interacting with each other (lean social scenes). Results ASD and TD adults both increased their attention to faces in communicative contexts (rich social scenes) as compared to non-communicative contexts (lean social scenes). However, TD adults increased their attention to faces significantly more when watching two people communicate than did ASD adults, who increased their attention to a lesser degree. Further analysis revealed that ASD adults persisted in looking at hands and toys, even when observing two people communicate in a rich social scene. Conclusions Diminished gaze to faces when observing two people communicating may lead to fewer opportunities for social learning and subsequent reductions in social knowledge. Naturalistic measures of contextual modulation could help identify areas of need for individuals learning about the social world and could become treatment targets to improve everyday social learning.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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