Atypical Reflexive Gaze Patterns on Emotional Faces in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

Atypical scan paths on emotional faces and reduced eye contact represent a prominent feature of autism symptomatology, yet the reason for these abnormalities remains a puzzle. Do individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) fail to orient toward the eyes or do they actively avoid direct eye contact? Here, we used a new task to investigate reflexive eye movements on fearful, happy, and neutral faces. Participants (ASDs: 12; controls: 11) initially fixated either on the eyes or on the mouth. By analyzing the frequency of participants' eye movements away from the eyes and toward the eyes, respectively, we explored both avoidance and orientation reactions. The ASD group showed a reduced preference for the eyes relative to the control group, primarily characterized by more frequent eye movements away from the eyes. Eye-tracking data revealed a pronounced influence of active avoidance of direct eye contact on atypical gaze in ASDs. The combination of avoidance and reduced orientation into an individual index predicted emotional recognition performance. Crucially, this result provides evidence for a direct link between individual gaze patterns and associated social symptomatology. These findings thereby give important insights into the social pathology of ASD, with implications for future research and interventions.

Diminished sensitivity and specificity at recognising facial emotional expressions of varying intensity underlie emotion-specific recognition deficits in autism spectrum disorders

“…the intensity of the expression, which overall is in line with the reports by Law Smith et al (2010). That no recognition deficit for disgust, surprise, happiness, pride, and contempt emerged at any intensity level, can potentially be explained by the saliency of the mouth region for these emotions and the preference for the mouth region in ASD (Kliemann, Dziobek, Hatri, Steimke, & Heekeren, 2010;Spezio, Adolphs, Hurley, & Piven, 2007). Results showed deficits in the ASD group in recognition of anger at low and intermediate intensity, embarrassment at low intensity, and fear and sadness at all three intensity levels.…”

The Role of the Amygdala in Atypical Gaze on Emotional Faces in Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…In each trial, a fixation cross was presented initially (jittered, 2-15.5 s), followed by the presentation of a face (150 ms) ( Fig. 1) (Gamer and Büchel, 2009;Gamer et al, 2010;Kliemann et al, 2010). After showing a blank gray screen (jittered, 2-14 s), participants were asked to indicate the emotional expression via button press on a fiber optic response device (Current Designs Inc.).…”

“…The index measures the directionality of gaze shifts toward the eyes compared with the mouth while correcting for between-subject variability due to differences in the overall proportion of trials containing gaze shifts. Comparable indices have been used in two previous studies, using the same experimental paradigm (Gamer and Büchel, 2009;Kliemann et al, 2010). The proportion of gaze shifts toward the mouth or toward the eyes are corrected by dividing the respective variable by the sum of the gaze shifts toward both features in each emotion and adding one to offset the divisor away from zero:…”

“…In contrast, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show atypical gaze on emotional faces-marked by a reduced eye focus (Klin et al, 2002;Pelphrey et al, 2002;Kliemann et al, 2010). Within the social symptomatology in ASD, processing information from the eyes seems to be specifically impaired (Leekam et al, 1998;Baron-Cohen et al, 2001b).…”

Distinct Contributions to Facial Emotion Perception of Foveated versus Nonfoveated Facial Features

“…Individuals with autism, for example, tend to fixate the eye region less than controls (e.g., Dalton et al, 2005), whereas children with Williams Foveated vs Non-Foveated Facial Features 6 syndrome fixate the eyes more than controls (e.g., Riby & Hancock, 2008). Yet both groups tend to have difficulties identifying facially expressed emotions (e.g., Philip et al, 2010;Plesa Skwerer, Verbalis, Schofield, Faja, & Tager-Flusberg, 2006), which in some cases is predicted by their abnormal face scanning (Corden, Chilvers, & Skuse, 2008;Kliemann, Dziobek, Hatri, Steimke, & Heekeren, 2010). The link between looking-behaviour and impaired function in these conditions suggests an important relationship between foveal and extrafoveal processing of facial cues to emotion.…”