Atypical Social Judgment and Sensitivity to Perceptual Cues in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

Evaluation of faces is an important dimension of social relationships. A degraded sensitivity to facial perceptual cues might contribute to atypical social interactions in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study investigated whether face based social judgment is atypical in ASD and if so, whether it could be related to a degraded sensitivity to facial perceptual cues. Individuals with ASD (n = 33) and IQ-and age-matched controls (n = 38) were enrolled in this study. Watching a series of photographic or synthetic faces, they had to judge them for ''kindness''. In synthetic stimuli, the amount of perceptual cues available could be either large or small. We observed that social judgment was atypical in the ASD group on photographic stimuli, but, contrarily to the prediction based on the degraded sensitivity hypothesis, analyses on synthetic stimuli found a similar performance and a similar effect of the amount of perceptual cues in both groups.Further studies on perceptual differences between photographs and synthetic pictures of faces might help understand atypical social judgment in ASD.

Gaze direction detection in autism spectrum disorder

“…Might the use of synthetic stimuli have caused a disadvantage in the participants in the ASD group, creating an artificial difference? To our knowledge, previous mentions of differences between photographic and synthetic stimuli in ASD (Forgeot d’Arc et al, 2014; Rosset et al, 2008) have consistently shown the opposite pattern (i.e. synthetic stimuli being more easily processed by ASD groups than natural stimuli).…”

“…The participants took part in training and test sessions that were embedded in a larger battery of perception, social cognition, and executive functions (Forgeot d’Arc et al, 2014). At the beginning of the training session, participants were given pre-recorded verbal, written, and illustrated instructions, informing them that they would have to indicate whether the depicted character watched a green or a blue object.…”

Empathy and face processing in adults with and without autism spectrum disorder

“…Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by deficits in social skills and communication, as well as restricted interests and repetitive behaviors [American Psychiatric Association, ]. Numerous factors contribute to the social difficulties in this population including, for example, problems with executive function [Pugliese et al, ], emotion regulation [Samson, Hardan, Lee, Phillips, & Gross, ], and social perception [Forgeot d'Arc et al, ]. Recent work in the area of face perception [e.g., Cassidy, Mitchell, Chapman, & Ropar, ; Chevallier et al, ; Shah, Bird, & Cook, ] highlights the need to clarify the nature of observed face processing difficulties; determine whether problems documented with static face stimuli persist when facial motion cues are available; and determine the relationships between face processing abilities and individual differences in symptom severity and traits such as empathy.…”

Age‐Related Differences in Sensitivity to Facial Trustworthiness: Perceptual Representation and the Role of Emotional Development

“…Most notably, impairments in social cognition and mentalizing abilities (i.e., attributing mental states to other people) are known to be associated to diminished abilities to discriminate socially relevant characteristics of faces. For example, adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show abnormal face‐based judgments of trustworthiness in association with atypical emotion recognition abilities (Adolphs, Sears, & Piven, ; Forgeot d'Arc et al, ). Despite this evidence supports the alleged relation between emotion recognition skills and social judgments from facial cues, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have explored whether interindividual variations in emotion comprehension abilities are reflected in corresponding variations in children's perceptual sensitivity to physical cues to trustworthiness as well as in their proneness to use such cues to generate trustworthiness judgments.…”