Eye‐direction detection: A dissociation between geometric and joint attention skills in autism

Abstract

This study examined differences between children with autism and control children in the ability to follow another person's direction of gaze. In Expt 1, children with autism, Down syndrome and normally developing children were given two tasks. The gaze monitoring task (GMT) measured the child's spontaneous tendency to follow gaze direction in response to another person's change of head and eye movement. The visual perspective taking task (VPT) measured the child's ability to compute and report what the other person was looking at, when instructed to do so. Results showed that the majority of Down syndrome and normal children passed both tasks. In contrast, children with autism failed the GMT. This failure could not have been due to a lack of the relevant geometric skill, as they passed the VPT. This geometric skill was examined further in Expt 2, using a fine discrimination task which tested children's ability to discriminate degrees of change in the orientation of gaze. Children with autism were well within their developmental age level on this task. These results indicate a dissociation between (impaired) spontaneous monitoring and (intact) geometric analysis of gaze‐direction.

The Relationship Between Visual Perspective Taking and Imitation Impairments in Children with Autism

“…Therefore, the findings are still preliminary to suggest that the impairments are specific to children with autism. The finding of VPT impairment in children with autism is in line with some previous studies (Hamilton, et al, 2009;Reed, 2002;Warreyn, et al, 2005;Yirmiya et al, 1994), but contradicts the findings of others (Baron-Cohen, 1989;Hobson, 1984;Leekam et al, 1997;Leslie & Frith, 1988;Reed & Peterson, 1990;Tan & Harris, 1991). One of the possible reasons for this inconsistency is the different designs of tasks.…”

The eye gaze direction of an observed person can bias perception, memory, and attention in adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder

“…In terms of eye-gaze direction discrimination, Leekam, Baron-Cohen, Perrett, Milders and Brown (1997) suggested that individuals with ASD are able to determine the direction of gaze relatively accurately; conversely Ashwin, Wicker and Baron-Cohen (2006) suggested that gaze direction perception is abnormal in individuals with ASD. As individuals with ASD often do not attend to the global content of stimuli unless prompted (e.g., Happé & Frith, 2006) and gaze cues have been shown to be voluntary rather than reflexive in individuals with ASD (Ristic et al, 2005) we predicted that eye-gaze direction would not cue individuals with ASD at all when searching for an object that is appearing/disappearing as it was not directly relevant to the task, hence no differences between the Straight Gaze conditions and the Gaze Object conditions were predicted for spotting the disappearing objects in any of the three locations.…”

Skin Conductance Responses to Another Person’s Gaze in Children with Autism

“…It has been shown that both children (Senju et al, 2003) and adults (Howard et al, 2000) with autism have difficulties in recognising gaze stimuli with an eye contact among serially presented averted-gaze stimuli. That the deficit is specifically related to the processing of eye contact is supported by the findings that individuals with autism can make overt discriminations of where other people are looking (Baron-Cohen et al, 1995;Kyllia¨inen & Hietanen, 2004;Leekam, Baron-Cohen, Perrett, Milders, & Brown, 1997;Tan & Harris, 1991) and that seeing of another person's averted gaze direction triggers an automatic shift of visual attention comparably in the clinical and control groups (Chawarska, Klin, & Volkmar, 2003;Kyllia¨inen & Hietanen, 2004;Senju, Tojo, Dairoku, & Hasegawa, 2004;Swettenham, Condie, Campbell, Milne, & Coleman, 2003).…”