Gaze aversion during social style interactions in autism spectrum disorder and Williams syndrome

Abstract

Publisher's copyright statement: NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Research in Developmental Disabilities. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A denitive version was subsequently published in Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34, 1, January 2013, 10.1016/j.ridd.2012.09.022. Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. patterns of GA with all participants looking away most while thinking and remembering (in contrast to listening and speaking). However there were a couple of specific disorder related differences: participants with WS looked away less when thinking and interacting with unfamiliar interlocutors; in typical development and WS familiarity was associated with reduced gaze aversion, however no such difference was evident in ASD. Results inform typical / atypical social and cognitive phenotypes. We conclude that gaze aversion serves some common functions in typical and atypical development in terms of managing the cognitive and social load of interactions. There are some specific idiosyncracies associated with managing familiarity in ASD and WS with elevated sociability with unfamiliar others in WS and a lack of differentiation to interlocutor familiarity in ASD. Regardless of the familiarity of the interlocutor, GA is associated with thinking for typically developing as well as atypically developing groups. Social skills training must take this into account.

Perspective influences eye movements during real-life conversation: Mentalising about self vs. others in autism

“…When it came to (non-social) eye gaze toward the background, we found a particularly important interaction between group and topic. Autistic participants showed significantly increased gaze toward the background compared to TD participants across all three topics of conversation, which likely reflects the social and cognitive load of managing the interaction (Doherty-Snedon, Whittle, & Riby, 2013). However, the between-group difference in gaze to the background was reduced in the self-condition relative to the unfamiliar-other condition.…”

A Tablet Computer-Assisted Motor and Language Skills Training Program to Promote Communication Development in Children with Autism: Development and Pilot Study

“…The first requirement was to accommodate an open-loop style of visuomotor control, in which visual feedback is not integrated into the execution of an ongoing movement (Haswell, Izawa, Dowell, Mostofsky, & Shadmehr, 2009). This design goal takes account of the known difficulty of many people with autism in making use of sensory feedback, such that gazing towards the target of a movement confers no advantage and can interfere with cognitive and motor resources necessary for successful communication (Chen, et al, 2012;Doherty-Sneddon, Riby, & Whittle, 2012;Doherty-Sneddon, Whittle, & Riby, 2013). People with autism often fixate only briefly before movement and then avert their gaze.…”

Quantifying naturalistic social gaze in fragile X syndrome using a novel eye tracking paradigm

“…Maintaining appropriate social gaze is a critical prerequisite for language development, emotion recognition, social engagement, and general learning through joint attention [Emery, ; Morales et al, ; Farroni et al, ; Brooks and Meltzoff, ; Csibra and Gergely, ; Itier and Batty, ; Senju and Johnson, ]. For example, several studies have indicated that high levels of social gaze avoidance can negatively impact social interaction skills and communication flow, given that crucial non‐verbal gestures and facial expressions that usually aid social interaction will be missed [Doherty‐Sneddon et al, ; Riby et al, ]. Given these factors, it seems important to examine and quantify social gaze in FXS in a naturalistic social setting (i.e., while individuals are actually engaged in a “real‐life” social interaction).…”