Gaze direction detection in autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Detecting where our partners direct their gaze is an important aspect of social interaction. An atypical gaze processing has been reported in autism. However, it remains controversial whether children and adults with autism spectrum disorder interpret indirect gaze direction with typical accuracy. This study investigated whether the detection of gaze direction toward an object is less accurate in autism spectrum disorder. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (n = 33) and intelligence quotients-matched and age-matched controls (n = 38) were asked to watch a series of synthetic faces looking at objects, and decide which of two objects was looked at. The angle formed by the two possible targets and the face varied following an adaptive procedure, in order to determine individual thresholds. We found that gaze direction detection was less accurate in autism spectrum disorder than in control participants. Our results suggest that the precision of gaze following may be one of the altered processes underlying social interaction difficulties in autism spectrum disorder.

No preference for direct versus averted gaze in autistic adults: a reinforced preferential looking paradigm

“…By contrast, no preference, either for direct or averted gaze, emerged in our autistic participants, in line with previous studies [ 42 , 88 ]. Whereas some authors have suggested that autistic individuals have trouble identifying subtly averted gaze [ 37 , 38 ], in our study, the manipulation between subtle and obvious averted gaze seemed to influence neither the neurotypical participants’ preference for direct gaze nor the absence of any preference in autistic participants.…”

“…Several studies found that autistic adults are able to detect [ 32 , 33 ] and follow [ 34 , 35 ] eye gaze direction. However, difficulties in detecting gaze direction have also been documented [ 36 ], especially with subtly averted gazes [ 37 , 38 ]. Neurotypical adults are known to display a preference for direct versus averted gaze [ 39 – 41 ].…”

“…While there is a growing interest in gender differences in autism, only a few eye-tracking studies controlled for the effects of gender on social processing in autism [ 38 , 44 – 49 ]. Most of these studies (mainly based on child samples) suggest a potentially higher social attention in autistic females compared to autistic males.…”

Out of mind, out of sight? Investigating abnormal face scanning in autism spectrum disorder using gaze‐contingent paradigm

“…One limitation of the current study was that the gender judgment task was rather challenging for children with ASD, reflected by their poorer discriminating ability in judging the gender of faces compared to TD children. This result is in line with numerous previous observations suggesting that individuals with ASD have lower sensitivity to many facial characteristics, including gaze direction, facial identities and expressions (Forgeot et al, ; Pellicano, Rhodes, & Calder, ; Uljarevic & Hamilton, ; Weigelt, Koldewyn, & Kanwisher, ). However, the result that the discriminating ability d’ of the ASD group is actually at the chance level is unexpected.…”

The Developmental Origins of Gaze‐Following in Human Infants

“…Some findings (Leekam, López, & Moore, ; Mundy, Sigman, & Kasari, ) suggest that a GF impairment may be most prominent early in development or in autistic children with lower mental age. Although it remains unclear to what extent GF is affected in ASD, different theories have been proposed to explain the impairment, including a diminished interest in faces and eyes (Chevallier, Kohls, Troiani, Brodkin, & Schultz, ); avoidance of eyes (Hadjikhani et al., ; but see Kylliäinen et al., ); impaired eye‐gaze direction detection (Forgeot d'Arc et al., ); and reinforcement learning differences (Triesch, Teuscher, Deák, & Carlson, ).…”