Reflexive orienting in response to eye gaze and an arrow in children with and without autism

Senju, Atsushi; Tojo, Yoshikuni; Dairoku, Hitoshi; Hasegawa, Toshikazu

doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00236.x

Cited by 220 publications

(248 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…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).…”

mentioning

confidence: 89%

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

Kylliäinen

Hietanen

2006

J Autism Dev Disord

201

155

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The effects of another person's gaze on physiological arousal were investigated by measuring skin conductance responses (SCR). Twelve able children with autism and 12 control children were shown face stimuli with straight gaze (eye contact) or averted gaze on a computer monitor. In children with autism, the responses to straight gaze were stronger than responses to averted gaze, whereas there was no difference in the responses to these gaze conditions in normally developing children. Thus, these results showed that eye gaze elicited differential pattern of SCR in normally developing children and in children with autism. It is possible that the enhanced arousal to eye contact may contribute to the abnormal gaze behaviour frequently reported in the context of autism.

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mentioning

confidence: 89%

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

Kylliäinen

Hietanen

2006

J Autism Dev Disord

201

155

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“…Children with ASD (ages [9][10][11][12][13][14] are slower at detecting direct gaze relative to controls [53] even though they decode and orient to the direction of averted gaze accurately [53,54]. Consistent with deficits in reciprocal gaze behavior, the results of a recent study showed that adults with ASD typically spend less time looking at the inner features of the face, particularly the eyes, in contrast to healthy or IQ matched controls [55].…”

Section: Anomalous Gaze Processing Among Children and Adults With Autismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autism and the development of face processing

Golarai

Grill-Spector

Reiss

2006

Clinical Neuroscience Research

158

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Autism is a pervasive developmental condition, characterized by impairments in non-verbal communication, social relationships and stereotypical patterns of behavior. A large body of evidence suggests that several aspects of face processing are impaired in autism, including anomalies in gaze processing, memory for facial identity and recognition of facial expressions of emotion. In search of neural markers of anomalous face processing in autism, much interest has focused on a network of brain regions that are implicated in social cognition and face processing. In this review, we will focus on three such regions, namely the STS for its role in processing gaze and facial movements, the FFA in face detection and identification and the amygdala in processing facial expressions of emotion. Much evidence suggests that a better understanding of the normal development of these specialized regions is essential for discovering the neural bases of face processing anomalies in autism. Thus, we will also examine the available literature on the normal development of face processing. Key unknowns in this research area are the neuro-developmental processes, the role of experience and the interactions among components of the face processing system in shaping each of the specialized regions for processing faces during normal development and in autism. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease.

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“…Although individuals with autism demonstrate deficits in coordinating visual attention with others (i.e., joint attention) and understanding the mental states of others on the basis of information gathered from the eyes (e.g., Loveland & Landry, 1986;Mundy, Sigman, Ungerer, & Sherman, 1986;Baron-Cohen, 1995;Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001), such deficits in gaze processing do not appear to be based in eye gaze direction discrimination per se. Baron-Cohen (1995) demonstrated that such deficits appear to be characterized by impairments in using gaze to understand the mental states of others, and recent behavioral studies confirms that automatic attentional shifts in responses to static gaze direction are intact in individuals with autism (Kylliainen & Hietanen, 2004;Senju, Tojo, Dairoku, & Hasegawa, 2004;Ames & Jarrold, 2006;Bayliss & Tipper, 2005;Burgos, Kaplan, Foss-Feig, Kenworthy, Gilotty, Lee, Girton, Gaillard, & Vaidya, 2005). This pattern of findings suggests that autism is not characterized by deficits in reflexive attention orienting to gaze direction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social stimuli interfere with cognitive control in autism

2007

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Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by cognitive control deficits as well as impairments in social interactions. However, the brain mechanisms mediating the interactive effects of these deficits have not been addressed. We employed event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the effects of processing directional information from faces on activity within brain regions mediating cognitive control. High-functioning individuals with autism and age-, gender-, and IQ-matched neurotypical individuals attended to the direction of a centrally-presented arrow or gaze stimulus with similar flanker stimuli oriented in the same ("congruent") or opposite ("incongruent") direction. The incongruent arrow condition was examined to assess functioning of brain regions mediating cognitive control in a context without social-cognitive demands, whereas the incongruent gaze condition assessed functioning of the same brain regions in a social-cognitive context. Consistent with prior studies, the incongruent arrow condition recruited activity in bilateral midfrontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral intraparietal sulcus, and the anterior cingulate relative to the congruent arrow condition in neurotypical participants. Notably, there were not diagnostic group differences in patterns of regional fMRI activation in response to the arrow condition. However, while viewing the incongruent gaze stimuli, although neurotypical participants recruited the same brain regions, participants with autism showed marked hypoactivation in these areas. These findings suggest that processing social-cognitive stimuli interferes with functioning of brain regions recruited during cognitive control tasks in autism. Implications for research into cognitive control deficits in autism are discussed.

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Reflexive orienting in response to eye gaze and an arrow in children with and without autism

Cited by 220 publications

References 64 publications

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

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

Autism and the development of face processing

Social stimuli interfere with cognitive control in autism

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