The Role of Face Familiarity in Eye Tracking of Faces by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

It has been shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate normal activation in the fusiform gyrus when viewing familiar, but not unfamiliar faces. The current study utilized eye tracking to investigate patterns of attention underlying familiar versus unfamiliar face processing in ASD. Eye movements of 18 typically developing participants and 17 individuals with ASD were recorded while passively viewing three face categories: unfamiliar non-repeating faces, a repeating highly familiar face, and a repeating previously unfamiliar face. Results suggest that individuals with ASD do not exhibit more normative gaze patterns when viewing familiar faces. A second task assessed facial recognition accuracy and response time for familiar and novel faces. The groups did not differ on accuracy or reaction times.

Atypical eye contact in autism: Models, mechanisms and development

“…This is because an atypical pattern of mutual gaze behaviour, or eye contact, is among the most distinguishable manifestation of the qualitative impairment in social interaction in ASD. Since Kanner's first report (Kanner, 1943(Kanner, , 1944, such atypical pattern of eye contact has been reported and discussed in many clinical and experimental settings, including recent studies using eye-tracking methods ( Figure 1, Boraston et al, 2008;Dalton et al, 2005;Pelphrey et al, 2002;Spezio et al, 2007c;Sterling et al, 2008, but see also Dapretto et al, 2006;Rutherford & Towns, 2008;van der Geest et al, 2002). Based on this clinical significance, eye contact is currently included in standardised diagnostic criteria such as DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) and ICD-10 (World Health Organization, 1993).…”

The Role of Alexithymia in Reduced Eye-Fixation in Autism Spectrum Conditions

“…These claims are based on the large number of studies documenting reduced attention to faces (Hutt and Ounsted 1966;Trepagnier et al 2002;Riby and Hancock 2008;Sasson et al 2007;Bal et al 2010;Baranek 1999;Chawarska and Shic 2009;Osterling and Dawson 1994;Osterling et al 2002;Hernandez et al 2009) and/or atypical eye fixation in autism (as initially detailed in Kanner's first descriptions of autism, Kanner 1943Kanner , 1944; see also Joseph and Tanaka 2003;Riby and Hancock 2008;Boraston et al 2008;Sterling et al 2008;Jones et al 2008; for a review see Senju and Johnson 2009a). Klin et al (2002) assessed fixation patterns while participants observed emotional movie clips containing social interaction.…”

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

“…Familiarity of interlocutor will influence the amount of GA (Argyle & Dean, 1965;Rubin, 1970;and cf Sterling et al 2010) for typically developing children. We predict no difference associated with familiarity in children with ASD (Sterling et al, 2010);…”

“…We know in typical adults and children that amount of eye contact is in part determined by the closeness of the social relationship (and familiarity is part of this) with, for example, more looking between close friends than strangers (Argyle & Dean, 1965;Rubin). In contrast Sterling, Dawson, Webb, Murias, Munson, Panagiotides and Aylward (2010) report that typically developing adults actually spent less time fixating on familiar faces than unfamiliar faces. One interpretation of this is that participants had to spend more time processing the unfamiliar information in the unfamiliar faces.…”

“…Dalton and colleagues (2005) report that greater activation of the fusiform gyrus and occipital cortex for personally familiar compared to unfamiliar faces is only found in typically developing individuals and is not seen in individuals with autism. Sterling et al (2010) used eye tracking and reported that individuals with ASD did not differ their eye movements according to familiarity of faces, a pattern seen in typical development. Therefore it is suggested that these two types of face stimuli induce similar patterns of brain activation for individuals with autism but not for typically developing individuals (Dawson et al, 2002;Dalton et al, 2005).…”