Viewing it differently: Social scene perception in Williams syndrome and Autism

134

102

Visual fixation patterns whilst viewing complex photographic scenes containing one person were studied in 24 high-functioning adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and 24 matched typically developing adolescents. Over two different scene presentation durations both groups spent a large, strikingly similar proportion of their viewing time fixating the person's face. However, time-course analyses revealed differences between groups in priorities of attention to the region of the face containing the eyes. It was also noted that although individuals with ASD were rapidly cued by the gaze direction of the person in the scene, this was not followed by an immediate increase in total fixation duration at the location of gaze, which was the case for typically developing individuals.

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 90%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 63%

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Do Gaze Cues in Complex Scenes Capture and Direct the Attention of High Functioning Adolescents with ASD? Evidence from Eye-tracking

Freeth

Chapman

Ropar

et al. 2009

134

102

“…Ashwin, Ricciardelli, & Baron-Cohen, 2009). Indeed previous work using eye-tracking techniques has indicated that ASD individuals spend less time than do typical individuals viewing people and faces in social situations (Mercadante, Macedo, Baptista, Paula, & Schwartzman, 2006;Riby & Hancock, 2009;Riby & Hancock, 2008), and future work would be valuable in utilising these eye tracking techniques to examine the role of directed attention on salient social and person aspects of an event and its effect on subsequent memory recall in an eyewitness paradigm. That the ASD group were significantly more accurate for Surrounding details when interviewed with SIs is not unexpected given that these types of details can be relatively separated from person and action details and might rely on more of a rote memory strategy.…”

Section: Insert Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

The Cognitive Interview for Eyewitnesses with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Maras

Bowler

2010

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. The cognitive interview for witnesses with autism spectrum disorder Eyewitness evidence is central to the criminal justice system. In 2007, 1.78 million UK offenders were found guilty or cautioned (UK Ministry of Justice, UK, 2008) and 87% of police officers indicated that eyewitnesses usually or always provided major investigative leads (Kebbell & Milne, 1998). Inaccurate or incomplete testimony can lead to wrongful conviction or acquittal (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1996) and so reliable interviewing techniques are imperative in eliciting the most detailed yet accurate reports from witnesses. The Cognitive Interview (CI) is now one of the most widely used and accepted forms of interviewing in both the US and the UK (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992;Geiselman, 1984), and is currently taught to all police recruits in the UK (Dando & Milne, 2009). The CI has been shown to elicit detailed, yet accurate, reports from adult witnesses (Davis, McMahon & Greenwood, 2005;Kohnken, Milne, Memon & Bull, 1999), children (Geiselman & Padilla, 1988;Memon, Wark, Bull & Koehnken, 1997), older witnesses (Wright & Holliday, 2007b) and witnesses with learning disabilities (referred to in the US as mental retardation) (Milne, Clare & Bull, 1999 The Cognitive Interview (CI) is based on two basic principles of how memory typically operates; that retrieval of an event will be enhanced if the context experienced at recall matches that experienced during encoding (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992;Roediger, Weldon, Challis, & Craik, 1989; Tulving & Thompson, 1973), and that memories are stored as interconnected nodes that provide multiple retrieval routes (Tulving, 1974). On the basis of these principles the CI was the external (physical) and internal (subjective) states that they experienced during the witnessed event before freely reporting as many details of the event as possible. Permanent repository link:Recall of trivial or incomplete details is encouraged ('report all' instruction) since important facts may be elicited that co-occurred with seemingly unimportant events (Geiselman, Fisher, Mackinnon, & Holland, 1986). CR is followed by QU in whichwitnesses are asked open-ended questions based on what they said during their first free-recall attempt. Further details are elicited by asking witnesses to summon and describe mental images of the event, for example focusing on the best image they have of the victim in order to describe their clothing. During CO witnesses are then asked to recall the events in a different order, for example starting with the last thing they witnessed and working backwards in detail until they report the first thing they witnessed. Finally, the witness is asked to recall the event from a different perspective (CP), for example from the perspective of another person or imagining they were positioned in a different location (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). All four of these mnemonic strategies elicit more detai...

“…This atypical social behaviour has attracted significant research interest, particularly in recent years (e.g. Haas et al, 2009;Plesa-Skwerer et al, 2008;Riby & Hancock, 2008, 2009a, 2009b. In keeping with the methodology used in the present research, an interesting possibility is that the unusual social behaviour observed in WS may be related to a bias in the interpretation of social situations.…”

Section: Interpretation Bias and Social Behaviour In Williams Syndromementioning

confidence: 72%

Interpretation of Ambiguous Situations: Evidence for a Dissociation Between Social and Physical Threat in Williams Syndrome

Dodd

Porter

2010

Interpretation bias 2 AbstractWilliams Syndrome (WS) is associated with an unusual profile of anxiety, characterised by increased rates of non-social anxiety but not social anxiety ). The present research examines whether this profile of anxiety is associated with an interpretation bias for ambiguous physical, but not social, situations. Sixteen participants with WS, aged 13-34 years, and two groups of typically developing controls matched to the WS group on chronological age (CA) and mental age (MA), participated. Consistent with the profile of anxiety reported in WS, the WS group were significantly more likely to interpret an ambiguous physical situation as threatening than both control groups.However, no between-group differences were found on the ambiguous social situations.