Absence of Preferential Unconscious Processing of Eye Contact in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder
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Eye contact plays an essential role in social interaction. Atypical eye contact is a diagnostic and widely reported feature of autism spectrum disorder ( ASD ). Here, we determined whether altered unconscious visual processing of eye contact might underlie atypical eye contact in ASD . Using continuous flash suppression ( CFS ), we found that typically developing ( TD ) adolescents detected faces with a direct gaze faster than faces with an averted gaze, indicating enhanced unconscious processing of eye contact. Critically, adolescents with ASD did not show different durations of perceptual suppression for faces with direct and averted gaze, suggesting that preferential unconscious processing of eye contact is absent in this group. In contrast, in a non‐ CFS control experiment, both adolescents with ASD and TD adolescents detected faces with a direct gaze faster than those with an averted gaze. Another CFS experiment confirmed that unconscious processing of non‐social stimuli is intact for adolescents with ASD . These results suggest that atypical processing of eye contact in individuals with ASD could be related to a weaker initial, unconscious registration of eye contact. Autism Res 2014, 7: 590–597. © 2014 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Keywords:
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According to the natural pedagogy theory, infant gaze following is based on an understanding of the communicative intent of specific ostensive cues. However, it has remained unclear how eye contact affects this understanding and why it induces gaze following behaviour. In this study, we examined infant arousal in different gaze following contexts and whether arousal levels during eye contact predict gaze following. Twenty-five infants, ages 9–10 months participated in this study. They watched a video of an actress gazing towards one of two objects and then either looking directly into the camera to make eye contact or not showing any communicative intent. We found that eye contact led to an elevation in the infants' heart rates (HRs) and that HR during eye contact was predictive of later gaze following. Furthermore, increases in HR predicted gaze following whether it was accompanied by communicative cues or not. These findings suggest that infant gaze following behaviour is associated with both communicative cues and physiological arousal.
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Eye contact constitutes a strong social signal in humans and affects various attentional processes. However, eye contact with another human might evoke different responses compared with a direct gaze depicted on a screen. Previous embodied gaze-cueing experiments with iCub humanoid robot showed eye contact modulations on gaze-cueing effect using a long stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA: 1000 ms, no predictive gaze cue). Instead, eye contact did not modulate the gaze-cueing effect using a shorter SOA (500 ms, no predictive gaze cue). In the present study, we investigated whether a robot’s eye contact on the screen could modulate the gaze-cueing effect by adapting the previous embodied experiments to a screen-based setup. Specifically, in two experiments we examined the impact of eye contact on the gaze-cueing effect for non-predictive cues while we varied the SOA (500 ms and 1000 ms). Our results showed that the robot’s direct gaze did not modulate the gaze-cueing effect (gaze-cueing effect present in all conditions), thereby suggesting that direct gaze presented in a 2D format on the screen has less impact on observers than its 3D embodied version in a physically present robot. Overall, our findings stress the importance of embodied interactions for understanding the mechanisms of social cognition.
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We report the personal eye gaze patterns of people engaged in face-to-face getting acquainted conversation. Considerable differences between individuals are underscored by a stability of eye gaze patterns within individuals. Results suggest the existence of an eye-mouth gaze continuum. This continuum includes some people showing a strong preference for eye gaze, some with a strong preference for mouth gaze, and others distributing their gaze between the eyes and mouth to varying extents. Additionally, we found evidence of within-participant consistency not just for location preference but also for the duration of fixations upon the eye and mouth regions. We also estimate that during a 4-minute getting acquainted conversation mutual face gaze constitutes about 60% of conversation that occurs via typically brief instances of 2.2 seconds. Mutual eye contact ranged from 0-45% of conversation, via very brief instances. This was despite participants subjectively perceiving eye contact occurring for about 70% of conversation. We argue that the subjective perception of eye contact is a product of mutual face gaze instead of actual mutual eye contact. We also outline the fast activity of gaze movements upon various locations both on and off face during a typical face-to-face conversation.
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The present paper investigated visual interaction in conversational dyads by using a larger range of gaze pattern measures associated with conversation than the total eye contact measure. Specifically, it aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the localized gaze pattern measure, which was scored for each subject by summing up gaze patterns for 3s immediately prior to and following the end of the interviewer's utterance over three occasions. Twenty female students were interviewed by one male student for about 10min. The interview topics were “fashion” for the first 5min and “sex” for the remaining 50min. (1) The frequency of a subject's gaze and eye contact was significantly greater in the “fashion” topic than in the “sex” topic, but the total amount and average length of both measures were not significantly different between the topics. (2) Immediately after the end of the interviewer's utterance subjects' gaze decreased, with significantly lesser localized gaze in the “sex” topic than in the “fashion” topic. It could thus be said that the localized gaze measure was more sensitive than the total eye contact measure.
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Research shows that arousal is significantly enhanced while participants make eye contact with a live person compared to viewing a picture of direct or averted gaze. Recent research has pointed toward the potential for social interaction as a possible driving force behind the arousal enhancement. That is, eye gaze is not only a signal perceived but also a signal sent out in order to communicate with others. This study aimed to test this by having dyads engage in eye contact and averted gaze naturally, while wearing sunglasses, and while blindfolded; such that the gaze signals were clear, degraded, and blocked, respectively. Autonomic nervous system arousal was measured via skin conductance response and level. The results showed that dyads exhibited the highest degree of arousal (increased skin conductance) while making eye contact (send/receive) compared to send-only or receive-only gaze trials; however, this was only the case if eye contact was clear. Once gaze information became degraded (by sunglasses or blindfold), arousal significantly decreased and was no longer modulated by the sending and receiving of gaze. Therefore, the arousal enhancement observed during eye contact is not only caused by receiving gaze signals (the focus of previous research) and should be more accurately attributed to the subtle interplay between sending and receiving gaze signals.
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