Abstract
BackgroundPrevious research studies have assessed the relationship between attention to social information and peripheral (e.g., plasma and salivary) oxytocin (OT) levels in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A relationship between them was observed in TD children, but not in children with ASD. However, this relationship remains unexamined in other age groups. To clarify whether this lack of association is maintained throughout development in individuals with ASD, we aimed to assess the relationship between salivary OT levels and attention to social information in adolescents and adults with and without ASD.MethodsWe recruited male adolescents and adults with ASD (n = 17) and TD participants (n = 24). Using the all-in-one eye-tracking system Gazefinder, we measured the percentage fixation time allocated to social information. We also measured the salivary OT levels and Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) of participants. Subsequently, we confirmed group differences and conducted a correlation analysis to investigate the relationships between these three measures.ResultsSalivary OT levels did not show any significant difference between the ASD and TD groups and were negatively correlated with the AQ in the whole-group analysis, but not in within-group analysis. Individuals with ASD had significantly lower percentage fixation times than did TD individuals for eye regions in human faces with/without mouth motion, for upright biological motion, and for people regions in the people and geometry movies. The percentage of fixation for geometric shapes in the people and geometry movies was significantly higher in the ASD than in the TD group. In the TD group, salivary OT levels were positively correlated with percentage fixation times for upright biological motion and people and negatively correlated with inverted biological motion and geometry. However, no significant correlations were found in the ASD group.ConclusionsOur exploratory results suggest that salivary OT levels in adolescents and adults with ASD are less indicative of attention to social stimuli than they are in TD adolescents and adults. It is suggested that their association is slightly weaker in adolescents and adults with ASD and that this attenuated relationship appears to be maintained throughout development.
Highlights
Previous research studies have assessed the relationship between attention to social information and peripheral oxytocin (OT) levels in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
Fujioka et al Ann Gen Psychiatry (2020) 19:38 is slightly weaker in adolescents and adults with ASD and that this attenuated relationship appears to be maintained throughout development
Only one study investigated individuals with ASD, reporting that salivary OT levels did not correlate with attention to social information in preschool children with ASD [51]. These results suggest that the association between peripheral OT levels and gaze patterns for social information may be attenuated in children with ASD
Summary
Previous research studies have assessed the relationship between attention to social information and peripheral (e.g., plasma and salivary) oxytocin (OT) levels in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Individuals with ASD tend to gaze less at the face [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], especially at the eye region [3, 10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], look less at biological motion [20,21,22], and pay greater attention to geometric shapes when people and geometric shapes are presented simultaneously [11, 23,24,25,26] than do typically developed (TD) individuals These unique gaze patterns for the face, eyes, and geometry have been reported in both children [3,4,5, 7,8,9,10, 13,14,15, 19, 23,24,25,26] and adults [6, 11, 12, 16,17,18,19], the unique gaze pattern for biological motion was reported only in children. Abnormal attention to social information is observed over a wide age range and reflects the severity of social deficits
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