Abstract
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present reduced visual attention to faces. However, contradictory conclusions have been drawn about the strategies involved in visual face scanning due to the various methodologies implemented in the study of facial screening. Here, we used a data-driven approach to compare children and adults with ASD subjected to the same free viewing task and to address developmental aspects of face scanning, including its temporal patterning, in healthy children, and adults. Four groups (54 subjects) were included in the study: typical adults, typically developing children, and adults and children with ASD. Eye tracking was performed on subjects viewing unfamiliar faces. Fixations were analyzed using a data-driven approach that employed spatial statistics to provide an objective, unbiased definition of the areas of interest. Typical adults expressed a spatial and temporal strategy for visual scanning that differed from the three other groups, involving a sequential fixation of the right eye (RE), left eye (LE), and mouth. Typically developing children, adults and children with autism exhibited similar fixation patterns and they always started by looking at the RE. Children (typical or with ASD) subsequently looked at the LE or the mouth. Based on the present results, the patterns of fixation for static faces that mature from childhood to adulthood in typical subjects are not found in adults with ASD. The atypical patterns found after developmental progression and experience in ASD groups appear to remain blocked in an immature state that cannot be differentiated from typical developmental child patterns of fixation.
Highlights
IntroductionIndividuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by social deficits and with faces being the most complex and frequently encountered social visual stimulus, it has been proposed that face scanning processing may be impaired in ASD (Behrmann et al, 2006; for review see Dawson et al, 2005; Golarai et al, 2006; Jemel et al, 2006; Sasson, 2006; Harms et al, 2010; Falck-Ytter and von Hofsten, 2011; Falck-Ytter et al, 2013b)
One-way ANOVA analysis revealed that the typical adult group differed significantly from the typically developing children (TD-C) and the two autism spectrum disorder (ASD) groups for all selected variables (Table 2)
We propose here a simple method that allows spatial normalization of face stimuli and a statistical data-driven method of extracting eye tracking information
Summary
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by social deficits and with faces being the most complex and frequently encountered social visual stimulus, it has been proposed that face scanning processing may be impaired in ASD (Behrmann et al, 2006; for review see Dawson et al, 2005; Golarai et al, 2006; Jemel et al, 2006; Sasson, 2006; Harms et al, 2010; Falck-Ytter and von Hofsten, 2011; Falck-Ytter et al, 2013b). Yarbus (1967) first demonstrated that adults display a distinct and ordered pattern of eye movements during face encoding and recognition, with fixations primarily converging on core facial features, i.e., eyes and mouth that form a triangular scanpath. This template routine has been partially replicated in other studies (Groner et al, 1984; Henderson et al, 2005), which leads to the presumption that such a triangular scan trajectory represents a strategy employed universally by individuals as the most efficient way to extract visual information
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