Exploring the impact of autistic traits and anxiety on visual attentional response to angry faces in adults with high autistic traits: An eye-movement study

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of autistic traits and anxiety on the visual attentional response to angry faces among individuals with varying levels of autistic traits in the general population. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, eye-tracking methodology was used to compare 26 participants with high autistic traits to 26 individuals with low autistic traits. The latency of the first fixation on images of angry faces, neutral faces, and objects during a free viewing task was measured. Anxiety levels were assessed using the Self-rating Anxiety Scale. Experiment 2 utilized an overlap task to examine attentional response patterns toward angry faces in individuals with high and low autistic traits. The findings revealed that participants with high autistic traits displayed a longer latency to first fixation on angry faces during the free-viewing task compared to those with low autistic traits. However, no significant differences were observed for neutral faces and objects. In the overlap task, the group with high autistic traits demonstrated a significantly prolonged latency to first fixation on angry faces in peripheral positions when the central stimulus was a neutral face and the peripheral stimulus was an angry face, relative to the group with low autistic traits. Importantly, when taking anxiety traits into account as a covariate in both experiments, the previously observed group effects no longer remained significant. These results were discussed within the frameworks of social motivation theory and the autism continuum hypothesis.