Abstract
AbstractThe aim of this study was to evaluate to what degree eyetracking paradigms of social attention, in combination with synchronous measurements of affective arousal, were associated with real‐life social behavior of children aged 3–7 years. Several eyetracking paradigms were used, involving social interactions, single/multiple faces, and emotional faces. Arousal was measured using electrocardiography. Real‐life social behavior was measured using structured behavior observations, parent questionnaires, and developmental interviews. Time spent looking at social stimuli was significantly associated with real‐life social behaviors, and independent of age, IQ, or gender. Paradigms involving social interactions and looking time to the eyes showed the most consistent relations with social behaviors. Stronger affective arousal responses were associated with shorter looking times toward eyes, which in turn were associated with less social awareness in real life. Eyetracking and arousal measures allow for sensitive and objective assessment of social abilities that have great relevance for real‐life social behaviors, with the potential to use in a broad and diverse population. These measures may help gain insight into the underpinnings of social behavior and may serve as a valuable marker or outcome measure in understanding, monitoring, and stimulating social‐emotional development early in life.
Highlights
From a young age, children typically have a preference for social stimuli, such as faces, eyes, and body motions (Chita‐Tegmark, 2016)
Because of the relevance of social attention for social development of children, it has been studied extensively, both in typically developing children and in children with aberrant social development, for example those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or social anxiety. This interest includes the identification of individual differences in children’s social attention, and the evaluation of how early training or intervention may impact social attention development, which calls for methods to assess social attention in a way that reflects real‐life social behaviors
In order to be able to provide in this, it is important that instruments assessing social attention in young children meet several criteria: (a) instruments should be sensitive, in order to pick up small individual differences, (b) instruments should be able to capture social attention independent of IQ and verbal instructions/responses, in order to be able to compare social attention across groups of children who vary in level of intellectual functioning, and (c) instruments should preferably have high ecological validity, in order to extrapolate findings to real‐life social abilities
Summary
Children typically have a preference for social stimuli, such as faces, eyes, and body motions (Chita‐Tegmark, 2016). In order to be able to provide in this, it is important that instruments assessing social attention in young children meet several criteria: (a) instruments should be sensitive, in order to pick up small individual differences, (b) instruments should be able to capture social attention independent of IQ and verbal instructions/responses, in order to be able to compare social attention across groups of children who vary in level of intellectual functioning, and (c) instruments should preferably have high ecological validity, in order to extrapolate findings to real‐life social abilities. These studies all were focused on children with atypical social development such as ASD (e.g., Louwerse et al, 2013; Nuske, Vivanti, & Dissanayake, 2014; Stagg, Davis, & Heaton, 2013; Zantinge, van Rijn, Stockmann, & Swaab, 2017) and social anxiety (Price et al, 2013) These studies have shown that looking at arousal responses may be helpful in understanding individual differences in social attention (i.e., accompanied by hypo‐arousal vs hyper‐arousal) and related social behavior. Third, is social attention as measured by eyetracking related to affective arousal triggered by the social stimuli? Including affective arousal measures (such as heart rate) in eyetracking paradigms could help in interpreting eyetracking data in terms of the underlying mechanisms driving social attention
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