Abstract
Atypical gaze behavior in response to a face has been well documented in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Children with ASD appear to differ from typically developing (TD) children in gaze behavior for spoken and dynamic face stimuli but not for nonspeaking, static face stimuli. Furthermore, children with ASD and TD children show a difference in their gaze behavior for certain expressions. However, few studies have examined the relationship between autism severity and gaze behavior toward certain facial expressions. The present study replicated and extended previous studies by examining gaze behavior towards pictures of facial expressions. We presented ASD and TD children with pictures of surprised, happy, neutral, angry, and sad facial expressions. Autism severity was assessed using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS). The results showed that there was no group difference in gaze behavior when looking at pictures of facial expressions. Conversely, the children with ASD who had more severe autistic symptomatology had a tendency to gaze at angry facial expressions for a shorter duration in comparison to other facial expressions. These findings suggest that autism severity should be considered when examining atypical responses to certain facial expressions.
Highlights
Human faces provide important social cues, and the perception of facial expressions is fundamental to the development of social communication
To investigate the role of autism severity in gaze behavior towards facial expressions, we examined the relationship degree between the total CARS scores (Childhood Autism Rating Scale) [27] and the proportion of total time spent looking at each facial expression
The mean proportion of the total time spent looking at the face Areas of Interest (AOI) was 65.1% (SD = 18.7) for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and 77.5% (SD = 20.0) for typically developing (TD)
Summary
Human faces provide important social cues, and the perception of facial expressions is fundamental to the development of social communication. It is expected that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), who are characterized by social communication difficulties, exhibit abnormalities in their perception of the face. Consistent with this view, several eye-tracking studies have shown atypical gaze behavior toward faces in individuals with ASD [1,2,3]. Gaze behavior toward the face differs because of variables such as speech (spoken or unspoken), movement (static or dynamic), or facial expression. In most previous investigations of gaze behavior toward faces in individuals with ASD, these variables have not been sufficiently examined
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