Abstract
Both individuals with diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and individuals high in psychopathic traits show reduced susceptibility to contagious yawning; that is, yawning after seeing or hearing another person yawn. Yet it is unclear whether the same underlying processes (e.g., reduced eye gaze) are responsible for the relationship between reduced contagion and these very different types of clinical traits. College Students (n = 97) watched videos of individuals yawning or scratching (a form of contagion not reliant on eye gaze for transmission) while their eye movements were tracked. They completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), the Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R), and the Adolescent and Adult Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist. Both psychopathic traits and autistic traits showed an inverse relationship to contagious yawning, consistent with previous research. However, the relationship between autistic (but not psychopathic) traits and contagious yawning was moderated by eye gaze. Furthermore, participants high in autistic traits showed typical levels of contagious itching whereas adults high in psychopathic traits showed diminished itch contagion. Finally, only psychopathic traits were associated with lower overall levels of empathy. The findings imply that the underlying processes contributing to the disruptions in contagious yawning amongst individuals high in autistic vs. psychopathic traits are distinct. In contrast to adults high in psychopathic traits, diminished contagion may appear amongst people with high levels of autistic traits secondary to diminished attention to the faces of others, and in the absence of a background deficit in emotional empathy.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Psychopathology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
Both Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and psychopathy have been described as empathy disorders (e.g., Platek et al, 2003; Schürmann et al, 2005), and previous research has shown that both individuals with ASD and individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits show diminished eye contact early in life (Robins et al, 2001; Dadds et al, 2014) as well as diminished susceptibility to contagious yawning (Helt et al, 2010; Rundle et al, 2015)
Total scores on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), and the Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R) were entered into a binary logistic regression model with contagious yawning serving as the dependent variable
Summary
Participants were 100 Trinity College students (50 female, 47 male), ages 18–23, recruited through psychology and neuroscience courses. Three participants were excluded due to loss of eye tracking data or inadequate visual attention, resulting in a final sample of 97. An AOI that covered the entire screen for each trial was created, in order to measure overall visual attention or any loss of eye tracking data. This was not used in analysis but was used to exclude two participants. Each of the 24 video clips contained 1 yawn (M = 13 s each) or 1 bout of scratching (M = 13 s each) with fixation cartoons shown at eye level between contagious stimuli clips within each block, lasting ∼7 s, for a total of 8 min of viewing time (see Figure 2)
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