Social attention and social-emotional modulation of attention in Angelman syndrome: an eye-tracking study

Abstract

Individuals with Angelman syndrome (AS) present with severe intellectual disability alongside a social phenotype characterised by social communication difficulties and an increased drive for social engagement. As the social phenotype in this condition is poorly understood, we examined patterns of social attention and social modulation of attention in AS. Twenty-four individuals with AS and twenty-one young children with similar mental age were shown videos featuring unfamiliar actors who performed simple actions across two conditions: a playful condition, in which the actor showed positive facial emotions, and a neutral condition, in which the actor showed a neutral facial expression. During the passive observation of the videos, participants’ proportion of time spent watching the two areas of interest (faces and actions) was examined using eye-tracking technology. We found that the playful condition elicited increased proportion of fixations duration to the actor’s face compared to the neutral condition similarly across groups. Additionally, the proportion of fixations duration to the action area was similar across groups in the two conditions. However, children with AS looked towards the actor’s face for a shorter duration compared to the comparison group across conditions. This pattern of similarities and differences provides novel insight on the complex social phenotype of children with AS.