Does the perception of moving eyes trigger reflexive visual orienting in autism?

Unconscious and Conscious Gaze-Triggered Attentional Orienting: Distinguishing Innate and Acquired Components of Social Attention in Children and Adults with Autistic Traits and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Typically developing (TD) individuals can readily orient attention according to others' eye-gaze direction, an ability known as social attention, which involves both innate and acquired components. To distinguish between these two components, we used a critical flicker fusion technique to render gaze cues invisible to participants, thereby largely reducing influences from consciously acquired strategies. Results revealed that both visible and invisible gaze cues could trigger attentional orienting in TD adults (aged 20 to 30 years) and children (aged 6 to 12 years). Intriguingly, only the ability to involuntarily respond to invisible gaze cues was negatively correlated with autistic traits among all TD participants. This ability was substantially impaired in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and in children with high autistic traits. No such association or reduction was observed with visible gaze cues. These findings provide compelling evidence for the functional demarcation of conscious and unconscious gaze-triggered attentional orienting that emerges early in life and develops into adulthood, shedding new light on the differentiation of the innate and acquired aspects of social attention. Moreover, they contribute to a comprehensive understanding of social endophenotypes of ASD.

Social attention patterns of autistic and non-autistic adults when viewing real versus reel people

LAY ABSTRACT

Early research shows that autistic adults do not attend to faces as much as non-autistic adults. However, some recent studies where autistic people are placed in scenarios with real people reveal that they attend to faces as much as non-autistic people. This study compares attention to faces in two situations. In one, autistic and non-autistic adults watched a pre-recorded video. In the other, they watched what they thought were two people in a room in the same building, via a life webcam, when in fact exactly the same video in two situations. We report the results of 32 autistic adults and 33 non-autistic adults. The results showed that autistic adults do not differ in any way from non-autistic adults when they watched what they believed was people interacting in real time. However, when they thought they were watching a video, non-autistic participants showed higher levels of attention to faces than non-autistic participants. We conclude that attention to social stimuli is the result of a combination of two processes. One innate, which seems to be different in autism, and one that is influenced by social norms, which works in the same way in autistic adults without learning disabilities. The results suggest that social attention is not as different in autism as first thought. Specifically, the study contributes to dispel long-standing deficit models regarding social attention in autism as it points to subtle differences in the use of social norms rather than impairments.

Are there quantitative differences between eye-gaze and arrow cues? A meta-analytic answer to the debate and a call for qualitative differences

Gaze acts from an early age as a cue to orient attention and, thereafter, to infer our social partners' intentions, thoughts, and emotions. Variants of the attentional orienting paradigm have been used to study the orienting capabilities associated to eye gaze. However, to date, it is still unclear whether this methodology truly assesses "social-specific" processes exclusively involved in attention to eye-gaze or the operation of domain-general attentional processes. The present study provides a comprehensive meta-analysis indicating that eye-gaze and non-social directional stimuli, such as arrows, produce equivalent attentional effects. This result casts doubt on the potential utility of the classic cueing task in revealing social-specific processes. On the other hand, we review behavioral evidence suggesting that eye-gaze stimuli may induce higher-order social processes when more specific experimental procedures that analyze qualitative rather than quantitative differences are used. These findings point to an integrated view in which domain-general and social specific processes both contribute to the attentional mechanisms induced by eye-gaze direction. Finally, some proposals about the social components specifically triggered by eye-gaze stimuli are discussed.

An ACP-Based Parallel Approach for Color Image Encryption Using Redundant Blocks

Public concerns on image encryption grow significantly as the development and application of edge computing and the Internet of Things intensified recently. However, most existing image cryptosystems are not sophisticated enough to resist the two major attack strategies available currently, that is: 1) differential attacks and 2) chosen-plaintext attacks, which are famous for their destructive power, especially their capability of exploiting cryptosystems' features to recover the secret key. In this article, we propose an artificial image, computational experiment, and parallel execution (ACP)-based color image encryption approach using redundant blocks. First, a redundant blocks strategy with redundant spaces is proposed to prevent differential attacks and accelerate operating speed while guaranteeing the security of image cryptosystems. Second, real-world chaotic data (e.g., stock data) are obtained to generate artificial images and conduct computational experiments. Furthermore, artificial images are encrypted via real-world chaos, while the original images are encrypted via simulated chaos (such as Chen's hyperchaos). Finally, we design the process of parallel execution for image encryption and use DNA XOR to merge two groups of encrypted subimages to fuse the effect of the chaotic characteristics in both the real world and the simulation. The final encrypted image is realized through the recovery of redundant blocks. The ACP mechanism of color image encryption achieves the goal of improving the sophistication of chaos-based cryptosystems and resists both the differential and chosen-plaintext attacks. Experimental results and security analysis show that our approach provides not only excellent encryption but also security sufficient to prevent known attacks.

Social Attention: Developmental Foundations and Relevance for Autism Spectrum Disorder

The use of the term "social attention" (SA) in the cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychopathology literature has increased exponentially in recent years, in part motivated by the aim to understand the early development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Unfortunately, theoretical discussions around the term have lagged behind its various uses. Here, we evaluate SA through a review of key candidate SA phenotypes emerging early in life, from newborn gaze cueing and preference for face-like configurations to later emerging skills such as joint attention. We argue that most of the considered SA phenotypes are unlikely to represent unique socioattentional processes and instead have to be understood in the broader context of bottom-up and emerging top-down (domain-general) attention. Some types of SA behaviors (e.g., initiation of joint attention) are linked to the early development of ASD, but this may reflect differences in social motivation rather than attention per se. Several SA candidates are not linked to ASD early in life, including the ones that may represent uniquely socioattentional processes (e.g., orienting to faces, predicting others' manual action goals). Although SA may be a useful superordinate category under which one can organize certain research questions, the widespread use of the term without proper definition is problematic. Characterizing gaze patterns and visual attention in social contexts in infants at elevated likelihood of ASD may facilitate early detection, but conceptual clarity regarding the underlying processes at play is needed to sharpen research questions and identify potential targets for early intervention.

Social and non-social gaze cueing in autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and a comorbid group

Recent trends in literature, along with the changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), make it imperative to study Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) together, in order to better understand potential aetiological commonalities between these highly comorbid disorders. The present study examines social cueing, a highly studied construct in ASD, and intra-subject variability (ISV), a potential endophenotype of ADHD, in four groups of typically developing (TD), ADHD, ASD- (ASD without ADHD), ASD+ (ASD with ADHD) participants (N = 85) aged 10-13 years. Results showed that social cueing is intact in the 'pure' ASD group when task expectations are clear. The ADHD group showed faster saccadic reaction times, no increased ISV and a pattern of viewing comparable to the TD group. However, the ASD + group showed a differences in processing style and ISV. A secondary analysis gives evidence of non-additive effects of the ASD and ADHD factors.

No preference for direct versus averted gaze in autistic adults: a reinforced preferential looking paradigm

Background

With the overarching objective to gain better insights into social attention in autistic adults, the present study addresses three outstanding issues about face processing in autism. First, do autistic adults display a preference for mouths over eyes; second, do they avoid direct gaze; third, is atypical visual exploration of faces in autism mediated by gender, social anxiety or alexithymia?

Methods

We used a novel reinforced preferential looking paradigm with a group of autistic adults (n = 43, 23 women) pairwise matched on age with neurotypical participants (n = 43, 21 women). Participants watched 28 different pairs of 5 s video recordings of a speaking person: the two videos, simultaneously displayed on the screen, were identical except that gaze was directed at the camera in one video and averted in the other. After a 680 ms transition phase, a short reinforcement animation appeared on the side that had displayed the direct gaze.

Results

None of the groups showed a preference for mouths over eyes. However, neurotypical participants fixated significantly more the stimuli with direct gaze, while no such preference emerged in autistic participants. As the experiment progressed, neurotypical participants also increasingly anticipated the appearance of the reinforcement, based on the location of the stimulus with the direct gaze, while no such anticipation emerged in autistic participants.

Limitations

Our autistic participants scored higher on the social anxiety and alexithymia questionnaires than neurotypicals. Future studies should match neurotypical and autistic participants on social anxiety and alexithymia and complement questionnaires with physiological measures of anxiety.

Conclusions

The absence of preference for direct versus averted gaze in the autistic group is probably due to difficulties in distinguishing eye gaze direction, potentially linked to a reduced spontaneous exploration or avoidance of the eye region. Social attention and preference for direct versus averted gaze correlated with alexithymia and social anxiety scores, but not gender.

Neurophysiological correlates of visuospatial attention and the social dynamics of gaze processing

The reflexive orienting response triggered by nonpredictive gaze cues is thought to be driven by a dedicated social neural network responsible for directing attention toward socially salient information. However, atypical processing of eye gaze using concomitant perceptual features has been proposed to underlie attentional orienting in groups with impairments in social cognition. Here, we examined the neurophysiological indices of visuospatial attention during a spatial cueing task, considering individual variability in social cognition in typically developing individuals, and the relative salience of social gaze and perceptual motion cues. We found enhanced neural activation to incongruent cues, wherein modulation of the N2b serves as a marker of the allocation of attention in the spatial domain. Our findings suggest the social gaze cue is less salient for those with greater autistic traits. An attentional bias toward perceptual motion cues correlated with greater social anxiety and alexithymia, and thus may reflect reduced sensitivity to social stimuli. These results provide evidence for likely neurophysiological mechanisms underlying gaze cueing and offer insight into the use of qualitatively different cognitive mechanisms used to access social information. Such paradigms provide potential insight into normative orienting responses reported in atypical groups and would benefit investigations of gaze following abilities in clinical populations.

The Effect of Autistic Traits on Social Orienting in Typically Developing Individuals

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by wide ranging and heterogeneous changes in social and cognitive abilities, including deficits in orienting attention during early processing of stimuli. Investigators have found that there is a continuum of autism-like traits in the general population, suggesting that these autistic traits may be examined in the absence of clinically diagnosed autism. To provide evidence for the continuum of autistic traits in terms of social attention and to provide insights into social attention deficits in people with autism, the current study was conducted to examine the effect of autistic traits of typically developing individuals on social orienting using a spatial cueing paradigm. The typically developing individuals who participated in this study were divided into high autistic traits (HA) and low autistic traits groups using the Autism Quotient scale. All participants completed a spatial cueing task in which social cues (gaze) and non-social cues (arrow) were presented under different cue predictability conditions (predictive vs. non-predictive) with different SOAs (100 ms vs. 400 ms). The results showed that compared to low autistic individuals, high autistic individuals had less benefit from non-predictive social cues but greater benefit from non-social ones, providing evidence that such spatial attention impairment in high autistic individuals is specific to the social domain. Interestingly, the smaller benefit from non-predictive social cues in high autistic individuals was shown only in the 400 ms condition, not in the 100 ms condition, suggesting that their difficulties in orienting to non-predictive social cues may be caused by a deficiency in spontaneously effortful control processing.

Emotion first: children prioritize emotional faces in gaze-cued attentional orienting

Children shift their attention based on the gaze direction of another person but it is unclear whether they prioritize only the gaze of fearful faces over neutral ones or more generally, the gaze of emotional faces. School children performed a gaze-cueing task, in which central, non-predictive happy, angry, and neutral face-cues were briefly presented with averted gaze. Findings for 9-10-year-old children showed that the magnitude of gaze-cueing effects for happy and angry face-cues was similar and it was particularly larger with angry compared to neutral face-cues. In contrast, 6-7-year-old children showed gaze-cueing effects only with happy face-cues. The present findings clearly indicate that older children show emotion-enhanced gaze-cueing effects. In contrast, younger children did not show gaze-cueing effects with neutral and angry faces but they did with happy faces. The implications of age differences in the ability to prioritize emotional faces when shifting attention based on the observed gaze direction of a non-predictive face-cue are discussed in the context of the extant literature.

No Own-Age Bias in Children's Gaze-Cueing Effects

Sensitivity to another person's eye gaze is vital for social and language development. In this eye-tracking study, a group of 74 children (6-14 years old) performed a gaze-cueing experiment in which another person's shift in eye gaze potentially cued the location of a peripheral target. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether children's gaze-cueing effects are modulated by the other person's age. In half of the trials, the gaze cue was given by adult models, in the other half of the trials by child models. Regardless of the models' ages, children displayed an overall gaze-cueing effect. However, results showed no indication of an own-age bias in the performance on the gaze-cueing task; the gaze-cueing effect is similar for both child and adult face cues. These results did not change when we looked at the performance of a subsample of participants (n = 23) who closely matched the age of the child models. Our results do not allow us to disentangle the possibility that children are insensitive to a model's age or whether they consider models of either age as equally informative. Future research should aim at trying to disentangle these two possibilities.

Attention to faces and gaze-following in social anxiety: preliminary evidence from a naturalistic eye-tracking investigation

Social attentional biases are a core component of social anxiety disorder, but research has not yet determined their direction due to methodological limitations. Here we present preliminary findings from a novel, dynamic eye-tracking paradigm allowing spatial-temporal measurement of attention and gaze-following, a mechanism previously unexplored in social anxiety. 105 participants took part, with those high (N = 27) and low (N = 25) in social anxiety traits (HSA and LSA respectively) entered into the analyses. Participants watched a video of an emotionally-neutral social scene, where two actors periodically shifted their gaze towards the periphery. HSA participants looked more at the actors' faces during the initial 2s than the LSA group but there were no group differences in proportion of first fixations to the face or latency to first fixate the face, although HSA individuals' first fixations to the face were shorter. No further differences in eye movements were found, nor in gaze-following behaviour, although these null effects could potentially result from the relatively small sample. Findings suggest attention is biased towards faces in HSA individuals during initial scene inspection, but that overt gaze-following may be impervious to individual differences in social anxiety. Future research should seek to replicate these effects.

How attention gates social interactions

Social interactions are at the core of social life. However, humans selectively choose their exchange partners and do not engage in all available opportunities for social encounters. In this review, we argue that attentional systems play an important role in guiding the selection of social interactions. Supported by both classic and emerging literature, we identify and characterize the three core processes-perception, interpretation, and evaluation-that interact with attentional systems to modulate selective responses to social environments. Perceptual processes facilitate attentional prioritization of social cues. Interpretative processes link attention with understanding of cues' social meanings and agents' mental states. Evaluative processes determine the perceived value of the source of social information. The interplay between attention and these three routes of processing places attention in a powerful role to manage the selection of the vast amount of social information that individuals encounter on a daily basis and, in turn, gate the selection of social interactions.

Brief Report: Attentional Cueing to Images of Social Interactions is Automatic for Neurotypical Individuals But Not Those with ASC

Human actions induce attentional orienting toward the target of the action. We examined the influence of action cueing in social (man throwing toward a human) and non-social (man throwing toward a tree) contexts in observers with and without autism spectrum condition (ASC). Results suggested that a social interaction enhanced the cueing effect for neurotypical participants. Participants with ASC did not benefit from non-predictive cues and were slower in social contexts, although they benefitted from reliably predictive cues. Social orienting appears to be automatic in the context of an implied social interaction for neurotypical observers, but not those with ASC. Neurotypical participants’ behavior may be driven by automatic processing, while participants with ASC use an alternative, effortful strategy.

Neural Mechanisms Underlying Conscious and Unconscious Gaze-Triggered Attentional Orienting in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Impaired joint attention represents the core clinical feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Behavioral studies have suggested that gaze-triggered attentional orienting is intact in response to supraliminally presented eyes but impaired in response to subliminally presented eyes in individuals with ASD. However, the neural mechanisms underlying conscious and unconscious gaze-triggered attentional orienting remain unclear. We investigated this issue in ASD and typically developing (TD) individuals using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. The participants viewed cue stimuli of averted or straight eye gaze direction presented either supraliminally or subliminally and then localized a target. Reaction times were shorter when eye-gaze cues were directionally valid compared with when they were neutral under the supraliminal condition in both groups; the same pattern was found in the TD group but not the ASD group under the subliminal condition. The temporo–parieto–frontal regions showed stronger activation in response to averted eyes than to straight eyes in both groups under the supraliminal condition. The left amygdala was more activated while viewing averted vs. straight eyes in the TD group than in the ASD group under the subliminal condition. These findings provide an explanation for the neural mechanisms underlying the impairment in unconscious but not conscious gaze-triggered attentional orienting in individuals with ASD and suggest possible neurological and behavioral interventions to facilitate their joint attention behaviors.

Feature and motion-based gaze cuing is linked with reduced social competence

Gaze following is a fundamental ability that plays an important role in human social function. However, the link between these two processes remains elusive. On the one hand, typically developing persons show robust gaze following in laboratory cuing tasks. On the other hand, investigations with individuals with autism suggest that reduced social competence in this population may partly reflect an atypical access to social information through attending to perceptual changes that normally accompany gaze shifts, like luminance or motion transients. Here we investigated if gaze cuing in typically developing individuals was modulated by similar task-irrelevant perceptual changes. In Experiment 1, a social gaze cue was presented with or without a luminance change. In Experiment 2, a social gaze cue was presented together with a motion cue. Both experiments indicated reduced magnitudes of gaze cuing in persons with low social competence on trials containing an irrelevant perceptual change. This suggests that similarly to individuals with autism, typically developing persons with low social competence also utilize idiosyncratic perceptual changes in the environment to access social content, revealing strong links between basic gaze following abilities and a range of social competence within typical individuals.

A Study of Impaired Judgment of Eye-Gaze Direction and Related Face-Processing Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders

The purpose of this study was to examine whether individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) use the same cognitive strategies as typically developing individuals when processing eye-gaze direction. Subjects viewed pictures of whole faces, the eye region alone, and pairs of arrows presented for 40, 70, or 100 ms, and responded according to the direction the eyes were looking or the arrows pointing (left, right, or straight ahead). Experiment 1 demonstrated that typically developing adults ( n = 41) were more accurate and showed shorter reaction times when judging direction of averted eye gaze in the context of the whole face than when only the eyes were visible (eye-region-alone condition). Furthermore, in the eye-region-alone condition participants were more accurate and faster at judging direct eye gaze than averted eye gaze. The same task was used in experiment 2 to compare the performance of a group of individuals with ASD ( n = 24) with that of a group of IQ-matched typically developing individuals ( n = 26). The performance of the control participants was identical to that observed in experiment 1. Individuals with ASD were able to judge eye-gaze direction accurately at short exposure duration; however, they failed to show the typical advantage for judging averted gaze in whole faces and the increased sensitivity to direct gaze in the eye-region-alone condition. The findings are discussed in terms of impairments to discrete gaze-processing and face-processing mechanisms, and the connectivity between these mechanisms.

Disentangling the initiation from the response in joint attention: an eye-tracking study in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders

Joint attention (JA), whose deficit is an early risk marker for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), has two dimensions: (1) responding to JA and (2) initiating JA. Eye-tracking technology has largely been used to investigate responding JA, but rarely to study initiating JA especially in young children with ASD. The aim of this study was to describe the differences in the visual patterns of toddlers with ASD and those with typical development (TD) during both responding JA and initiating JA tasks. Eye-tracking technology was used to monitor the gaze of 17 children with ASD and 15 age-matched children with TD during the presentation of short video sequences involving one responding JA and two initiating JA tasks (initiating JA-1 and initiating JA-2). Gaze accuracy, transitions and fixations were analyzed. No differences were found in the responding JA task between children with ASD and those with TD, whereas, in the initiating JA tasks, different patterns of fixation and transitions were shown between the groups. These results suggest that children with ASD and those with TD show different visual patterns when they are expected to initiate joint attention but not when they respond to joint attention. We hypothesized that differences in transitions and fixations are linked to ASD impairments in visual disengagement from face, in global scanning of the scene and in the ability to anticipate object's action.

Brief Report: Reduced Temporal-Central EEG Alpha Coherence During Joint Attention Perception in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Although prior studies have demonstrated reduced resting state EEG coherence in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), no studies have explored the nature of EEG coherence during joint attention. We examined the EEG coherence of the joint attention network in adolescents with and without ASD during congruent and incongruent joint attention perception and an eyes-open resting condition. Across conditions, adolescents with ASD showed reduced right hemisphere temporal-central alpha coherence compared to typically developing adolescents. Greater right temporal-central alpha coherence during joint attention was positively associated with social cognitive performance in typical development but not in ASD. These results suggest that, in addition to a resting state, EEG coherence during joint attention perception is reduced in ASD.

Intact Reflexive but Deficient Voluntary Social Orienting in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Impairment in social interactions is a primary characteristic of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although these individuals tend to orient less to naturalistic social cues than do typically developing (TD) individuals, laboratory experiments testing social orienting in ASD have been inconclusive, possibly because of a failure to fully isolate reflexive (stimulus-driven) and voluntary (goal-directed) social orienting processes. The purpose of the present study was to separately examine potential reflexive and/or voluntary social orienting differences in individuals with ASD relative to TD controls. Subjects (ages 7–14) with high-functioning ASD and a matched control group completed three gaze cueing tasks on an iPad in which individuals briefly saw a face with averted gaze followed by a target after a variable delay. Two tasks were 100% predictive with either all congruent (target appears in gaze direction) or all incongruent (target appears opposite from gaze direction) trials, respectively. Another task was non-predictive with these same trials (half congruent and half incongruent) intermixed randomly. Response times (RTs) to the target were used to calculate reflexive (incongruent condition RT—congruent condition RT) and voluntary (non-predictive condition RT—predictive condition RT) gaze cueing effects. Subjects also completed two additional non-social orienting tasks (ProPoint and AntiPoint). Subjects with ASD demonstrate intact reflexive but deficient voluntary gaze following. Similar results were found in a separate test of non-social orienting. This suggests problems with using social cues, but only in a goal-directed fashion, in our sample of high-functioning individuals with ASD. Such findings may not only explain inconclusive previous findings but more importantly be critical for understanding social dysfunctions in ASD and for developing future interventions.

Self make-up: the influence of self-referential processing on attention orienting

For humans, both eye gaze and arrows serve as powerful signals for orienting attention. Recent studies have shown important differences between gaze and arrows in attention orienting; however, the mechanisms underlying these differences are not known. One such mechanism may be self-referential processing. To investigate this possibility, we trained participants to associate two cues (a red and green arrow in Experiment 1A and two different faces in Experiment 1B) with distinct words (“self” and “other”). Then, we manipulated two types of sound (voice and tone) as targets to investigate whether the cueing effect to self- and other-referential cues differs in a manner similar to that reported for gaze and arrows. We found that self-, but not other-, referential cues induced an enhanced cueing effect to the voice target relative to the tone target regardless of the cue characteristic (i.e., biological or non-biological). Our results suggest that the difference between gaze and arrows in orienting attention can be explained, at least in part, by the self-referentiality of gaze. Furthermore, in Experiment 2, we found a reverse cueing pattern between gaze and arrow cues by manipulating subjects’ experiences, suggesting that differences in the self-referentiality of gaze and arrow cues are not inherent.

Visual attention shifting in autism spectrum disorders

INTRODUCTION

Abnormal visual attention has been frequently observed in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Abnormal shifting of visual attention is related to abnormal development of social cognition and has been identified as a key neuropsychological finding in ASD. Better characterizing attention shifting in ASD and its relationship with social functioning may help to identify new targets for intervention and improving social communication in these disorders. Thus, the current study investigated deficits in attention shifting in ASD as well as relationships between attention shifting and social communication in ASD and neurotypicals (NT).

METHOD

To investigate deficits in visual attention shifting in ASD, 20 ASD and 20 age- and gender-matched NT completed visual search (VS) and Navon tasks with attention-shifting demands as well as a set-shifting task. VS was a feature search task with targets defined in one of two dimensions; Navon required identification of a target letter presented at the global or local level. Psychomotor and processing speed were entered as covariates. Relationships between visual attention shifting, set shifting, and social functioning were also examined.

RESULTS

ASD and NT showed comparable costs of shifting attention. However, psychomotor and processing speed were slower in ASD than in NT, and psychomotor and processing speed were positively correlated with attention-shifting costs on Navon and VS, respectively, for both groups. Attention shifting on VS and Navon were correlated among NT, while attention shifting on Navon was correlated with set shifting among ASD. Attention-shifting costs on Navon were positively correlated with restricted and repetitive behaviors among ASD.

CONCLUSIONS

Relationships between attention shifting and psychomotor and processing speed, as well as relationships between measures of different aspects of visual attention shifting, suggest inefficient top-down influences over preattentive visual processing in ASD. Inefficient attention shifting may be related to restricted and repetitive behaviors in these disorders.

The cued recognition task: dissociating the abrupt onset effect from the social and arrow cueing effect

In a standard center cueing paradigm, participants are asked to identify a target object presented either to the left or the right of a center cue (e.g., eye gaze, head-turn, arrow, etc.). When the center cue is non-predictive (e.g., the arrow points to the correct location of the target only 50 % of the time), the target can still be identified faster at the validly cued location than at the invalidly cued location. However, the abrupt onset of an object can elicit reflexive attention orientation. It is important to investigate whether this abrupt onset effect interferes with the cueing effect elicited by center cues because this interference effect, if it exists, should be controlled for in order to improve the test validity of the center cueing task. In an attentional cueing paradigm, we examined how the abrupt appearance of an exogenous target object mitigates the influence of center cues involving either a head turn (Experiment 1) or an arrow (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a non-predictive head-turn cue was followed by a target object (circle or square) presented in the left or right visual field. In the non-distractor condition, the target object was presented by itself. In this case, it is assumed that the sudden appearance of the target provides an orienting cue to the observer. To equalize the cueing effect of the target object, we presented a competing distractor object (triangle) in the opposite visual field to the target object. The participant's task was to categorize the target object as either a circle or square while ignoring the non-target triangle object in the opposite visual field. In Experiment 2, the arrow version of the cued recognition task was used, in which a single-headed arrow pointed to the object. The results from both experiments showed that both the non-predictive head-turn and arrow cues produced a reliable cueing effect in the distractor and non-distractor conditions. However, the magnitude of the cueing effect was greater in the distractor condition than in the non-distractor condition, suggesting that the abrupt onset of the target object acts like an exogenous signal, thereby reducing the impact of the internal head turn and arrow cues.

Reduced gaze following and attention to heads when viewing a "live" social scene

Social stimuli are known to both attract and direct our attention, but most research on social attention has been conducted in highly controlled laboratory settings lacking in social context. This study examined the role of social context on viewing behaviour of participants whilst they watched a dynamic social scene, under three different conditions. In two social groups, participants believed they were watching a live webcam of other participants. The socially-engaged group believed they would later complete a group task with the people in the video, whilst the non-engaged group believed they would not meet the people in the scene. In a third condition, participants simply free-viewed the same video with the knowledge that it was pre-recorded, with no suggestion of a later interaction. Results demonstrated that the social context in which the stimulus was viewed significantly influenced viewing behaviour. Specifically, participants in the social conditions allocated less visual attention towards the heads of the actors in the scene and followed their gaze less than those in the free-viewing group. These findings suggest that by underestimating the impact of social context in social attention, researchers risk coming to inaccurate conclusions about how we attend to others in the real world.

Atypical integration of social cues for orienting to gaze direction in adults with autism

BACKGROUND

Gaze direction provides important information about social attention, and people tend to reflexively orient in the direction others are gazing. Perceiving the gaze of others relies on the integration of multiple social cues, which include perceptual information related to the eyes, gaze direction, head position, and body orientation of others. Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are characterised by social and emotional deficits, including atypical gaze behaviour. The social-emotional deficits may emerge from a reliance on perceptual information involving details and features, at the expense of more holistic processing, which includes the integration of features. While people with ASC are often able to physically compute gaze direction and show intact reflexive orienting to others' gaze, they show deficits in reading mental states from the eyes.

METHODS

The present study recruited 23 adult males with a diagnosis of ASC and 23 adult males without ASC as a control group. They were tested using a spatial cuing paradigm involving head and body cues in a photograph of a person followed by a laterally presented target. The task manipulated the orientation of head with respect to body orientation to test subsequent shifts of attention in observers.

RESULTS

The results replicated previous findings showing facilitated shifts of attention by the healthy control participants toward laterally presented targets cued by a congruently rotated head combined with a front view of a body. In contrast, the ASC group showed facilitated orienting to targets when both the head and body were rotated towards the target.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings reveal atypical integration of social cues in ASC for orienting of attention. This is suggested to reflect abnormalities in cognitive and neural mechanisms specialized for processing of social cues for attention orienting in ASC.

Attention orienting by eye gaze and arrows reveals flexibility to environmental changes

This study aimed to evaluate the difference in non-predictive cues between gaze and arrows in attention orienting. Attention orienting was investigated with gaze or arrows as separate cues in a simple condition (i.e., block design) in Experiment 1 and in an unpredictable condition (i.e., randomized design) in Experiment 2. Two kinds of sound (voice and tone) stimuli were used as targets. Results showed that gaze and arrow cues induced enhanced attention orienting to a voice versus tone target in the block condition. However, in the randomized condition, enhanced attention orienting to a voice versus tone target was found in gaze but not arrow cues. The congruency of the meaning between a social cue (i.e., gaze) and a social target (i.e., voice) was clear in the randomized but not blocked design, because social gaze and non-social arrow cues were implemented in the same block. Thus, attention orienting might be mediated by the associated relationship of cue-target in a randomized condition, as an enhanced orienting effect was found when the associated relationship of cue-target was strong (i.e., social cue and target). The present study suggests that the difference in attention orienting between gaze and arrows is apparent in a randomized design (the unpredictable condition), and people employ a flexibly strategy of orienting to better respond to environmental changes.

Neural synchrony examined with magnetoencephalography (MEG) during eye gaze processing in autism spectrum disorders: preliminary findings

BACKGROUND

Gaze processing deficits are a seminal, early, and enduring behavioral deficit in autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, a comprehensive characterization of the neural processes mediating abnormal gaze processing in ASD has yet to be conducted.

METHODS

This study investigated whole-brain patterns of neural synchrony during passive viewing of direct and averted eye gaze in ASD adolescents and young adults (M Age  = 16.6) compared to neurotypicals (NT) (M Age  = 17.5) while undergoing magnetoencephalography. Coherence between each pair of 54 brain regions within each of three frequency bands (low frequency (0 to 15 Hz), beta (15 to 30 Hz), and low gamma (30 to 45 Hz)) was calculated.

RESULTS

Significantly higher coherence and synchronization in posterior brain regions (temporo-parietal-occipital) across all frequencies was evident in ASD, particularly within the low 0 to 15 Hz frequency range. Higher coherence in fronto-temporo-parietal regions was noted in NT. A significantly higher number of low frequency cross-hemispheric synchronous connections and a near absence of right intra-hemispheric coherence in the beta frequency band were noted in ASD. Significantly higher low frequency coherent activity in bilateral temporo-parieto-occipital cortical regions and higher gamma band coherence in right temporo-parieto-occipital brain regions during averted gaze was related to more severe symptomology as reported on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R).

CONCLUSIONS

The preliminary results suggest a pattern of aberrant connectivity that includes higher low frequency synchronization in posterior cortical regions, lack of long-range right hemispheric beta and gamma coherence, and decreased coherence in fronto-temporo-parietal regions necessary for orienting to shifts in eye gaze in ASD; a critical behavior essential for social communication.

Perception of pointing from biological motion point-light displays in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder

We examined whether the movement involved in a pointing gesture, depicted using point-light displays, is sufficient to cue attention in typically developing children (TD) and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (aged 8-11 years). Using a Posner-type paradigm, a centrally located display indicated the location of a forthcoming target on 80% of trials and the opposite location on 20% of trials. TD children, but not children with ASD, were faster to identify a validly cued target than an invalidly cued target. A scrambled version of the point-light pointing gesture, retaining individual dot speed and direction of movement but not the configuration, produced no validity effect in either group. A video of a pointing gesture produced validity effects in both groups.

A meta-analysis of visual orienting in autism

BACKGROUND

Visual orienting is inconsistently reported to be impaired in autism.

METHODS

We conducted a meta-analysis on visual orienting in autism. We focused on studies that used a Posner-type task. A total of 18 research papers published between 1993 and 2011 were included in our meta-analysis. We examined the effects of differences in experimental design as well as differences in participant samples. We examined both orienting reaction times of participants with autism, and the effect size relative to comparison group in each experiment.

RESULTS

We found that participants with autism oriented across conditions (mean orienting effect = 40.73 ms), which was of an overall smaller magnitude than that of comparison groups (Cohen's d = 0.44). Participants with autism were most impaired on arrow cue tasks, and least impaired on eye-gaze cue tasks, more impaired with rapid trials, and the impairment increased with age.

CONCLUSIONS

Variations in experimental design and participant age group contribute to whether participants with autism appear impaired at visual orienting. Critical gaps exist in the literature; developmental studies are needed across and comparing broader age ranges, and more attention should be focused on basic endogenous orienting processes.

Atypical gaze following in autism: a comparison of three potential mechanisms

In order to evaluate the following potential mechanisms underlying atypical gaze following in autism, impaired reflexive gaze following, difficulty integrating gaze and affect, or reduced understanding of the referential significance of gaze, we administered three paradigms to young children with autism (N = 21) and chronological (N = 21) and nonverbal mental age (N = 21) matched controls. Children with autism exhibited impaired reflexive gaze following. The absence of evidence of integration of gaze and affect, regardless of diagnosis, indicates ineffective measurement of this construct. Reduced gaze following was apparent among children with autism during eye-tracking and in-person assessments. Word learning from gaze cues was better explained by developmental level than autism. Thus, gaze following may traverse an atypical, rather than just delayed, trajectory in autism.

Social orienting of children with autism to facial expressions and speech: a study with a wearable eye-tracker in naturalistic settings

This study investigates attention orienting to social stimuli in children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) during dyadic social interactions taking place in real-life settings. We study the effect of social cues that differ in complexity and distinguish between social cues produced by facial expressions of emotion and those produced during speech. We record the children's gazes using a head-mounted eye-tracking device and report on a detailed and quantitative analysis of the motion of the gaze in response to the social cues. The study encompasses a group of children with ASC from 2 to 11-years old (n = 14) and a group of typically developing (TD) children (n = 17) between 3 and 6-years old. While the two groups orient overtly to facial expressions, children with ASC do so to a lesser extent. Children with ASC differ importantly from TD children in the way they respond to speech cues, displaying little overt shifting of attention to speaking faces. When children with ASC orient to facial expressions, they show reaction times and first fixation lengths similar to those presented by TD children. However, children with ASC orient to speaking faces slower than TD children. These results support the hypothesis that individuals affected by ASC have difficulties processing complex social sounds and detecting intermodal correspondence between facial and vocal information. It also corroborates evidence that people with ASC show reduced overt attention toward social stimuli.

Orienting in response to gaze and the social use of gaze among children with autism spectrum disorder

Potential relations between gaze cueing, social use of gaze, and ability to follow line of sight were examined in children with autism and typically developing peers. Children with autism (mean age = 10 years) demonstrated intact gaze cueing. However, they preferred to follow arrows instead of eyes to infer mental state, and showed decreased accuracy in following line of sight when several visual distracters were present. Performance across tasks was not correlated for either group. Findings suggest that children with autism are less inclined to prioritize and select eyes, particularly in visually-rich environments. Gaze-following deficits may lie at the level of selective attention, rather than cueing-a possibility that can be explored with more complex and ecologically valid tasks.

Broad autism phenotype in typically developing children predicts performance on an eye-tracking measure of joint attention

We examined visual attention allocation during a set of social videos that are intended to elicit the coordination of attention with another person, compared to a control condition. Deficits in joint attention are a characteristic of young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants included a diverse sample of 50 typically developing school-aged children between 3 and 9 years of age (M = 6:3, SD = 1:8). Results demonstrated that gaze allocation differed significantly between the experimental and control condition. Further, individual differences in gaze allocation were significantly predicted by a parent-report measure evaluating features of the broad autism phenotype. This study contributes to a research program that aims to develop and validate an endophenotype measure of ASD.

Precursors to social and communication difficulties in infants at-risk for autism: gaze following and attentional engagement

Whilst joint attention (JA) impairments in autism have been widely studied, little is known about the early development of gaze following, a precursor to establishing JA. We employed eye-tracking to record gaze following longitudinally in infants with and without a family history of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at 7 and 13 months. No group difference was found between at-risk and low-risk infants in gaze following behaviour at either age. However, despite following gaze successfully at 13 months, at-risk infants with later emerging socio-communication difficulties (both those with ASD and atypical development at 36 months of age) allocated less attention to the congruent object compared to typically developing at-risk siblings and low-risk controls. The findings suggest that the subtle emergence of difficulties in JA in infancy may be related to ASD and other atypical outcomes.

Impaired eye region search accuracy in children with autistic spectrum disorders

To explore mechanisms underlying reduced fixation of eyes in autism, children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and typically developing children were tested in five visual search experiments: simple color feature; color-shape conjunction; face in non-face objects; mouth region; and eye region. No group differences were found for reaction time profile shapes in any of the five experiments, suggesting intact basic search mechanics in children with ASD. Contrary to early reports in the literature, but consistent with other more recent findings, we observed no superiority for conjunction search in children with ASD. Importantly, children with ASD did show reduced accuracy for eye region search (p = .005), suggesting that eyes contribute less to high-level face representations in ASD or that there is an eye region-specific disruption to attentional processes engaged by search in ASD.

Atypical attentional networks and the emergence of autism

The sociocommunicative impairments that define autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are not present at birth but emerge gradually over the first two years of life. In typical development, basic attentional processes may provide a critical foundation for sociocommunicative abilities. Therefore early attentional dysfunction in ASD may result in atypical development of social communication. Prior research has demonstrated that persons with ASD exhibit early and lifelong impairments in attention. The primary aim of this paper is to provide a review of the extant research on attention in ASD using a framework of functionally independent attentional networks as conceptualized by Posner and colleagues: the alerting, orienting and executive control networks (Posner and Petersen, 1990; Petersen and Posner, 2012). The neural substrates and typical development of each attentional network are briefly discussed, a review of the ASD attention literature is presented, and a hypothesis is proposed that links aberrant attentional mechanisms, specifically impaired disengagement of attention, with the emergence of core ASD symptoms.

Attention orienting by gaze and facial expressions across development

Processing of facial expressions has been shown to potentiate orienting of attention toward the direction signaled by gaze in adults, an important social-cognitive function. However, little is known about how this social attention skill develops. This study is the first to examine the developmental trajectory of the gaze orienting effect (GOE), its modulations by facial expressions, and its links with theory of mind (ToM) abilities. Dynamic emotional stimuli were presented to 222 participants (7-25 years old) with normal trait anxiety using a gaze-cuing paradigm. The GOE was found as early as 7 years of age and decreased linearly until 12-13 years, at which point adult levels were reached. Both fearful and surprised expressions enhanced the GOE compared with neutral expressions. The GOE for fearful faces was also larger than for joyful and angry expressions. These effects did not interact with age and were not driven by intertrial variance. Importantly, the GOE did not correlate with ToM abilities as assessed by the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test. The implication of these findings for clinical and typically developing populations is discussed.

Comparing face processing strategies between typically-developed observers and observers with autism using sub-sampled-pixels presentation in response classification technique

In the present study we modified the standard classification image method by subsampling visual stimuli to provide us with a technique capable of examining an individual's face-processing strategy in detail with fewer trials. Experiment 1 confirmed that one testing session (1450 trials) was sufficient to produce classification images that were qualitatively similar to those obtained previously with 10,000 trials (Sekuler et al., 2004). Experiment 2 used this method to compare classification images obtained from observers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically-developing (TD) observers. As was found in Experiment 1, classification images obtained from TD observers suggested that they all discriminated faces based on information conveyed by pixels in the eyes/brow region. In contrast, classification images obtained from ASD observers suggested that they used different perceptual strategies: three out of five ASD observers used a typical strategy of making use of information in the eye/brow region, but two used an atypical strategy that relied on information in the forehead region. The advantage of using the response classification technique is that there is no restriction to specific theoretical perspectives or a priori hypotheses, which enabled us to see unexpected strategies, like ASD's forehead strategy, and thus showed this technique is particularly useful in the examination of special populations.

Social and non-social cueing of visuospatial attention in autism and typical development

Three experiments explored attention to eye gaze, which is incompletely understood in typical development and is hypothesized to be disrupted in autism. Experiment 1 (n = 26 typical adults) involved covert orienting to box, arrow, and gaze cues at two probabilities and cue-target times to test whether reorienting for gaze is endogenous, exogenous, or unique; experiment 2 (total n = 80: male and female children and adults) studied age and sex effects on gaze cueing. Gaze cueing appears endogenous and may strengthen in typical development. Experiment 3 tested exogenous, endogenous, and gaze-based orienting in 25 typical and 27 Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children. ASD children made more saccades, slowing their reaction times; however, exogenous and endogenous orienting, including gaze cueing, appear intact in ASD.

Shall we do this together? Social gaze influences action control in a comparison group, but not in individuals with high-functioning autism

Perceiving someone else's gaze shift toward an object can influence how this object will be manipulated by the observer, suggesting a modulatory effect of a gaze-based social context on action control. High-functioning autism (HFA) is characterized by impairments of social interaction, which may be associated with an inability to automatically integrate socially relevant nonverbal cues when generating actions. To explore these hypotheses, we made use of a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm in which a comparison group and patients with HFA were asked to generate spatially congruent or incongruent motor responses to changes in a face, a face-like and an object stimulus. Results demonstrate that while in the comparison group being looked at by a virtual other leads to a reduction of reaction time costs associated with generating a spatially incongruent response, this effect is not present in the HFA group. We suggest that this modulatory effect of social gaze on action control might play an important role in direct social interactions by helping to coordinate one's actions with those of someone else. Future research should focus on these implicit mechanisms of interpersonal alignment ('online' social cognition), which might be at the very heart of the difficulties individuals with autism experience in everyday social encounters.

Atypical neural networks for social orienting in autism spectrum disorders

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by significant social impairments, including deficits in orienting attention following social cues. Behavioral studies investigating social orienting in ASD, however, have yielded mixed results, as the use of naturalistic paradigms typically reveals clear deficits whereas computerized laboratory experiments often report normative behavior. The present study is the first to examine the neural mechanisms underlying social orienting in ASD in order to provide new insight into the social attention impairments that characterize this disorder. Using fMRI, we examined the neural correlates of social orienting in children and adolescents with ASD and in a matched sample of typically developing (TD) controls while they performed a spatial cueing paradigm with social (eye gaze) and nonsocial (arrow) cues. Cues were either directional (indicating left or right) or neutral (indicating no direction), and directional cues were uninformative of the upcoming target location in order to engage automatic processes by minimizing expectations. Behavioral results demonstrated intact orienting effects for social and nonsocial cues, with no differences between groups. The imaging results, however, revealed clear group differences in brain activity. When attention was directed by social cues compared to nonsocial cues, the TD group showed increased activity in frontoparietal attention networks, visual processing regions, and the striatum, whereas the ASD group only showed increased activity in the superior parietal lobule. Significant group × cue type interactions confirmed greater responsivity in task-relevant networks for social cues than nonsocial cues in TD as compared to ASD, despite similar behavioral performance. These results indicate that, in the autistic brain, social cues are not assigned the same privileged status as they are in the typically developing brain. These findings provide the first empirical evidence that the neural circuitry involved in social orienting is disrupted in ASD and highlight that normative behavioral performance in a laboratory setting may reflect compensatory mechanisms rather than intact social attention.

Do gaze cues in complex scenes capture and direct the attention of high functioning adolescents with ASD? Evidence from eye-tracking

Visual fixation patterns whilst viewing complex photographic scenes containing one person were studied in 24 high-functioning adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and 24 matched typically developing adolescents. Over two different scene presentation durations both groups spent a large, strikingly similar proportion of their viewing time fixating the person's face. However, time-course analyses revealed differences between groups in priorities of attention to the region of the face containing the eyes. It was also noted that although individuals with ASD were rapidly cued by the gaze direction of the person in the scene, this was not followed by an immediate increase in total fixation duration at the location of gaze, which was the case for typically developing individuals.