Differences in Sequential Eye Movement Behavior between Taiwanese and American Viewers

A cross-cultural study showing deficits in gaze-language coordination during rapid automatized naming among individuals with ASD

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their first-degree relatives demonstrate automaticity deficits reflected in reduced eye-voice coordination during rapid automatized naming (RAN), suggesting that RAN deficits may be a genetically meaningful marker of ASD language-related impairments. This study investigated whether RAN deficits in ASD extend to a language typologically distinct from English. Participants included 23 Cantonese-speaking individuals with ASD and 39 controls from Hong Kong (HK), and age- and IQ-comparable groups of previously-studied English-speaking individuals with ASD (n = 45) and controls (n = 44) from the US. Participants completed RAN on an eye tracker. Analyses examined naming time, error rate, measures of eye movement reflecting language automaticity, including eye-voice span (EVS; location of eyes versus the named item) and refixations. The HK-ASD group exhibited longer naming times and more refixations than HK-Controls, in a pattern similar to that observed in the US-ASD group. Cultural effects revealed that both HK groups showed longer EVS and more fixations than US groups. Naming time and refixation differences may be ASD-specific impairments spanning cultures/languages, whereas EVS and fixation frequency may be more variably impacted. A potential underlying mechanism of visual "stickiness" may be contributing to this breakdown in language automaticity in ASD.

Perception of being observed by a speaker alters gaze behavior

Previous research has shown that gaze behavior of a speaker's face during speech encoding is influenced by an array of factors relating to the quality of the speech signal and the encoding task. In these studies, participants were aware they were viewing pre-recorded stimuli of a speaker that is not representative of natural social interactions in which an interlocutor can observe one's gaze direction, potentially affecting fixation behavior due to communicative and social considerations. To assess the potential role of these factors during speech encoding, we compared fixation behavior during a speech-encoding task under two conditions: in the "real-time" condition, we used deception to convince participants that they were interacting with a live person who was able to see and hear them through online remote video communication. In the "pre-recorded" condition, participants were correctly informed they were watching a previously recorded video. We found that participants fixated the interlocutor's face significantly less in the real-time condition than the pre-recorded condition. When participants did look at the face, they fixated the mouth at a higher proportion of the time in the pre-recorded condition versus the real-time condition. These findings suggest that people engage in avoidance of potentially useful speech-directed fixations when they believe their fixations are being observed and demonstrate that social factors play a significant role in fixation behavior during speech encoding.