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Does Gaze Direction Modulate Facial Expression Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder?
Author(s) -
Akechi Hironori,
Senju Atsushi,
Kikuchi Yukiko,
Tojo Yoshikuni,
Osanai Hiroo,
Hasegawa Toshikazu
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01321.x
Subject(s) - gaze , psychology , facial expression , autism spectrum disorder , autism , typically developing , expression (computer science) , eye tracking , nonverbal communication , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , eye movement , facial expression recognition , audiology , communication , facial recognition system , neuroscience , medicine , physics , pattern recognition (psychology) , computer science , psychoanalysis , optics , programming language
Two experiments investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) integrate relevant communicative signals, such as gaze direction, when decoding a facial expression. In Experiment 1, typically developing children (9–14 years old; n = 14) were faster at detecting a facial expression accompanying a gaze direction with a congruent motivational tendency (i.e., an avoidant facial expression with averted eye gaze) than those with an incongruent motivational tendency. Children with ASD (9–14 years old; n = 14) were not affected by the gaze direction of facial stimuli. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which presented only the eye region of the face to typically developing children ( n = 10) and children with ASD ( n = 10). These results demonstrated that children with ASD do not encode and/or integrate multiple communicative signals based on their affective or motivational tendency.