A Comparative Study of Social Scene Parsing Strategies between Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Chen Song, Aosen Wang, Kathy Ralabate Doody, PhD, Michelle Hartley- McAndrew, MD, Jana Mertz, MBA, Feng Lin, PhD, Wenyao Xu, PhD

Abstract


Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disability characterized by deficits in social interaction. Gaze behavior is of great interest because it reveals the parsing strategy the participant uses to achieve social content. The legacy features in gaze fixation, such as time and area-of-interest, however, cannot comprehensively reveal the way the participant may cognize the social scene. In this work, we investigate the dynamic components within the gaze behavior of children with ASD upon the carefully-selected social scene. A cohort of child participants (n = 51) were recruited between 2 and 10 years. The results suggest significant differences in the social scene parsing strategies of children with ASD, giving added insight into the way they may decode and interpret the social scenarios.

[N A J Med Sci. 2016;9(3):96-103.   DOI:  10.7156/najms.2016.0903096]


Keywords


gaze dynamics, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), autism, social scene

Full Text:

PDF

References


Association AP. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Pub; 2013.

Grice SJ, Halit H, Farroni T, Baron-Cohen S, Bolton P, Johnson MH. Neural correlates of eye-gaze detection in young children with autism. Cortex. 2005;41:342-353.

Bal E, Harden E, Lamb D, Van Hecke AV, Denver JW, Porges SW. Emotion recognition in children with autism spectrum disorders: relations to eye gaze and autonomic state. J Autism Dev Disord. 2010;40:358-370.

Adolphs R, Sears L, Piven J. Abnormal processing of social information from faces in autism. J Cogn Neurosci. 2001;13:232-240.

Patriquin MA, Scarpa A, Friedman BH, Porges SW. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia: A marker for positive social functioning and receptive language skills in children with autism spectrum disorders. Dev Psychobiol. 2013;55:101-112.

Buswell GT. How people look at pictures: a study of the psychology and perception in art. 1935.

Underwood G. Eye guidance in reading and scene perception. Elsevier; 1998.

Chawarska K, Shic F. Looking but not seeing: atypical visual scanning and recognition of faces in 2 and 4-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder. J Autism Dev Disord. 2009;39:1663-1672.

Pelphrey KA, Sasson NJ, Reznick JS, Paul G, Goldman BD, Piven J. Visual scanning of faces in autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2002;32:249-261.

Boraston ZL, Corden B, Miles LK, Skuse DH, Blakemore SJ. Brief report: perception of genuine and posed smiles by individuals with autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2008;38:574-580.

Rutherford MD, Towns AM. Scan path differences and similarities during emotion perception in those with and without autism spectrum disorders. J Autism Dev Disord. 2008;38:1371-1381.

Schopler E, Reichler RJ, Devellis RF, Daly K. Toward Objective Classification of Childhood Autism - Childhood Autism Rating-Scale (Cars). J Autism Dev Disord. 1980;10:91-103.

Luria SM, Strauss MS. Comparison of eye movements over faces in photographic positives and negatives. Perception. 1978;7:349-358.

Walker-Smith GJ, Gale AG, Findlay JM. Eye movement strategies involved in face perception. Perception. 1977;6:313-326.

Senju A, Yaguchi K, Tojo Y, Hasegawa T. Eye contact does not facilitate detection in children with autism. Cognition. 2003;89(1):B43-51.

Dalton KM, Nacewicz BM, Johnstone T, et al. Gaze fixation and the neural circuitry of face processing in autism. Nat Neurosci. 2005;8:519-526.

Hirstein W, Iversen P, Ramachandran VS. Autonomic responses of autistic children to people and objects. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society. 2001;268:1883-1888.

Young GS, Merin N, Rogers SJ, Ozonoff S. Gaze behavior and affect at 6 months: predicting clinical outcomes and language development in typically developing infants and infants at risk for autism. Dev Sci. 2009;12:798-814.

Ozonoff S, Iosif A-M, Baguio F, et al. A prospective study of the emergence of early behavioral signs of autism. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2010;49:256-266. e252.

Gotham K, Pickles A, Lord C. Standardizing ADOS scores for a measure of severity in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of autism and developmental disorders. 2009;39:693-705.

Drewes H, Schmidt A. Interacting with the computer using gaze gestures. Human-Computer Interaction–INTERACT 2007: Springer; 2007:475-488.

Pepe MS. The statistical evaluation of medical tests for classification and prediction. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press; 2003.

Hubbard R. Blurring the distinctions between p's and alpha's in psychological research. Theor Psychol. 2004;14:295-327.

Nuzzo R. Scientific method: statistical errors. Nature. 2014;506:150-152.

Plaisted K, Swettenham J, Rees L. Children with autism show local precedence in a divided attention task and global precedence in a selective attention task. J Child Psychol Psyc. 1999;40:733-742.

Happe F, Frith U. The weak coherence account: Detail-focused cognitive style in autism spectrum disorders. J Autism Dev Disord. 2006;36:5-25.

Koldewyn K, Jiang YV, Weigelt S, Kanwisher N. Global/Local Processing in Autism: Not a Disability, but a Disinclination. J Autism Dev Disord. 2013;43:2329-2340.

Jones W, Carr K, Klin A. Absence of preferential looking to the eyes of approaching adults predicts level of social disability in 2-year-old toddlers with autism spectrum disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65:946-954.

Klin A, Jones W, Schultz R, Volkmar F, Cohen D. Defining and quantifying the social phenotype in autism. Am J Psychiat. 2002;159:895-908.

Klin A, Jones W. Altered face scanning and impaired recognition of biological motion in a 15‐month‐old infant with autism. Dev Sci. 2008;11:40-46.

Rice K, Moriuchi JM, Jones W, Klin A. Parsing heterogeneity in autism spectrum disorders: visual scanning of dynamic social scenes in school-aged children. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 2012;51:238-248.

Van der Geest J, Kemner C, Verbaten M, Van Engeland H. Gaze behavior of children with pervasive developmental disorder toward human faces: a fixation time study. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2002;43:669-678.

Neumann D, Spezio ML, Piven J, Adolphs R. Looking you in the mouth: abnormal gaze in autism resulting from impaired top-down modulation of visual attention. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006;1:194-202.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.