de Jong Maartje Cathelijne, van Engeland Herman, Kemner Chantal
The authors are with the Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands..
The authors are with the Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands.
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2008 Apr;47(4):443-454. doi: 10.1097/CHI.0b013e31816429a6.
Impaired gaze following is an important hallmark of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in clinical settings. Yet, ASD subjects perform normally on laboratory tasks involving gaze shifts. We investigated this contradiction, hypothesizing that impaired gaze following in ASDs is not related to basic impairments in attention orienting but to impaired emotion perception and abnormal processing of spatial frequencies (i.e., local and global information).
We tested 30 high-functioning, school-age children with ASDs and 30 age- and IQ-matched controls on a task involving gaze shifts that cue the location of targets. The cueing faces differed in emotionality and were filtered for different spatial frequencies. We recorded behavioral responses (reaction times) and brain responses (event-related potentials).
ASD subjects performed normally when neutral faces were used. However, emotional faces elicited modified face and gaze cue processing in control subjects, but not in the ASD subjects. Furthermore, the control group was biased toward the use of low spatial frequencies (global information) to process gaze cues, whereas the ASD group was biased toward the use of high spatial frequencies (local information).
We conclude that impaired gaze following in ASDs is related to impaired emotion processing. Moreover, ASD subjects show an abnormal reliance on local information to process gaze cues.
在临床环境中，注视跟随受损是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的一个重要标志。然而，ASD受试者在涉及目光转移的实验室任务中表现正常。我们对这一矛盾现象进行了研究，假设ASD中注视跟随受损并非与注意力定向的基本损伤有关，而是与情绪感知受损以及空间频率（即局部和全局信息）的异常处理有关。
我们对30名高功能学龄期ASD儿童和30名年龄及智商匹配的对照组儿童进行了一项涉及目光转移的任务测试，目光转移提示目标位置。提示面孔在情绪方面存在差异，并针对不同空间频率进行了过滤。我们记录了行为反应（反应时间）和大脑反应（事件相关电位）。
当使用中性面孔时，ASD受试者表现正常。然而，情绪面孔在对照组受试者中引发了对面孔和目光提示处理的改变，但在ASD受试者中未引发这种改变。此外，对照组倾向于使用低空间频率（全局信息）来处理目光提示，而ASD组则倾向于使用高空间频率（局部信息）。
我们得出结论，ASD中注视跟随受损与情绪处理受损有关。此外，ASD受试者在处理目光提示时表现出对局部信息的异常依赖。
