Queen's University Belfast, UK.
Autism. 2013 Nov;17(6):754-61. doi: 10.1177/1362361312456746. Epub 2012 Sep 17.
Previous eye tracking research on the allocation of attention to social information by individuals with autism spectrum disorders is equivocal and may be in part a consequence of variation in stimuli used between studies. The current study explored attention allocation to faces, and within faces, by individuals with Asperger syndrome using a range of static stimuli where faces were either viewed in isolation or viewed in the context of a social scene. Results showed that faces were viewed typically by the individuals with Asperger syndrome when presented in isolation, but attention to the eyes was significantly diminished in comparison to age and IQ-matched typical viewers when faces were viewed as part of social scenes. We show that when using static stimuli, there is evidence of atypicality for individuals with Asperger syndrome depending on the extent of social context. Our findings shed light on the previous explanations of gaze behaviour that have emphasised the role of movement in atypicalities of social attention in autism spectrum disorders and highlight the importance of consideration of the realistic portrayal of social information for future studies.
先前关于自闭症谱系障碍个体对社会信息注意力分配的眼动追踪研究结果并不一致，部分原因可能是由于研究之间使用的刺激存在差异。本研究使用一系列静态刺激物来探索阿斯伯格综合征个体对面部以及面部内部的注意力分配，在这些刺激物中，面部要么单独呈现，要么在社交场景中呈现。结果表明，当单独呈现时，阿斯伯格综合征个体对面部的观察是正常的，但与年龄和 IQ 匹配的典型观察者相比，当面部作为社交场景的一部分呈现时，他们对眼睛的注意力明显减少。我们的研究结果表明，当使用静态刺激时，阿斯伯格综合征个体存在非典型性，这取决于社会背景的程度。我们的研究结果为之前强调自闭症谱系障碍中社会注意力异常与运动有关的解释提供了依据，并强调了在未来研究中考虑社会信息的真实呈现的重要性。
