Hanley Mary, Riby Debbie M, Carty Clare, Melaugh McAteer Annie, Kennedy Andrew, McPhillips Martin
Durham University, UK
Durham University, UK.
Autism. 2015 Oct;19(7):868-73. doi: 10.1177/1362361315580767. Epub 2015 May 6.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder do not just 'grow out of' their early difficulties in understanding the social world. Even for those who are cognitively able, autism-related difficulties continue into adulthood. Atypicalities attending to and interpreting communicative signals from others can provide barriers to success in education, employment and relationships. In the current study, we use eye-tracking during real social interaction to explore attention to social cues (e.g. face, eyes, mouth) and links to social awareness in a group of cognitively able University students with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing students from the same University. During the interaction, students with autism spectrum disorder showed less eye fixation and more mouth fixation than typically developing students. Importantly, while 63% of typically developing participants reported thinking they were deceived about the true nature of the interaction, only 9% of autism spectrum disorder participants picked up this subtle social signal. We argue that understanding how these social attentional and social awareness difficulties manifest during adulthood is important given the growing number of adults with autism spectrum disorder who are attending higher level education. These adults may be particularly susceptible to drop-out due to demands of coping in situations where social awareness is so important.
患有自闭症谱系障碍的个体并不会简单地“摆脱”他们早期在理解社会世界方面的困难。即使对于那些认知能力较强的人来说，与自闭症相关的困难也会持续到成年期。关注和解读他人交际信号的异常可能会成为教育、就业和人际关系取得成功的障碍。在当前的研究中，我们在真实的社交互动过程中使用眼动追踪技术，来探究一组认知能力较强的患有自闭症谱系障碍的大学生以及来自同一所大学的发育正常的学生对社交线索（如面部、眼睛、嘴巴）的关注情况以及与社交意识的关联。在互动过程中，患有自闭症谱系障碍的学生比发育正常的学生表现出更少的注视眼睛和更多的注视嘴巴的情况。重要的是，虽然63%的发育正常的参与者报告称他们认为自己在互动的真实性质上受到了欺骗，但只有9%的自闭症谱系障碍参与者察觉到了这个微妙的社交信号。我们认为，鉴于越来越多患有自闭症谱系障碍的成年人正在接受高等教育，了解这些社交注意力和社交意识方面的困难在成年期是如何表现的非常重要。这些成年人可能特别容易因在社交意识如此重要的情况下应对需求而辍学。
