Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, California.
Autism Res. 2019 Jun;12(6):878-883. doi: 10.1002/aur.2090. Epub 2019 Feb 25.
Impaired predictive coding has been proposed as a framework to explain discrepancies between expectations and outcomes in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that may contribute to core symptoms of the disorder. However, no eye tracking study has directly addressed this framework in the context of visual predictions of social and nonsocial stimuli. The current study used eye tracking to examine violations of learned visual associations of both social and nonsocial stimuli. Twenty-six adolescents with ASD and 18 typically developing control (TDC) adolescents completed an outcome expectation eye tracking task in which predictive cues correctly (80% of trials) or incorrectly (20% of trials) indicated the location (left or right) of forthcoming social or nonsocial stimuli. During violation trials, individuals with ASD focused their gaze relatively more often on stimuli presented on locations that violated the learned association and less often on locations that corresponded with the learned association. This finding was not moderated by stimulus type (i.e., social vs. nonsocial). Additionally, participants who looked at incorrectly predicted locations more often had significantly greater ASD symptom severity. These results are consistent with theories that characterize ASD as a disorder of prediction and have potential implications for understanding symptoms related to prediction errors in individuals with ASD. Autism Res 2019, 12: 878-883. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit impairments making predictions that may impact learning. In this study, we used eye tracking methodology and found that individuals with ASD were less likely to look at the predicted location when a visual routine was violated. This pattern was evident for both social and nonsocial images and was associated with greater ASD symptom severity. These findings provide additional support for predictive challenges in ASD.
受损的预测编码被提出作为一个框架来解释自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中期望和结果之间的差异，这些差异可能导致该障碍的核心症状。然而，没有眼动追踪研究直接在社会和非社会刺激的视觉预测背景下探讨这一框架。本研究使用眼动追踪技术来研究社会和非社会刺激的学习视觉关联的违反情况。26 名 ASD 青少年和 18 名典型发育对照组（TDC）青少年完成了一个结果预期眼动追踪任务，其中预测线索正确（80%的试验）或错误（20%的试验）指示即将出现的社会或非社会刺激的位置（左或右）。在违反试验中，与 ASD 相关的个体相对更频繁地将目光集中在违反学习关联的位置上，而较少地集中在与学习关联相对应的位置上。这一发现不受刺激类型（即社会与非社会）的调节。此外，更多地注视错误预测位置的参与者具有显著更高的 ASD 症状严重程度。这些结果与将 ASD 描述为一种预测障碍的理论一致，并有可能对理解 ASD 个体与预测错误相关的症状具有启示意义。自闭症研究 2019, 12: 878-883. © 2019 国际自闭症研究协会，威利期刊，公司。 要点总结：自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者在进行预测时存在障碍，这可能会影响学习。在这项研究中，我们使用眼动追踪方法发现，当视觉常规被违反时，ASD 患者不太可能看向预测位置。这种模式对社会和非社会图像都很明显，并且与更大的 ASD 症状严重程度相关。这些发现为 ASD 中的预测挑战提供了更多支持。
