Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva, Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland.
Fondation Pôle Autisme, Unité de Recherche, 4 place du Cirque, 1204, Geneva, Switzerland.
BMC Psychol. 2021 Mar 31;9(1):50. doi: 10.1186/s40359-021-00553-2.
Typical development of socio-communicative skills relies on keen observation of others. It thus follows that decreased social attention negatively impacts the subsequent development of socio-communicative abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In addition, studies indicate that social attention is modulated by context and that greater social difficulties are observed in more socially demanding situations. Our study aims to investigate the effect of social complexity on visual exploration of others' actions in preschoolers.
To investigate the impact of social complexity, we used an eye-tracking paradigm with 26 typically developing preschoolers (TD, age = 3.60 ± 1.55) and 37 preschoolers with ASD (age = 3.55 ± 1.21). Participants were shown videos of two children engaging in socially simple play (parallel) versus socially complex play (interactive). We subsequently quantified the time spent and fixation duration on faces, objects, bodies, as well as the background and the number of spontaneous gaze shifts between socially relevant areas of interest.
In the ASD group, we observed decreased time spent on faces. Social complexity (interactive play) elicited changes in visual exploration patterns in both groups. From the parallel to the interactive condition, we observed a shift towards socially relevant parts of the scene, a decrease in fixation duration, as well as an increase in spontaneous gaze shifts between faces and objects though there were fewer in the ASD group.
Our results need to be interpreted cautiously due to relatively small sample sizes and may be relevant to male preschoolers, given our male-only sample and reported phenotypic differences between males and females.
Our results suggest that similar to TD children, though to a lesser extent, visual exploration patterns in ASD are modulated by context. Children with ASD that were less sensitive to context modulation showed decreased socio-communicative skills or higher levels of symptoms. Our findings support using naturalistic designs to capture socio-communicative deficits in ASD.
社会交际技能的典型发展依赖于对他人的敏锐观察。因此，社交注意力下降会对自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童随后的社会交际能力发展产生负面影响。此外，研究表明社交注意力受到情境的调节，在更具社交挑战性的情境中会观察到更大的社交困难。我们的研究旨在调查社会复杂性对学龄前儿童对他人动作的视觉探索的影响。
为了研究社会复杂性的影响，我们使用了眼动追踪范式，其中包括 26 名典型发展的学龄前儿童（TD，年龄=3.60±1.55）和 37 名 ASD 学龄前儿童（年龄=3.55±1.21）。参与者观看了两个孩子进行简单社交游戏（平行）和复杂社交游戏（互动）的视频。随后，我们量化了在面部、物体、身体以及背景上花费的时间和注视持续时间，以及自发注视从社交相关兴趣区域之间的转移次数。
在 ASD 组中，我们观察到在面部上花费的时间减少。社会复杂性（互动游戏）在两组中都引起了视觉探索模式的变化。从平行条件到互动条件，我们观察到对场景中社交相关部分的转移，注视持续时间减少，以及自发注视从面部到物体之间的转移增加，尽管在 ASD 组中转移次数较少。
由于样本量相对较小，我们的结果需要谨慎解释，并且由于我们的样本仅为男性，以及报告的男性和女性之间的表型差异，我们的结果可能与男性学龄前儿童有关。
我们的结果表明，与 TD 儿童相似，尽管程度较小，但 ASD 儿童的视觉探索模式受情境调节。对情境调节不太敏感的 ASD 儿童表现出社交沟通技能下降或症状水平较高。我们的发现支持使用自然主义设计来捕捉 ASD 中的社交沟通缺陷。
