Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom; University of Guadalajara, Mexico.
Cognition. 2021 Jul;212:104710. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104710. Epub 2021 Apr 13.
Recognition of emotional facial expressions is considered to be atypical in autism. This difficulty is thought to be due to the way that facial expressions are visually explored. Evidence for atypical visual exploration of emotional faces in autism is, however, equivocal. We propose that, where observed, atypical visual exploration of emotional facial expressions is due to alexithymia, a distinct but frequently co-occurring condition. In this eye-tracking study we tested the alexithymia hypothesis using a number of recent methodological advances to study eye gaze during several emotion processing tasks (emotion recognition, intensity judgements, free gaze), in 25 adults with, and 45 without, autism. A multilevel polynomial modelling strategy was used to describe the spatiotemporal dynamics of eye gaze to emotional facial expressions. Converging evidence from traditional and novel analysis methods revealed that atypical gaze to the eyes is best predicted by alexithymia in both autistic and non-autistic individuals. Information theoretic analyses also revealed differential effects of task on gaze patterns as a function of alexithymia, but not autism. These findings highlight factors underlying atypical emotion processing in autistic individuals, with wide-ranging implications for emotion research.
识别情绪面部表情被认为是自闭症的一个非典型特征。这种困难被认为是由于面部表情的视觉探索方式造成的。然而，自闭症患者对情绪面孔的视觉探索异常的证据尚无定论。我们提出，在观察到的情况下，情绪面部表情的视觉探索异常是由于述情障碍引起的，述情障碍是一种独特但经常同时发生的情况。在这项眼动追踪研究中，我们使用了一些最近的方法学进展，在 25 名自闭症患者和 45 名非自闭症患者中，测试了几种情绪处理任务（情绪识别、强度判断、自由注视）期间的眼动，以验证述情障碍假说。使用多层次多项式建模策略来描述对情绪面部表情的眼动时空动态。传统和新颖分析方法的综合证据表明，在自闭症和非自闭症个体中，对眼睛的异常注视最能通过述情障碍来预测。信息论分析还揭示了任务对注视模式的影响因述情障碍而异，但与自闭症无关。这些发现突出了自闭症个体中异常情绪处理的潜在因素，对情绪研究具有广泛的意义。
