Zhang Yifan, Li Dandan, Yang Tingting, Chen Chuanao, Li Hong, Zhu Chunyan
The School of Mental Health and Psychological Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Cognition and Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Hefei, China.
Front Psychiatry. 2022 Aug 22;13:920821. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.920821. eCollection 2022.
Most evidence suggested that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experienced gaze avoidance when looking at the eyes compared to typically developing (TD) individuals. Children with ASD magnified their fears when received threatening stimuli, resulting in a reduced duration of eye contact. Few studies have explored the gaze characteristics of children with ASD by dividing emotional faces into threatening and non-threatening pairs. In addition, although dynamic videos are more helpful in understanding the gaze characteristics of children with ASD, the experimental stimuli for some of the previous studies were still emotional pictures. We explored the viewing of dynamic threatening and non-threatening faces by children with ASD in different areas of interest (AOIs). In this study, 6-10 years old children with and without ASD viewed faces with threatening (fearful and angry) and non-threatening (sad and happy) expressions, respectively, with their eyes movements recorded. The results showed that when confronted with threatening faces, children with ASD, rather than TD, showed substantial eye avoidances, particularly non-specific avoidances in the fixation time on the mouths and significantly less time gazing at the mouths in any emotions, which was not observed for non-threatening faces. No correlations were found between the severity of symptoms and characteristics of gaze at the eyes and mouths in children with ASD. These results further enhance the understanding of the gaze characteristics of children with ASD on threatening and non-threatening faces and possibly provide additional evidence for their social interaction improvements.
大多数证据表明，与正常发育的个体相比，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者在看眼睛时会避免目光接触。患有ASD的儿童在受到威胁性刺激时会放大他们的恐惧，从而减少眼神接触的持续时间。很少有研究通过将情绪面孔分为威胁性和非威胁性对来探索患有ASD的儿童的注视特征。此外，尽管动态视频在理解患有ASD的儿童的注视特征方面更有帮助，但之前一些研究的实验刺激仍然是情绪图片。我们探讨了患有ASD的儿童在不同感兴趣区域（AOI）对动态威胁性和非威胁性面孔的观看情况。在这项研究中，6至10岁患有和未患有ASD的儿童分别观看了带有威胁性（恐惧和愤怒）和非威胁性（悲伤和快乐）表情的面孔，并记录了他们的眼球运动。结果表明，当面对威胁性面孔时，患有ASD的儿童而非正常发育的儿童表现出大量的目光回避，尤其是在嘴巴注视时间上的非特异性回避，并且在任何情绪下注视嘴巴的时间都明显减少，而在面对非威胁性面孔时未观察到这种情况。在患有ASD的儿童中，症状严重程度与眼睛和嘴巴的注视特征之间未发现相关性。这些结果进一步加深了对患有ASD的儿童在威胁性和非威胁性面孔上的注视特征的理解，并可能为改善他们的社交互动提供额外的证据。
