Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States of America.
Changshu Institute of Technology, Jiangsu, China.
PLoS One. 2022 Oct 27;17(10):e0275281. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0275281. eCollection 2022.
The study of gaze perception has largely focused on a single cue (the eyes) in two-dimensional settings. While this literature suggests that 2D gaze perception is shaped by atypical development, as in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), gaze perception is in reality contextually-sensitive, perceived as an emergent feature conveyed by the rotation of the pupils and head. We examined gaze perception in this integrative context, across development, among children and adolescents developing typically or with ASD with both 2D and 3D stimuli. We found that both groups utilized head and pupil rotations to judge gaze on a 2D face. But when evaluating the gaze of a physically-present, 3D robot, the same ASD observers used eye cues less than their typically-developing peers. This demonstrates that emergent gaze perception is a slowly developing process that is surprisingly intact, albeit weakened in ASD, and illustrates how new technology can bridge visual and clinical science.
该研究主要关注二维环境中单一的注视线索（眼睛）。虽然该文献表明，2D 注视感知受到异常发育的影响，如自闭症谱系障碍（ASD），但实际上，注视感知是上下文敏感的，被视为由瞳孔和头部旋转传达的新兴特征。我们在这个综合背景下，在典型发育或患有 ASD 的儿童和青少年中，用 2D 和 3D 刺激物研究了注视感知。我们发现，两组人都利用头部和瞳孔的旋转来判断二维面孔上的注视。但是，当评估一个物理存在的、3D 机器人的注视时，相同的 ASD 观察者使用眼睛线索的次数少于其典型发育的同龄人。这表明，新兴的注视感知是一个缓慢发展的过程，尽管在 ASD 中较弱，但令人惊讶的是，它是完整的，并说明了新技术如何能够连接视觉和临床科学。
