Clin Elise, Kissine Mikhail
Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Autism. 2023 Oct;27(7):1949-1959. doi: 10.1177/13623613221148553. Epub 2023 Jan 23.
Autistics are usually reported to share less eye contact than neurotypicals with their interlocutors. However, the reason why autistics might pay less attention to eyes looking at them is still unknown: some autistics express being hyper-aroused by this eye contact, while some eye-tracking studies suggest that eye contact is associated with hypo-arousal in autism.This study is based on a highly controlled live face-to-face paradigm, combining a wearable eye-tracker (to study eye behaviours) with electrodermal activity sensors (to assess potential stress). We draw a nuanced picture of social attention in autism, as our autistic participants did not differ from our neurotypical group in their eye behaviours nor their skin conductance responses. However, we found that neurotypicals, compared to autistics, seemed to be much more distressed when their interlocutor did not gaze at them during the experiment.Our study encourages to consider social interaction difficulties in autism as a relational issue, instead as an individual deficit. This step might be first taken in research, by implementing paradigms sensitive to the experimenter's role and attitude.
通常报告称，自闭症患者与对话者的眼神交流比神经典型者少。然而，自闭症患者可能较少关注他人注视自己的眼睛的原因仍不明确：一些自闭症患者表示这种眼神交流会让他们过度兴奋，而一些眼动追踪研究表明，眼神交流与自闭症患者的低唤醒状态有关。本研究基于高度可控的面对面实时范式，将可穿戴眼动追踪器（用于研究眼部行为）与皮肤电活动传感器（用于评估潜在压力）相结合。我们描绘了一幅关于自闭症患者社交注意力的细致图景，因为我们的自闭症参与者在眼部行为和皮肤电导率反应方面与神经典型组没有差异。然而，我们发现，与自闭症患者相比，神经典型者在实验过程中如果对话者没有注视他们，似乎会更加苦恼。我们的研究鼓励将自闭症患者的社交互动困难视为一个关系问题，而不是个体缺陷。这一步骤可能首先在研究中采取，通过采用对实验者角色和态度敏感的范式。
