Is visual gaze in children with autism spectrum disorder related to sequence of emotion intensity presentation? An eye-tracking study of natural emotion perception processes.

Emotion cognitive remediation is a critical component of social skills training for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Visual perception of emotions is highly correlated with the intensity and sequence of presented emotions. However, few studies examined the effect of presentation sequence and intensity on emotion perception. The present study examined the gaze patterns of children with ASD in receiving different sequences of emotion presentation using eye-tracking technologies. Gaze patterns of ecologically-valid video clips of silent emotion stimuli by 51 ASD children and 34 typically developing (TD) children were recorded. Results indicated that ASD and TD children showed opposite visual fixation during different intensity presentation modes: children with ASD showed better emotion perception with a weak-to-strong emotion sequence when presented. The visual reductions in emotion perception in children with ASD may due to different perceptual threshold to emotional intensity. The extent of the reductions could be related to an individual's Personal-Social ability. The present study supports the importance of intensity of emotions and the order at which the emotional stimuli were presented in yielding better emotion perceptions in children with ASD, suggesting that the order of emotion presentation may potentially influence emotion processing during ASD rehabilitation. It is anticipated that the present findings could bring more insights to clinicians for intervention planning in the future.