Harada Yuki, Ohyama Junji, Sano Misako, Ishii Naomi, Maida Keiko, Wada Megumi, Wada Makoto
Developmental Disorders Section, Department of Rehabilitation for Brain Functions, Research Institute of National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities, Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan.
Faculty of Humanities, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, Kyoto, Japan.
Front Psychiatry. 2024 Feb 19;15:1328708. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1328708. eCollection 2024.
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show atypical recognition of facial emotions, which has been suggested to stem from arousal and attention allocation. Recent studies have focused on the ability to perceive an average expression from multiple spatially different expressions. This study investigated the effect of autistic traits on temporal ensemble, that is, the perception of the average expression from multiple changing expressions.
We conducted a simplified temporal-ensemble task and analyzed behavioral responses, pupil size, and viewing times for eyes of a face. Participants with and without diagnosis of ASD viewed serial presentations of facial expressions that randomly switched between emotional and neutral. The temporal ratio of the emotional expressions was manipulated. The participants estimated the intensity of the facial emotions for the overall presentation.
We obtained three major results: (a) many participants with ASD were less susceptible to the ratio of anger expression for temporal ensembles, (b) they produced significantly greater pupil size for angry expressions (within-participants comparison) and smaller pupil size for sad expressions (between-groups comparison), and (c) pupil size and viewing time to eyes were not correlated with the temporal ensemble.
These results suggest atypical temporal integration of anger expression and arousal characteristics in individuals with ASD; however, the atypical integration is not fully explained by arousal or attentional allocation.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者对面部情绪的识别存在异常，这被认为源于唤醒和注意力分配。最近的研究集中在从多个空间上不同的表情中感知平均表情的能力上。本研究调查了自闭症特质对时间整合的影响，即从多个变化的表情中感知平均表情的能力。
我们进行了一项简化的时间整合任务，并分析了行为反应、瞳孔大小和面部眼睛的注视时间。有和没有ASD诊断的参与者观看了在情绪和中性表情之间随机切换的面部表情系列呈现。情绪表情的时间比例被操纵。参与者估计整个呈现中面部情绪的强度。
我们获得了三个主要结果：（a）许多ASD患者对时间整合中愤怒表情的比例不太敏感，（b）他们对愤怒表情产生了显著更大的瞳孔大小（参与者内比较），对悲伤表情产生了更小的瞳孔大小（组间比较），以及（c）瞳孔大小和眼睛注视时间与时间整合无关。
这些结果表明ASD患者在愤怒表情和唤醒特征方面存在非典型的时间整合；然而，这种非典型整合不能完全由唤醒或注意力分配来解释。
