Department of Medical Education, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Autism Res. 2024 Oct;17(10):2120-2132. doi: 10.1002/aur.3206. Epub 2024 Aug 2.
Autistic individuals encounter challenges in recognizing emotional expressions of others. Pupillary response has been proposed as an indicator of arousal dysregulation or cognitive load. The pupillary response of autistic individuals during socio-affective tasks remains unclear. This study investigated pupillary response in autistic adults when viewing emotional faces/eyes and recognizing emotions during the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) and watching interpersonal touch scenes in the social touch task. The study included 98 participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and 37 typically developing controls (TD). Pupil size was measured using the Tobii X2-30 Eye Tracker. The results showed that autistic adults had larger maximal pupil sizes, smaller minimal pupil sizes, and greater change rates of pupil size, particularly during the RMET Eyes task. Clinical correlations revealed that attention switching difficulty positively correlated with mean pupil size in TD participants, while social communication deficits positively correlated with mean pupil size in autistic participants. In conclusion, our findings suggest atypical pupillary responses in autistic adults during socio-affective tasks, indicating heightened cognitive demand. Further investigation is necessary to understand the underlying mechanisms and their association with autistic traits.
自闭症个体在识别他人的情绪表达方面存在困难。瞳孔反应已被提出作为唤醒失调或认知负荷的指标。自闭症个体在社会情感任务中的瞳孔反应尚不清楚。本研究调查了自闭症成年人在观看情绪面孔/眼睛时的瞳孔反应，以及在阅读眼睛测试（RMET）中识别情绪和观看社会触摸任务中的人际触摸场景时的瞳孔反应。该研究包括 98 名被诊断为自闭症谱系障碍的参与者和 37 名典型发育对照组（TD）。使用 Tobii X2-30 眼动追踪器测量瞳孔大小。结果表明，自闭症成年人的最大瞳孔尺寸更大，最小瞳孔尺寸更小，瞳孔尺寸变化率更大，尤其是在 RMET 眼睛任务中。临床相关性表明，注意力转换困难与 TD 参与者的平均瞳孔大小呈正相关，而社会沟通缺陷与自闭症参与者的平均瞳孔大小呈正相关。总之，我们的研究结果表明自闭症成年人在社会情感任务中存在异常的瞳孔反应，表明认知需求增加。需要进一步研究以了解潜在机制及其与自闭症特征的关联。
