Visual attention to dynamic faces and objects is linked to face processing skills: A combined study of children with autism and controls

Frontiers in Psychology

Volumn 4, Issue APR, 2013, Pages

  Parish Morris, Julia ^a,b   Chevallier, Coralie ^b   Tonge, Natasha ^b   Letzen, Janelle ^c   Pandey, Juhi ^b   Schultz, Robert T ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

^b CHILDREN S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

ASD; Autism; Autism spectrum disorder; Eye tracking; Eyetracking; Face processing

Indexed keywords

EID: 84878797354     PISSN: None     EISSN: 16641078     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00185     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. Carey, S., Diamond, R., and Woods, B. (1980). The development of face recognition-a maturational component? Dev. Psychol. 16, 257-269.
2. Chevallier, C., Grèzes, J., Molesworth, C., Berthoz, S., and Happé, F. (2012a). Selective social anhedonia in high functioning autism. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 42, 1504-1509.
3. Chevallier, C., Kohls, G., Troiani, V., Brodkin, E. S., and Schultz, R. T. (2012b). The social motivation theory of autism. Trends Cogn. Sci. 16, 231-239.
4. Constantino, J. M., and Gruber, C. P. (2005). Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
5. Dawson, G., Webb, S. J., and McPartland, J. (2005). Understanding the nature of face processing impairment in autism: insights from behavioral and electrophysiological studies. Dev. Neuropsychol. 27, 403-424.
6. Elliot, C. D. (2007). Differential Ability Scales, 2nd Edn. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
7. Elsabbagh, M., Mercure, E., Hudry, K., Chandler, S., Pasco, G., Charman, T., et al. (2012). Infant neural sensitivity to dynamic eye gaze is associated with later emerging autism. Curr. Biol. 22, 338-342.
8. Faja, S., Webb, S. J., Merkle, K., Aylward, E., and Dawson, G. (2009). Brief report: face configuration accuracy and processing speed among adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 39, 532-538.
9. Farzin, F., Rivera, S. M., and Whitney, D. (2011). Resolution of spatial and temporal visual attention in infants with fragile X syndrome. Brain 134, 3355-3368.
10. Gliga, T., and Csibra, G. (2007). Seeing the face through the eyes: a developmental perspective on face expertise. Prog. Brain Res. 164, 323-339.
11. Goren, C. C., Sarty, M., and Wu, P. Y. K. (1975). Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-like stimuli by newborn infants. Pediatrics 56, 544-549.
12. Gotham, K., Pickles, A., and Lord, C. (2009). Standardizing ADOS scores for a measure of severity in autism spectrum disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 39, 693-705.
13. Grelotti, D. J., Gauthier, I., and Schultz, R. T. (2002). Social interest and the development of cortical face specialization: what autism teaches us about face processing. Dev. Psychobiol. 40, 213-225.
14. Harms, M. B., Martin, A., and Wallace, G. L. (2010). Facial emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychol. Rev. 20, 290-322.
15. Insel, T., Cuthbert, B., Garvey, M., Heinssen, R., Pine, D. S., Quinn, K., et al. (2010). Research domain criteria (RDoC): toward a new classification framework for research on mental disorders. Am. J. Psychiatry 167, 748-751.
16. Johnson, M. H. (2005). Subcortical face processing. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 6, 766-774.
17. Johnson, M. H., and Morton, J. (1991). Biology and Cognitive Development: The Case of Face Recognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
18. Kazdin, A. (1989). Evaluation of the Pleasure Scale in the assessment of anhedonia in children. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 28, 364-372.
19. Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F., and Cohen, D. (2002). Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 59, 809-816.
20. Lord, C., Risi, S., Lambrecht, L., Cook, E. H. Jr., Leventhal, B. L., DiLavore, P. C., et al. (2000). The autism diagnostic observation schedule-generic: a standard measure of social and communication deficits associated with the spectrum of autism. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 30, 205-223.
21. McPartland, J. C., Webb, S. J., Keehn, B., and Dawson, G. (2011). Patterns of visual attention to faces and objects in autism spectrum disorder. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 41, 148-157.
22. Nakano, T., Tanaka, K., Endo, Y., Yamane, Y., Yamamoto, T., Nakano, Y., et al. (2010). Atypical gaze patterns in children and adults with autism spectrum disorders dissociated from developmental changes in gaze behaviour. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 277, 2935-2943.
23. Pierce, K., Conant, D., Hazin, R., Stoner, R., and Desmond, J. (2011). Preference for geometric patterns early in life as a risk factor for autism. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 68, 101-109.
24. Riby, D. M., and Hancock, P. J. B. (2008). Do faces capture the attention of individuals with williams syndrome or autism? Evidence from tracking eye movements. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 39, 1-11.
25. Rice, K., Moriuchi, J. M., Jones, W., and Klin, A. (2012). Parsing heterogeneity in autism spectrum disorders: visual scanning of dynamic social scenes in school-aged children. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 51, 238-248.
26. Rosa-Salva, O., Regolin, L., and Vallortigara, G. (2010). Faces are special for newly hatched chicks: evidence for inborn domain-specific mechanisms underlying spontaneous preferences for face-like stimuli. Dev. Sci. 13, 565-577.
27. Russell, R., Duchaine, B., and Nakayama, K. (2009). Super-recognizers: people with extraordinary face recognition ability. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 16, 252-257.
28. Rutter, M., Bailey, A., and Lord, C. (2003a). Social Communication Questionnaire-WPS (SCQ-WPS). Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
29. Rutter, M., Le Couteur, A., and Lord, C. (2003b). Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised-WPS (WPS-ed). Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
30. Sanislow, C. A., Pine, D. S., Quinn, K. J., Kozak, M. J., Garvey, M. A., Heinssen, R. K., et al. (2010). Developing constructs for psychopathology research: research domain criteria. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 119, 631-639.
31. Sasson, N. J., Turner-Brown, L. M., Holtzclaw, T. N., Lam, K. S. L., and Bodfish, J. W. (2008). Children with autism demonstrate circumscribed attention during passive viewing of complex social and nonsocial picture arrays. Autism Res. 1, 31-42.
32. Scherf, K. S., Behrmann, M., Minshew, N., and Luna, B. (2008). Atypical development of face and greeble recognition in autism. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 49, 838-847.
33. Schultz, R. T. (2005). Developmental deficits in social perception in autism: the role of the amygdala and fusiform face area. Int. J. Dev. Neurosci. 23, 125-141.
34. Schultz, R. T., Gauthier, I., Klin, A., Fulbright, R., Anderson, A., Volkmar, F., et al. (2000). Abnormal ventral temporal cortical activity during face discrimination among individuals with autism and Asperger syndrome. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 57, 331-340.
35. South, M., Ozonoff, S., and McMahon, W. (2005). Repetitive behavior profiles in Asperger Syndrome and high-functioning autism. J. Autism. Dev. Disord. 35, 145-158.
36. Swingley, D., Pinto, J. P., and Fernald, A. (1998). Assessing the speed and accuracy of word recognition in infants. Adv. Infancy Res. 12, 257-277.
37. Tanaka, J. W., Wolf, J. M., Klaiman, C., Koenig, K., Cockburn, J., Herlihy, L., et al. (2012). The perception and identification of facial emotions in individuals with autism spectrum disorders using the Let's Face It! J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 53, 1259-1267.
38. Thomas, L. A., De Bellis, M. D., Graham, R., and LaBar, K. S. (2007). Development of emotional facial recognition in late childhood and adolescence. Dev. Sci. 10, 547-558.
39. Weigelt, S., Koldewyn, K., and Kanwisher, N. (2012). Face identity recognition in autism spectrum disorders: A review of behavioral studies. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 36, 1060-1084.
40. Wolf, J. M., Tanaka, J. W., Klaiman, C., Cockburn, J., Herlihy, L., Brown, C., et al. (2008). Specific impairment of face-processing abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder using the Let's Face It! skills battery. Autism Res. 1, 329-340.