EFFECTS OF PARTICIPANT’S ROLE AND NARRATIVE TOPIC ON VISUAL ATTENTION IN ADULTS WITH AUTISM DURING A STRUCTURED INTERACTION

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have well-documented difficulties on face perception tasks. Although visual attention has been examined to clarify the nature face processing in ASD, there is no consensus among research concerning how visual attention differs in individuals with ASD, and less is known about how individuals with ASD attend to faces during interactions. The current study used a novel method to simulate a video-mediated interaction and thereby examine the effects of group (autism, control), participant’s role (listening, responding), and topic demands (cognitive and social) on visual attention during an interactive context. Nineteen male adults with ASD and 19 male typically developing (TD) adults, matched on age and measures of IQ, completed a task that involved alternating between responding to narrative topics and listening to their partner (a confederate) respond to the same topics. Unbeknownst to participants, prerecorded videos were shown instead of a live-video feed and eye movements were recorded. Additional analyses examined the effects of stimulus type, individual differences, and temporal-specific differences in group viewing proportions. Overall, patterns of visual attention were similar for participants with and without ASD, indicating that top-down factors moderate gaze in ASD. When between-group differences were identified, the majority of differences revealed reduced attention to facial regions or attenuated shifts in gaze in the autism group, but not atypicalities in the overall patterns of gaze. However, results indicated that both the distribution of attention to facial features and the extent of between-group differences in gaze differed depending on whether static or dynamic faces were viewed. In addition, reduced gaze to the face during the listening condition and reduced overall gaze to the nose distinguished the autism group from the control group. Participant characteristics (i.e., social anxiety, social skills participation) and contextual factors (i.e., emotional, dense, or disfluent speech) associated with within-group and between-group variability were also identified. Findings highlight the importance of examining visual attention using ecologically-valid designs in order to conceptualize face processing in ASD. Possible explanations for group differences in gaze to the nose, rather than the eyes or the mouth, are discussed