Atypical monitoring and responsiveness to goal‑directed gaze in autism spectrum disorder
Author(s)
Vivanti, Giacomo
Trembath, David
Dissanayake, Cheryl
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2014
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
We hypothesized that difficulty in understanding the goals of others' actions in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) might be linked to a diminished attention and responsivity to relevant social cues. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we investigated how 24 children with ASD and 24 matched children without ASD responded to the observation of uncompleted actions without a clear target (neutral condition) versus a condition in which the actor's gaze direction indicated the target of the actions (head-turning condition). Children without ASD significantly increased their attention to the actor's face and to the action's target in the ...
View more >We hypothesized that difficulty in understanding the goals of others' actions in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) might be linked to a diminished attention and responsivity to relevant social cues. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we investigated how 24 children with ASD and 24 matched children without ASD responded to the observation of uncompleted actions without a clear target (neutral condition) versus a condition in which the actor's gaze direction indicated the target of the actions (head-turning condition). Children without ASD significantly increased their attention to the actor's face and to the action's target in the head-turning condition compared to the neutral condition, while this was not the case in the ASD group. Overall, our findings suggest a diminished monitoring and responsivity to social cues signalling goal-directedness, which might impact on the ability to understand other's action goals in young children with ASD.
View less >
View more >We hypothesized that difficulty in understanding the goals of others' actions in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) might be linked to a diminished attention and responsivity to relevant social cues. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we investigated how 24 children with ASD and 24 matched children without ASD responded to the observation of uncompleted actions without a clear target (neutral condition) versus a condition in which the actor's gaze direction indicated the target of the actions (head-turning condition). Children without ASD significantly increased their attention to the actor's face and to the action's target in the head-turning condition compared to the neutral condition, while this was not the case in the ASD group. Overall, our findings suggest a diminished monitoring and responsivity to social cues signalling goal-directedness, which might impact on the ability to understand other's action goals in young children with ASD.
View less >
Journal Title
Experimental Brain Research
Volume
232
Issue
2
Subject
Biomedical and clinical sciences
Psychology