| Autism spectrum disorder(ASD)is a complex pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder.Clinical behavioral observations have shown that autism spectrum disorders generally establish less eye contact with others,and this eye contact impairment affect social communication and interaction in children with autism spectrum disorders.At present,there are two kinds of different and contradictory theoretical hypothesis including the active avoidance hypothesis and passively omit hypothesis which infer the reason for eye contact impairment in autism spectrum disorders individuals in academia.Each has their support from empirical research evidence.Exploring the causes of abnormal eye gaze processing behavior in children with autism spectrum disorders is contributing to provide theoretical basis and guidance for effectively intervening eye gaze processing impairment in children with autism spectrum disorders.This study selected 19 high-functioning ASD children as experimental group and 17 intellectual ability,chronological age and gender matched TD children(Typical Developmental,TD)as the control group,investigating the influence of different eye gaze direction on the attention processing of individual with autism spectrum disorders.In experiment 1,attention cue paradigm,visual preference paradigm and gap overlap paradigm were used to investigate the effects of different eye gaze direction on visual attention processing in three attention stages including attention orientation,attention maintenance and attention disengagement in children with autism spectrum disorders.The results showed that compared with averted gaze faces,TD children showed faster detection speed and longer attention maintenance for direct faces while ASD children showed no significant difference in detection speed and attention maintenance time of faces with either eye gaze direction.The eye gaze direction did not affect TD children and ASD children attention disengagement from face.In experiment 2,the differences of attention processing between direct eye gaze and averted gaze in children with autism spectrum disorders were investigated in real static social scenes pictures.The results showed that the eye gaze direction didn't affect the detection speed of TD children and ASD children on the face and eye area in the real static scene picture.Compared with averted gaze,TD children showed longer attention maintenance time for direct faces and eye area while ASD children did not show this preference.TD children prefer for direct gaze while ASD children don't prefer for either eye gaze direction face.In experiment 3,the differences on the gaze behaviors to faces in children with autism spectrum disorders for different eye gaze directions in real social interactive videos was examined.The results showed that there was no significant difference in the eye fixation time and face fixation time of children with ASD in the three different eye gaze direction stages while the eye fixation time and face fixation time of children with TD in the direct gaze stage were significantly higher than the other two non-direct gaze direction stages.The results support the passive ignoring direct gaze hypothesis.In addition,in the above three experiments,we found that the fixation time of ASD children on the face was significantly shorter than that of TD children,regardless of the eye gaze direction of face,indicating that children with ASD had insufficient attention processing on the face.Combining the three series of experiments,this study found that children with ASD establishing less eye contact with others because they passively omit direct gaze rather than actively avoided it.Parents and educators should gradually correct their understanding of this group.It is suggested that teachers and parents can explain the social communication significance of direct eye gaze to ASD children in different social situations by social story intervention or video modeling intervention to improve the sensitivity of ASD individuals to the direct eye gaze presented by others and the ability to initiate social communication with others. |
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