Eye Movement Study Of High And Low Autistic College Students In Recognizing Emotional Face

Autism Traits are a collection of behavioral,personality,and corresponding cognitive characteristics associated with Autism Spectrum Disorders(ASD).Depending on the severity of symptoms,they can be classified as suprathreshold autism traits(meeting clinical diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders)and subthreshold autism traits.Individuals with subthreshold high autistic traits are not diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder,but exhibit impairments in social functioning similar to those of individuals with autism spectrum disorders,with a lesser degree of impairment.Previous research has shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorders have abnormal face processing compared to normal individuals,under-attention to core face areas,and modulation by face emotions.Individuals with high autistic traits also exhibit deficits in attention to the core face region compared to individuals with low autistic traits.The theory of mind deficit hypothesis suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorders have difficulty understanding others’ beliefs,desires,and emotions and using them as a basis for understanding and inferring others’ behavior.The intense world theory suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorders perceive abnormally strong and highly sensitive perceptions to the extent that they avoid stimuli such as eye contact.In this study,two experiments were conducted to investigate whether for college students with high autistic traits the abnormalities in face gaze are due to a low level of theory of mind or whether the abnormalities in face gaze are due to over-sensitivity to emotions and the presence of overload processing that produces avoidance of the core face area.Experiment 1 used a two-factor mixed experimental design of 2(autistic trait: high,low)×6(face emotions: anger,disgust,fear,happiness,sadness,surprise)with a face emotion recognition task,and their eye movement trajectories during processing of faces were recorded using an oculomotor to explore whether there were significant differences in the recognition of basic emotional faces between college students with different high and low autistic traits.The results revealed that there was no significant difference in the correct rate of recognizing face emotions between the two groups of subjects;however,individuals with high autistic trait had significantly less eye area gaze than individuals with low autistic trait at the early stage of face presentation(the first 500 ms).This indicates that individuals with high autistic traits have abnormal gaze on emotional faces compared to individuals with low autistic traits in the early stages of gaze processing.Experiment 2 used a three-factor mixed experimental design of 2(autistic trait: high,low)×6(face emotions: anger,disgust,fear,happiness,sadness,surprise)× 5(degree of expression:20%,40%,60%,80%,100%)using a face recognition task and using an eye-tracking device to record their eye movement trajectories while processing faces to explore whether college students with different high and low autistic traits had a significant difference in recognizing The experiment explored whether there were significant differences between college students with high and low autistic traits in recognizing basic emotional faces with different levels of expression.The results showed that there was no significant difference in the correct recognition rate of face emotions between the two groups;the intensity of face emotions significantly affected the correct recognition rate of emotions;the correct recognition rate of happy,angry and sad faces gradually increased with the increase of expression level,and the correct recognition rate of disgusted,surprised and fearful faces stopped increasing after reaching a certain intensity;the correct recognition rate of faces and the core area of faces in the two groups did not significantly differ.There was no significant difference between the two groups in their gaze on faces and the eyes and mouth of the core area of faces;the gaze characteristics of different emotional faces were moderated by emotions and the degree of expression.There was a significant difference in the effect of emotion and expression level on the two groups of subjects in the early stage of face presentation(first 500 ms).The present results indicate that although individuals with high autistic traits did not differ significantly from individuals with low autistic traits in the correct recognition of face emotions,they showed abnormalities in the gaze on the eye region early in the processing of faces and were moderated by emotion and intensity,similar to previous findings in individuals with autism spectrum disorders.Although individuals with high autistic traits showed abnormalities in face gaze early in face processing,they did not affect their recognition of emotion,a result more consistent with the expectations of the intense world theory.This result helps us to gain more insight into the processing of social cues in high autistic traits as well as autism spectrum disorders,and to further design intervention programs to help them better interact socially.