Spontaneous and cued gaze-following in autism and Williams syndrome

Background: From a young age the typical development of social functioning relies upon the allocation of attention to socially relevant information, which in turn allows experience at processing such information and thus enhances social cognition. As such, research has attempted to identify the developmental processes that are derailed in some neuro-developmental disorders that impact upon social functioning. Williams syndrome (WS) and Autism are disorders of development that are characterized by atypical yet divergent social phenotypes and atypicalities of attention to people.

Methods: We used eye tracking to explore how individuals with WS and Autism attended to, and subsequently interpreted, an actor’s eye gaze cue within a social scene. Images were presented for three seconds, initially with an instruction simply to look at the picture. The images were then shown again, with the participant asked to identify the object being looked at. Allocation of eye-gaze in each condition was analyzed by ANOVA and accuracy of identification was compared with t-tests.

Results: Participants with WS allocated more gaze time to face and eyes than their matched controls both with and without being asked to identify the item being looked at; while participants with Autism spent less time on face and eyes in both conditions. When cued to follow gaze, participants with WS increased gaze to the correct targets, while those with Autism looked more at the face and eyes but did not increase gaze to the correct targets, while continuing to look much more than their controls at implausible targets. Both groups identified fewer objects than their controls.

Conclusions: The atypicalities found are likely to be entwined with the deficits shown in interpreting social cognitive cues from the images. WS and Autism are characterised by atypicalities of social attention that impact upon socio-cognitive expertise but importantly the type of atypicality is syndrome-specific.

Gaze behavior of the visually impaired during street crossing.

PURPOSE:

This study explored the gaze patterns of fully sighted and visually impaired subjects during the high-risk activity of crossing the street.

METHODS:

Gaze behavior of 12 fully sighted subjects, nine with visual impairment resulting from age-related macular degeneration and 12 with impairment resulting from glaucoma, was monitored using a portable eye tracker as they crossed at two unfamiliar intersections.

RESULTS:

All subject groups fixated primarily on vehicles and crossing elements but changed their fixation behavior as they moved from "walking to the curb" to "standing at the curb" and to "crossing the street." A comparison of where subjects fixated in the 4-second time period before crossing showed that the fully sighted who waited for the light to change fixated on the light, whereas the fully sighted who crossed early fixated primarily on vehicles. Visually impaired subjects crossing early or waiting for the light fixate primarily on vehicles.

CONCLUSIONS:

Vision status affects fixation allocation while performing the high-risk activity of street crossing. Crossing decision-making strategy corresponds to fixation behavior only for the fully sighted subjects.

Day 1. Free Communications – Psychology (Session 2): The influence of body language and expected competency on gaze behaviour while forming an initial impression of a tennis player.

D1.S3.4(4). BASES Conference 2015 (Burton-on-Trent), 1-2 December. British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences

Applying gaze-contingent training within community settings to infants from diverse SES backgrounds

Even in infancy children from low-SES backgrounds differ in frontal cortex functioning and, by the start of preschool, they frequently show poor performance on executive functions including attention control. These differences may causally mediate later difficulties in academic learning. Here, we present a study to assess the feasibility of using computerized paradigms to train attention control in infants, delivered weekly over five sessions in early intervention centres for low-SES families. Thirty-three 12-month-old infants were recruited, of whom 23 completed the training. Our results showed the feasibility of repeat-visit cognitive training within community settings. Training-related improvements were found, relative to active controls, on tasks assessing visual sustained attention, saccadic reaction time, and rule learning, whereas trend improvements were found on assessments of short-term memory. No significant improvements were found in task switching. These results warrant further investigation into the potential of this method for targeting ‘at-risk’ infants in community settings.