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Title

Social orienting of children with autism to facial expressions and speech: a study with a wearable eye-tracker in naturalistic settings
Authors
Magrelli, Silvia
Jermann, Patrick
Noris, Basilio
Ansermet, François
Hentsch, François
Nadel, Jacqueline
Billard, Aude
Published in Frontiers in Psychology. 2013, vol. 4, p. 840
Abstract This study investigates attention orienting to social stimuli in children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) during dyadic social interactions taking place in real-life settings. We study the effect of social cues that differ in complexity and distinguish between social cues produced by facial expressions of emotion and those produced during speech. We record the children's gazes using a head-mounted eye-tracking device and report on a detailed and quantitative analysis of the motion of the gaze in response to the social cues. The study encompasses a group of children with ASC from 2 to 11-years old (n = 14) and a group of typically developing (TD) children (n = 17) between 3 and 6-years old. While the two groups orient overtly to facial expressions, children with ASC do so to a lesser extent. Children with ASC differ importantly from TD children in the way they respond to speech cues, displaying little overt shifting of attention to speaking faces. When children with ASC orient to facial expressions, they show reaction times and first fixation lengths similar to those presented by TD children. However, children with ASC orient to speaking faces slower than TD children. These results support the hypothesis that individuals affected by ASC have difficulties processing complex social sounds and detecting intermodal correspondence between facial and vocal information. It also corroborates evidence that people with ASC show reduced overt attention toward social stimuli.
Identifiers
PMID: 24312064
Full text
Article (Published version) (989 Kb) - public document Free access
Structures
Faculté de médecine / Section de médecine clinique / Département de psychiatrie
Research group Groupe Ansermet François (psychiatrie) (861)
Citation
(ISO format) 		MAGRELLI, Silvia et al. Social orienting of children with autism to facial expressions and speech: a study with a wearable eye-tracker in naturalistic settings. In: Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, vol. 4, p. 840. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:43588

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Deposited on : 2014-12-17

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