Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Scan Path Differences and Similarities During Emotion Perception in those With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorders

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Typical adults use predictable scan patterns while observing faces. Some research suggests that people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) instead attend to eyes less, and perhaps to the mouth more. The current experiment was designed as a direct measure of scan paths that people with and without ASD use when identifying simple and complex emotions. Participants saw photos of emotions and chose emotion labels. Scan paths were measured via infrared corneal reflectance. Both groups looked significantly longer at eyes than mouth, and neither overall looking time at eyes nor first fixations distinguished the groups. These results are contrary to suggestions that those with ASD attend preferentially to the mouth and avoid the eyes. Furthermore, there was no interaction between group and area of the face: the ratio of attention between eyes and mouth did not differ between the ASD and control groups. However, those with ASD looked at the eyes less than the control group when viewing complex emotions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S., Campbell, R., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Grant, J., & Walker, J. (1995). Are children with autism blind to the mentalistic significance of the eyes? British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13, 379–398.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S., & Cross, P. (1992). Reading the eyes: Evidence for the role of perception in the development of a theory of mind. Mind and Language, 6, 173–186.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., & Jolliffe, T. (1997). Is there a “language of the eyes”? Evidence from normal adults, and adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome. Visual Cognition, 4, 311–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barton, J. J. S., Keenan, J. P., & Bass, T. (2001). Discrimination of spatial relations and features in faces: Effects of inversion and viewing duration. British Journal of Psychology, 92, 527–549.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boucher, J. D., & Ekman, P. (1975). Facial areas and emotional information. Journal of Communication, 25, 21–29.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boucher, J., & Lewis, V. (1992). Unfamiliar face recognition in relatively able autistic children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 33, 843–859.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Braverman, M., Fein, D., Lucci, D., & Waterhouse, L. (1989). Affect comprehension in children with pervasive developmental disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 17, 301–316.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buitelaar, J. K., Van der Wees, M., Swabb-Barneveld, H., & Van der Gaag, R. J. (1999). Theory of mind and emotion-recognition functioning in autistic spectrum disorders and in psychiatric control and normal children. Development and Psychopathology, 11, 39–58.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Caldara, R., Schyns, P., Mayer, E., Smith, M. L., Gosselin, F., & Rossion, B. (2005). Does prosopagnosia take the eyes out of face representations? Evidence for a defect in representing diagnostic facial information following brain damage. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 1652–1666.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Celani, G., Battacchi, M. W., & Arcidiacono, L. (1999). The understanding of the emotional meaning of facial expressions in people with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29, 57–66.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Davies, G., Ellis, H., & Shepherd, J. (1977). Cue saliency in faces as assessed by the “photofit” technique. Perception, 6, 263–269.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • de Gelder, B., Vroomen, J., & van der Heide, L. (1991). Face recognition and lip-reading in autism. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 3, 69–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunlap, K. (1927). The role of eye muscles and mouth muscles in the expression of the emotions. Child Behaviour, Differential and Genetic Psychology, 2, 199–233.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17, 129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fraser, I. H., Craig, G. L., & Parker, D. M. (1990). Reaction time measures of feature saliency in schematic faces. Perception, 19, 661–673.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gepner, B., deGelder, B., & deSchonen, S. (1996). Face processing in autistics: Evidence for a generalised deficit? Child Neuropsychology, 2, 123–139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hadwin, J., Baron-Cohen, S., Howlin, P., & Hill, K. (1996). Can we teach children with autism to understand emotions, belief or pretence? Development and Psychopathology, 8, 345–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haig, N. D. (1985). How faces differ – A new comparative technique. Perception, 14, 601–615.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Haig, N. D. (1986). Exploring recognition with interchanged facial features. Perception, 15, 235–247.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hanawalt, N. G. (1944). The role of the upper and the lower parts of the face as the basis for judging facial expressions: II. In posed expressions and “candid camera” pictures. The Journal of General Psychology, 31, 23–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Happé, F., & Frith, U. (2006). The weak central coherence account: Detail-focussed cognitive style in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 5–25.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hobson, R. P. (1986). The autistic childs appraisal of expressions of emotion. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 27, 321–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hobson, R. P., Ouston, J., & Lee, A. (1988). What’s in a face? The case of autism. British Journal of Psychology, 79, 441–453.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Howlin, P., Baron-Cohen, S., & Hadwin, J. (1999). Teaching children with autism to mind-read: A practical guide. Chichester: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joseph, R. M., & Tanaka, J. (2003). Holistic and part-based face recognition in children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 529–542.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F., & Cohen, D. (2002). Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Archives of General Psychiatry, 59, 809–816.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Klin, A., Sparrow, S., de Bildt, A., Cicchetti, D., Cohen, D., & Volkmar, F. (1999). A normed study of face recognition in autism and related disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29, 499–508.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Langdell, T. (1978). Recognition of faces – Approach to study of autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 19, 255–268.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lord, C., Risi, S., Lambrecht, L., Cook, E. H., Leventhal, B. L., DiLavore, P. C., et al. (2000). The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule–Generic: A standard measure of social and communication deficits associated with the spectrum of autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 30, 205–223.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Loveland, K. A., Tunali-Kotoski, B., Chen, Y. R., Ortegon, J., Pearson, D. A., Brelsford, K. A., et al. (1997). Emotion recognition in autism: Verbal and nonverbal information. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 579–593.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nishimura, M., Rutherford, M. D., & Maurer, D. (2007). Evidence of configural face processing in adults with autism. Visual Cognition.

  • Ozonoff, S., Pennington, B. F., & Rogers, S. J. (1990). Are there emotion perception deficits in young autistic children? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 31, 343–361.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pelphrey, K. A., Sasson, N. J., Reznick, J. S., Paul, G., Goldman, B. D., & Piven, J. (2002). Visual scanning of faces in autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 32, 249–261.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Plaisted, K., Saksida, L., Alcantara, J., & Weisblatt, E. (2003). Towards an understanding of the mechanisms of weak central coherence effects: Experiments in visual configural learning and auditory perception. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences, 358, 375–386.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rutherford, M. D., Clements, K., & Sekuler, A. B. (2007). Differences in discrimination of eye and mouth displacement in autism spectrum disorders. Vision Research, 47, 2099–2110.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rutherford, M. D., & McIntosh, D. I. (2007). Rules versus prototype matching: Strategies of perception of emotional facial expressions in the autism spectrum. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 187–196.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schyns, P. G., Bonnar, L., & Gosselin, F. (2002). Show me the features! Understanding recognition from the use of visual information. Psychological Science, 13, 402–409.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sergent, J. (1984). Configural processing of faces in the left and right cerebral hemispheres. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 554–572.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Silver, M., & Oakes, P. (2001). Evaluation of a new computer intervention to teach people with autism or Asperger syndrome to recognize and predict emotions in others. Autism, 5, 299–316.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Spezio, M. L., Adolphs, R., Hurley, R. S. E., & Piven, J. (2007a). Abnormal use of facial information in high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 929–939.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Spezio, M. L., Adolphs, R., Hurley, R. S. E., & Piven, J. (2007b). Analysis of face gaze in autism with “Bubbles”. Neuropsychologia, 45, 144–151.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sullivan, L. A., & Kirkpatrick, S. W. (1996). Facial interpretation and component consistency. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 122, 389–404.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tanaka, J. W., & Farah, M. J. (1993). Parts and wholes in face recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: A Human Experimental Psychology, 46a, 225–245.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tantam, D., Monaghan, L., Nicholson, H., & Stirling, J. (1989). Autistic children’s ability to interpret faces: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 30, 623–630.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Teunisse, J. P., & de Gelder, B. (2001). Impaired categorical perception of facial expressions in high-functioning adolescents with autism. Child Neuropsychology, 7, 1–14.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Teunisse, J. P., & de Gelder, B. (2003). Face processing in adolescents with autistic disorder: The inversion and composite effects. Brain and Cognition, 52, 285–294.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • van der Geest, J. N., Kemner, C., Verbaten, M. N., & van Engeland, H. (2002). Gaze behavior of children with pervasive developmental disorder toward human faces: A fixation time study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 669–678.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, Canada, L8S 4K1

    M. D. Rutherford & Ashley M. Towns

Authors
  1. M. D. Rutherford
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ashley M. Towns
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to M. D. Rutherford.

Additional information

This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant to MDR.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Rutherford, M.D., Towns, A.M. Scan Path Differences and Similarities During Emotion Perception in those With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorders. J Autism Dev Disord 38, 1371–1381 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0525-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0525-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation