Logo image
Back
No Evidence of Emotional Dysregulation or Aversion to Mutual Gaze in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Pupillometry Study
Journal article   Peer reviewed

No Evidence of Emotional Dysregulation or Aversion to Mutual Gaze in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Pupillometry Study

Heather J. Nuske, Giacomo Vivanti and Cheryl Dissanayake
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, v 45(11), pp 3433-3445
01 Nov 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2479-5
PMID: 26031923
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel

Abstract

Psychology Psychology, Developmental Social Sciences
The 'gaze aversion hypothesis', suggests that people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) avoid mutual gaze because they experience it as hyper-arousing. To test this hypothesis we showed mutual and averted gaze stimuli to 23 mixed-ability preschoolers with ASD (M Mullen DQ = 68) and 21 typically-developing preschoolers, aged 2-5 years, using eye-tracking technology to measure visual attention and emotional arousal (i.e., pupil dilation). There were no group differences in attention to the eye region or pupil dilation. Both groups dilated their pupils more to mutual compared to averted gaze. More internalizing symptoms in the children with ASD related to less emotional arousal to mutual gaze. The pattern of results suggests that preschoolers with ASD are not dysregulated in their responses to mutual gaze.

Metrics

8 Record Views
30 citations in Web of Science
28 citations in Scopus

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Web of Science research areas
Psychology, Developmental
Logo image