Social attention in the wild - fixations to the eyes and autistic traits during a naturalistic interaction in a healthy sample

Autor(en)

Raimund Buehler, Ulrich Ansorge, Giorgia Silani

Abstrakt

Attention to social stimuli is a key component of social behavior and facilitates the development of fundamental social skills. Studies investigating social attention in neurotypical or neurodiverse populations have often relied on screen-based experiments using static images or videos, which lack the sensory richness and reciprocity present in real-life social interactions. This can possibly be attributed to the challenges one encounters when creating naturalistic experiments, such as dealing with dynamically moving areas of interest (AOIs), which require either time-intensive manual coding or restraining of participants. Here, we present findings from an experimental paradigm using unrestrained mobile eye-tracking and a face detection algorithm (MTCNN) to measure fixation rates during a semi-structured, face-to-face interview. Data from N = 62 healthy adult participants was analyzed for gaze behavior and related to participants' autistic traits. We observed a significant negative correlation between fixation rates on the eye region averaged over the entire interaction and scores on the autism spectrum quotient (AQ) (r = -0.14), indicating participants with high autistic traits fixated less frequently on the eye region. We also compared different types of interview questions (open vs. closed) to explore whether the reduction in fixation rates was more pronounced for specific time intervals during the interview. Lastly, we discuss both possibilities for extensions as well as limitations of the presented paradigm that could serve as inspiration for future research.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Klinische und Gesundheitspsychologie, Institut für Psychologie der Kognition, Emotion und Methoden

Journal

Scientific Reports

Band

14

Seiten

1-10

ISSN

2045-2322

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-79210-8

Publikationsdatum

12-2024

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

501011 Kognitionspsychologie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

General

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/88061a71-99a5-4602-b120-c4268558fd08