Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-24-2020
Journal
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Volume
13
URL with Digital Object Identifier
10.3389/fnhum.2019.00470
Abstract
© Copyright © 2020 Laycock, Wood, Wright, Crewther and Goodale. Individuals on the autism spectrum are reported to show impairments in the processing of social information, including aspects of eye-movements towards faces. Abnormalities in basic-level visual processing are also reported. In the current study, we sought to determine if the latency of saccades made towards social targets (faces) in a natural scene as opposed to inanimate targets (cars) would be related to sub-clinical autism traits (ATs) in individuals drawn from a neurotypical population. The effect of stimulus inversion was also examined given that difficulties with processing inverted faces are thought to be a function of face expertise. No group differences in saccadic latency were established for face or car targets, regardless of image orientation. However, as expected, we found that individuals with higher autism-like traits did not demonstrate a saccadic face inversion effect, but those with lower autism-like traits did. Neither group showed a car inversion effect. Thus, these results suggest that neurotypical individuals with high autism-like traits also show anomalies in detecting and orienting to faces. In particular, the reduced saccadic face inversion effect established in these participants with high ATs suggests that speed of visual processing and orienting towards faces may be associated with the social difficulties found across the broader autism spectrum.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Notes
© 2020 Laycock, Wood, Wright, Crewther and Goodale. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Originally published as:
Laycock R, Wood K, Wright A, Crewther SG and Goodale MA (2020) Saccade Latency Provides Evidence for Reduced Face Inversion Effects With Higher Autism Traits. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 13:470. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00470
Corrigendum available at https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00058