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Eye Tracking Effort Expenditure and Autonomic Arousal to Social and Circumscribed Interest Stimuli in Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

The social communicative deficits and repetitive behaviours seen in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be affected by altered stimulus salience and reward attribution. The present study used eye tracking and a behavioural measure to index effort expenditure, arousal, and attention, during viewing of images depicting social scenes and subject-specific circumscribed interests in a group of 10 adults with ASD (mean age 25.4 years) and 19 typically-developing controls (mean age 20.7 years) Split-plot and one-way repeated measures ANOVAs were used to explore results. A significant difference between the ASD and control group was found in the amount of effort expended to view social and circumscribed images. The ASD group also displayed significant differences in pupillary response to social and circumscribed images, indicative of changes in autonomic arousal. Overall, the results support the social motivation hypothesis in ASD (Chevallier et al., Trends Cogn Sci 16(4):231–239, 2012) and suggest a role for autonomic arousal in the ASD symptom dyad.

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  1. A. Gough

    Present address: SR Research Ltd, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, McMaster University, Neuroscience & Behaviour, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    J. M. Traynor, A. Gough, D. I. Shore & G. B. C. Hall

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    E. Duku

  3. McMaster University, Psychology Building (PC) Room 307, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1, Canada

    G. B. C. Hall

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Contributions

JMT, AH, and GBCH conceptualized the study. JMT wrote and submitted the ethics application, recruited participants, collected and analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript. AH programmed the experiment, trained experimenters to use the Eye Link II system, developed testing protocols, and edited revisions of the manuscript. ED provided statistical consultation. DIS and GBCH edited revisions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to G. B. C. Hall.

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Traynor, J.M., Gough, A., Duku, E. et al. Eye Tracking Effort Expenditure and Autonomic Arousal to Social and Circumscribed Interest Stimuli in Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 49, 1988–2002 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-03877-y

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