Gaze Allocation to the Speaker's Face during Ironic and Sincere Statements: Relations to Features of the Broad Autism Phenotype in Typically Developing Children and Adults
Item
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Title
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Gaze Allocation to the Speaker's Face during Ironic and Sincere Statements: Relations to Features of the Broad Autism Phenotype in Typically Developing Children and Adults
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:6b51e36ecb44:11366
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identifier
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11786
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Creator
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Serlin, Gayle,
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Contributor
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Michael J. Siller
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Developmental psychology | Cognitive psychology | autism | eye-tracking | theory of mind
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Abstract
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The human ability to navigate our highly social world is reflected in the richness of our interactions with others. Using specialized skills for language and theory of mind, i.e., interpreting the minds of the self and others, we can communicate with others verbally and nonverbally to convey our intentions. During healthy development, these social skills emerge naturally but they can be deficient or absent in individuals diagnosed with autism. The goal of the current project is to examine several aspects of social cognition in 50 typical children ages 3.2--9.3 years old (M = 6.3, SD = 1.8) and 42 typical adults ages 18--30 ( M = 22.4, SD = 4.7) and to identify autism endophenotypes revealed by the performance of our samples. We administered the Nonliteral Language eye-tracking paradigm to children and adults to ascertain patterns of gaze allocation to expressive faces of speakers delivering ironic, sincere or neutral remarks. Each participant completed an inventory targeting social deficits to determine the presence of broad autism phenotype (BAP), or traits associated with autism that occur in the general population. Children also received a Theory of Mind Battery and a narrative competence task to provide a measure of internal state language. We discovered that when controlling for global development in the correlations between theory of mind performance and measures of narrative competence, some aspects of linguistic complexity remained significantly correlated to theory of mind but internal state language did not. Results concerning all measures revealed that both adults and children allocated more gaze to expressive faces delivering ironic remarks, yet gaze allocation was not predicted by expression of the BAP in either sample. However in adults, greater expression of the BAP predicted less gaze allocation to all expressive faces regardless of the type of remark a speaker made. In children, we found inverse effects for the relation between Theory of Mind Battery and the use of internal state language on gaze allocation, respectively: Decreased performance predicted greater gaze allocation to all expressive faces regardless of the type of remark that was delivered. These contrasting findings in adults and children suggest that the optimal strategies socially impaired individuals utilize may vary across development. The impact of this possibility should be considered in the study of autism endophenotypes related to social behavior.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
