Hironori Akechi

Attention to Eye Contact in the West and East: Autonomic Responses and Evaluative Ratings

Eye contact has a fundamental role in human social interaction. The special appearance of the human eye (i.e., white sclera contrasted with a coloured iris) implies the importance of detecting another persons face through eye contact. Empirical studies have demonstrated that faces making eye contact are detected quickly and processed preferentially (i.e., the eye contact effect). Such sensitivity to eye contact seems to be innate and universal among humans; however, several studies suggest that cultural norms affect eye contact behaviours. For example, Japanese individuals exhibit less eye contact than do individuals from Western European or North American cultures. However, how culture modulates eye contact behaviour is unclear. The present study investigated cultural differences in autonomic correlates of attentional orienting (i.e., heart rate) and looking time. Additionally, we examined evaluative ratings of eye contact with another real person, displaying an emotionally neutral expression, between participants from Western European (Finnish) and East Asian (Japanese) cultures. Our results showed that eye contact elicited stronger heart rate deceleration responses (i.e., attentional orienting), shorter looking times, and higher ratings of subjective feelings of arousal as compared to averted gaze in both cultures. Instead, cultural differences in the eye contact effect were observed in various evaluative responses regarding the stimulus faces (e.g., facial emotion, approachability etc.). The rating results suggest that individuals from an East Asian culture perceive anothers face as being angrier, unapproachable, and unpleasant when making eye contact as compared to individuals from a Western European culture. The rating results also revealed that gaze direction (direct vs. averted) could influence perceptions about another persons facial affect and disposition. These results suggest that cultural differences in eye contact behaviour emerge from differential display rules and cultural norms, as opposed to culture affecting eye contact behaviour directly at the physiological level.

Brief Report: Does Eye Contact Induce Contagious Yawning in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder?.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) reportedly fail to show contagious yawning, but the mechanism underlying the lack of contagious yawning is still unclear. The current study examined whether instructed fixation on the eyes modulates contagious yawning in ASD. Thirty-one children with ASD, as well as 31 age-matched typically developing (TD) children, observed video clips of either yawning or control mouth movements. Participants were instructed to fixate to the eyes of the face stimuli. Following instructed fixation on the eyes, both TD children and children with ASD yawned equally frequently in response to yawning stimuli. Current results suggest that contagious yawning could occur in ASD under an experimental condition in which they are instructed to fixate on the yawning eyes.

Does Gaze Direction Modulate Facial Expression Processing in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Two experiments investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) integrate relevant communicative signals, such as gaze direction, when decoding a facial expression. In Experiment 1, typically developing children (9-14 years old; n = 14) were faster at detecting a facial expression accompanying a gaze direction with a congruent motivational tendency (i.e., an avoidant facial expression with averted eye gaze) than those with an incongruent motivational tendency. Children with ASD (9-14 years old; n = 14) were not affected by the gaze direction of facial stimuli. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which presented only the eye region of the face to typically developing children (n = 10) and children with ASD (n = 10). These results demonstrated that children with ASD do not encode and/or integrate multiple communicative signals based on their affective or motivational tendency.

The effect of gaze direction on the processing of facial expressions in children with autism spectrum disorder: an ERP study.

This study investigated the neural basis of the effect of gaze direction on facial expression processing in children with and without ASD, using event-related potential (ERP). Children with ASD (10-17-year olds) and typically developing (TD) children (9-16-year olds) were asked to determine the emotional expressions (anger or fearful) of a facial stimulus with a direct or averted gaze, and the ERPs were recorded concurrently. In TD children, faces with a congruent expression and gaze direction in approach-avoidance motivation, such as an angry face with a direct gaze (i.e., approaching motivation) and a fearful face with an averted gaze (i.e., avoidant motivation), were recognized more accurately and elicited larger N170 amplitudes than motivationally incongruent facial stimuli (an angry face with an averted gaze and a fearful face with a direct gaze). These results demonstrated the neural basis and time course of integration of facial expression and gaze direction in TD children and its impairment in children with ASD.

Absence of preferential unconscious processing of eye contact in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.

Eye contact plays an essential role in social interaction. Atypical eye contact is a diagnostic and widely reported feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we determined whether altered unconscious visual processing of eye contact might underlie atypical eye contact in ASD. Using continuous flash suppression (CFS), we found that typically developing (TD) adolescents detected faces with a direct gaze faster than faces with an averted gaze, indicating enhanced unconscious processing of eye contact. Critically, adolescents with ASD did not show different durations of perceptual suppression for faces with direct and averted gaze, suggesting that preferential unconscious processing of eye contact is absent in this group. In contrast, in a non‐CFS control experiment, both adolescents with ASD and TD adolescents detected faces with a direct gaze faster than those with an averted gaze. Another CFS experiment confirmed that unconscious processing of non‐social stimuli is intact for adolescents with ASD. These results suggest that atypical processing of eye contact in individuals with ASD could be related to a weaker initial, unconscious registration of eye contact. Autism Res 2014, 7: 590–597.

Neural and behavioural responses to face-likeness of objects in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

Numerous studies have revealed atypical face processing in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) characterized by social interaction and communication difficulties. This study investigated sensitivity to face-likeness in ASD. In Experiment 1, we found a strong positive correlation between the face-likeness ratings of non-face objects in the ASD (11–19 years old) and the typically developing (TD) group (9–21 years old). In Experiment 2 (the scalp-recorded event-related potential experiment), the participants of both groups (ASD, 12–19 years old; TD, 12–18 years old) exhibited an enhanced face-sensitive N170 amplitude to a face-like object. Whereas the TD adolescents showed an enhanced N170 during the face-likeness judgements, adolescents with ASD did not. Thus, both individuals with ASD and TD individuals have a perceptual and neural sensitivity to face-like features in objects. When required to process face-like features, a face-related brain system reacts more strongly in TD individuals but not in individuals with ASD.

Cultural Modulation of Face and Gaze Scanning in Young Children

Previous research has demonstrated that the way human adults look at others’ faces is modulated by their cultural background, but very little is known about how such a culture-specific pattern of face gaze develops. The current study investigated the role of cultural background on the development of face scanning in young children between the ages of 1 and 7 years, and its modulation by the eye gaze direction of the face. British and Japanese participants’ eye movements were recorded while they observed faces moving their eyes towards or away from the participants. British children fixated more on the mouth whereas Japanese children fixated more on the eyes, replicating the results with adult participants. No cultural differences were observed in the differential responses to direct and averted gaze. The results suggest that different patterns of face scanning exist between different cultures from the first years of life, but differential scanning of direct and averted gaze associated with different cultural norms develop later in life.

Preferential awareness of protofacial stimuli in autism

It has been suggested that a subcortically mediated, innate sensitivity to protofacial stimuli leads to specialized face processing and to the development of the social brain. A dysfunction of this face-processing pathway has been associated with atypical social development in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study investigated whether individuals with ASD exhibit primary sensitivity to monochrome protoface stimuli using continuous flash suppression (CFS). Under CFS, visual stimuli are suppressed from awareness, and cortical processing is strongly reduced while subcortical regions continue to respond to invisible stimuli. We found that both adolescents with ASD and typically developing adolescents showed preferential detection of upright protoface stimuli under CFS but not in a non-CFS control condition. These results challenge the notion that a primitive sensitivity to protoface stimuli is essential for typical social development. Rather, our findings suggest such sensitivity is not a sufficient condition for typical social development and that the presence of other complementary factors is necessary for the development of the social brain.

Mind perception and moral judgment in autism: Mind perception in autism

Social difficulties of autistic individuals have been suggested to be caused by mind blindness, the absence of a theory of mind. Numerous studies have investigated theory of mind in autism spectrum disorder or how autistic individuals represent the mental states of others. Here, we have examined, as an alternative, mind perception, namely how individuals perceive the minds of various animate and inanimate entities. Autistic and non‐autistic participants demonstrated evidence of a similar two‐dimensional mind perception; agency, capacity for doing (i.e., self‐control, memory, plan), and experience, capacity for feeling (i.e., fear, hunger, pain). Some targets (e.g., human infant and dog) were perceived to have low agency but high experience, while others (e.g., robot and God) were perceived to have the reverse pattern. Moreover, in both autistic and non‐autistic groups, the attribution of moral blame positively correlated with agency, whereas moral consideration positively correlated with experience. These results offer new evidence of social cognition, particularly conception of mind and morality, in autism. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1239–1244.