Ouriel Grynszpan

A meta-analysis of the anterior cingulate contribution to social pain

Many functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have explored the neural correlates of social pain that results from social threat, exclusion, rejection, loss or negative evaluation. Although activations have consistently been reported within the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), it remains unclear which ACC subdivision is particularly involved. To provide a quantitative estimation of the specific involvement of ACC subdivisions in social pain, we conducted a voxel-based meta-analysis. The literature search identified 46 articles that included 940 subjects, the majority of which used the cyberball task. Significant likelihoods of activation were found in both the ventral and dorsal ACC for both social pain elicitation and self-reported distress during social pain. Self-reported distress involved more specifically the subgenual and pregenual ACC than social pain-related contrasts. The cyberball task involved the anterior midcingulate cortex to a lesser extent than other experimental tasks. During social pain, children exhibited subgenual activations to a greater extent than adults. Finally, the ventro-dorsal gradient of ACC activations in cyberball studies was related to the length of exclusion phases. The present meta-analysis contributes to a better understanding of the role of ACC subdivisions in social pain, and it could be of particular importance for guiding future studies of social pain and its neural underpinnings.

Self-Monitoring of Gaze in High Functioning Autism

Atypical visual behaviour has been recently proposed to account for much of social misunderstanding in autism. Using an eye-tracking system and a gaze-contingent lens display, the present study explores self-monitoring of eye motion in two conditions: free visual exploration and guided exploration via blurring the visual field except for the focal area of vision. During these conditions, thirteen students with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFASD) and fourteen typical individuals were presented naturalistic and interactive social stimuli using virtual reality. Fixation data showed a weaker modulation of eye movements according to the conditions in the HFASD group, thus suggesting impairments in self-monitoring of gaze. Moreover, the gaze-contingent lens induced a visual behaviour whereby social understanding scores were correlated with the time spent gazing at faces. The device could be useful for treating gaze monitoring deficiencies in HFASD.

Joint Attention Simulation Using Eye-Tracking and Virtual Humans

This article analyses the issues pertaining to the simulation of joint attention with virtual humans. Gaze represents a powerful communication channel illustrated by the pivotal role of joint attention in social interactions. To our knowledge, there have been only few attempts to simulate gazing patterns associated with joint attention as a mean for developing empathic virtual agents. Eye-tracking technologies now enable creating non-invasive gaze-contingent systems that empower the user with the ability to lead a virtual humans focus of attention in real-time. Although gaze control can be deliberate, most of our visual behaviors in everyday life are not. This article reports empirical data suggesting that users only have partial awareness of controlling gaze-contingent displays. The technical challenges induced by detecting the users focus of attention in virtual reality are reviewed and several solutions are compared. We designed and tested a platform for creating virtual humans endowed with the ability to follow the users attention. The article discusses the advantages of simulating joint attention for improving interpersonal skills and user engagement. Joint attention plays a major role in the development of autism. The platform we designed is intended for research and treatment of autism and tests included participants with this disorder.

Investigating social gaze as an action-perception online performance

Gaze represents a major non-verbal communication channel in social interactions. In this respect, when facing another person, ones gaze should not be examined as a purely perceptive process but also as an action-perception online performance. However, little is known about processes involved in the real-time self-regulation of social gaze. The present study investigates the impact of a gaze-contingent viewing window on fixation patterns and the awareness of being the agent moving the window. In face-to-face scenarios played by a virtual human character, the task for the 18 adult participants was to interpret an equivocal sentence which could be disambiguated by examining the emotional expressions of the character speaking. The virtual character was embedded in naturalistic backgrounds to enhance realism. Eye-tracking data showed that the viewing window induced changes in gaze behavior, notably longer visual fixations. Notwithstanding, only half of the participants ascribed the window displacements to their eye movements. These participants also spent more time looking at the eyes and mouth regions of the virtual human character. The outcomes of the study highlight the dissociation between non-volitional gaze adaptation and the self-ascription of agency. Such dissociation provides support for a two-step account of the sense of agency composed of pre-noetic monitoring mechanisms and reflexive processes, linked by bottom-up and top-down processes. We comment upon these results, which illustrate the relevance of our method for studying online social cognition, in particular concerning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) where the poor pragmatic understanding of oral speech is considered linked to visual peculiarities that impede facial exploration.

A new virtual environment paradigm for high functioning autism intended to help attentional disengagement in a social context Bridging the gap between relevance theory and executive dysfunction

This article presents a review of the question regarding the link between social communication difficulties and altered executive functions (which are cognitive functions involved in the control of behavior, such as planning, inhibition, working memory etc) in high functioning autism. We first analyze the difficulties experienced by people with high functioning autism in processing contextual cues during social conversations. We extend this approach to a broader scope including verbal and non-verbal communication. Indeed, understanding social interactions requires integrating and connecting transient multimodal social cues. The article then focuses on the alterations reported in high functioning autism concerning the ability to process facial expressions during an ongoing conversation. This ability involves attentional resources that are discussed in light of the executive dysfunction attributed to autism. On this basis, we hypothesize that the difficulties in appreciating the synergy between facial expressions and speech could be linked to impairments in shifting attention from one to the other. A new experimental paradigm designed for testing this hypothesis is presented. It relies on a virtual environment system based on eye-tracking technology enabling users to control the visual display via their gaze. The intent behind this apparatus is to compensate for the deficits in shifting attention attributed to autism. We finally describe the procedure devised for testing this new virtual environment paradigm and conclude on its potential therapeutic use.

Entraînement des compétences assistées par les technologies numériques dans l’autisme : une revue

Le nombre d’etudes sur l’utilisation des technologies numeriques au service des personnes avec Troubles du spectre d’autisme (TSA) a progresse rapidement depuis une quinzaine d’annees. Ce champ de recherche est motive, entre autres, par l’attirance envers ces technologies attribuee aux personnes avec TSA. Une proportion significative des projets s’adresse particulierement aux enfants, a qui seront proposes des entrainements aux habiletes sociales adaptees a l’âge, a la reconnaissance d’emotion, au maniement du langage parle et ecrit, et aux apprentissages conceptuels utiles en milieu scolaire. Les chercheurs du domaine font preuve d’une importante inventivite dans la panoplie des technologies qu’ils mettent en œuvre. Au-dela de l’ordinateur de bureau classique ou de la tablette graphique, les projets developpes utilisent la robotique, la realite virtuelle, les plateformes collaboratives, ou encore l’eye-tracking. L’analyse systematique de la litterature apporte des elements de preuves en faveur de l’efficacite de ces entrainements. Neanmoins, des questions subsistent concernant l’heterogeneite des methodes utilisees, l’impact des aidants humains, la maintenance des effets et leur generalisation aux competences de la vie quotidienne.

Gaze leading is associated with liking

Gaze plays a pivotal role in human communication, especially for coordinating attention. The ability to guide the gaze orientation of others forms the backbone of joint attention. Recent research has raised the possibility that gaze following behaviors could induce liking. The present study seeks to investigate this hypothesis. We designed two physically different human avatars that could follow the gaze of users via eye-tracking technology. In a preliminary experiment, 20 participants assessed the baseline appeal of the two avatars and confirmed that the avatars differed in this respect. In the main experiment, we compared how 19 participants rated the two avatars in terms of pleasantness, trustworthiness and closeness when the avatars were following their gaze versus when the avatar generated gaze movements autonomously. Although the same avatar as in the preliminary experiment was rated more favorably, the pleasantness attributed to the two avatars increased when they followed the gaze of the participants. This outcome provides evidence that gaze following fosters liking independently of the baseline appeal of the individual.

Predictive Mechanisms Are Not Involved the Same Way during Human-Human vs. Human-Machine Interactions: A Review

Nowadays, interactions with others do not only involve human peers but also automated systems. Many studies suggest that the motor predictive systems that are engaged during action execution are also involved during joint actions with peers and during other human generated action observation. Indeed, the comparator model hypothesis suggests that the comparison between a predicted state and an estimated real state enables motor control, and by a similar functioning, understanding and anticipating observed actions. Such a mechanism allows making predictions about an ongoing action, and is essential to action regulation, especially during joint actions with peers. Interestingly, the same comparison process has been shown to be involved in the construction of an individuals sense of agency, both for self-generated and observed other human generated actions. However, the implication of such predictive mechanisms during interactions with machines is not consensual, probably due to the high heterogeneousness of the automata used in the experimentations, from very simplistic devices to full humanoid robots. The discrepancies that are observed during human/machine interactions could arise from the absence of action/observation matching abilities when interacting with traditional low-level automata. Consistently, the difficulties to build a joint agency with this kind of machines could stem from the same problem. In this context, we aim to review the studies investigating predictive mechanisms during social interactions with humans and with automated artificial systems. We will start by presenting human data that show the involvement of predictions in action control and in the sense of agency during social interactions. Thereafter, we will confront this literature with data from the robotic field. Finally, we will address the upcoming issues in the field of robotics related to automated systems aimed at acting as collaborative agents.[This corrects the article on p. 52 in vol. 11, PMID: 29081744.].

Simon Effect for the Design of Tactile Stimulation

Tactile stimulation appears to be useful in a noisy or demanding environment to alert or notify the user as it provides a direct and private communication channel. In such cases, the user has to respond fast and accurately to the stimulation. This requires an optimal detection and response to the signal. The current study focused on the layout of tactile stimulation interfaces to be used for alert or notification with regard to the user’s position in space. We investigated the well-known Simon Effect in a tactile modality. The Simon Effect refers to a cognitive interference due to the spatial incongruence induced by a signal when it originates from the side opposite to the user’s response. In addition, we studied the influence of the amplitude of the signal and explored the effect of the location and amplitude of the previous signal. Results showed that the Simon Effect was observed with Linear Resonant Actuators, over user fingertips and user’s response delivered on push button pedals. Besides, the findings show that participants responded faster when two consecutives signals were congruent and with equal intensity. These results are discussed to provide guidelines for designing tactile stimulation systems for alert or notification.

Children Facial Expression Production: Influence of Age, Gender, Emotion Subtype, Elicitation Condition and Culture

The production of facial expressions (FEs) is an important skill that allows children to share and adapt emotions with their relatives and peers during social interactions. These skills are impaired in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, the way in which typical children develop and master their production of FEs has still not been clearly assessed. This study aimed to explore factors that could influence the production of FEs in childhood such as age, gender, emotion subtype (sadness, anger, joy, and neutral), elicitation task (on request, imitation), area of recruitment (French Riviera and Parisian) and emotion multimodality. A total of one hundred fifty-seven children aged 6–11 years were enrolled in Nice and Paris, France. We asked them to produce FEs in two different tasks: imitation with an avatar model and production on request without a model. Results from a multivariate analysis revealed that: (1) children performed better with age. (2) Positive emotions were easier to produce than negative emotions. (3) Children produced better FE on request (as opposed to imitation); and (4) Riviera children performed better than Parisian children suggesting regional influences on emotion production. We conclude that facial emotion production is a complex developmental process influenced by several factors that needs to be acknowledged in future research.