Emotional face recognition in male adolescents with autism spectrum disorder or disruptive behavior disorder: an eye-tracking study
Bours, C. C.A.H.; Bakker-Huvenaars, M. J.; Tramper, J.; Bielczyk, N.; Scheepers, F.; Nijhof, K. S.; Baanders, A. N.; Lambregts-Rommelse, N. N.J.; Medendorp, P.; Glennon, J. C.; Buitelaar, J. K.
(2018) European child & adolescent psychiatry, volume 27, issue 9, pp. 1143 - 1157
(Article)
Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and Conduct Disorder (CD) are often associated with emotion recognition difficulties. This is the first eye-tracking study to examine emotional face recognition (i.e., gazing behavior) in a direct comparison of male adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder, and
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typically developing (TD) individuals. We also investigate the role of psychopathic traits, callous–unemotional (CU) traits, and subtypes of aggressive behavior in emotional face recognition. A total of 122 male adolescents (N = 50 ASD, N = 44 ODD/CD, and N = 28 TD) aged 12–19 years (M = 15.4 years, SD= 1.9) were included in the current study for the eye-tracking experiment. Participants were presented with neutral and emotional faces using a Tobii 1750 eye-tracking monitor to record gaze behavior. Our main dependent eye-tracking variables were: (1) fixation duration to the eyes of a face and (2) time to the first fixation to the eyes. Since distributions of eye-tracking variables were not completely Gaussian, non-parametric tests were chosen to investigate gaze behavior across the diagnostic groups with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder, and Typically Developing individuals. Furthermore, we used Spearman correlations to investigate the links with psychopathy, callous, and unemotional traits and subtypes of aggression as assessed by questionnaires. The relative total fixation duration to the eyes was decreased in both the Autism Spectrum Disorder group and the Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder group for several emotional expressions. In both the Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder group, increased time to first fixation on the eyes of fearful faces only was nominally significant. The time to first fixation on the eyes was nominally correlated with psychopathic traits and proactive aggression. The current findings do not support strong claims for differential cross-disorder eye-gazing deficits and for a role of shared underlying psychopathic traits, callous–unemotional traits, and aggression subtypes. Our data provide valuable and novel insights into gaze timing distributions when looking at the eyes of a fearful face.
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Keywords: Aggression, Autism spectrum disorder, Callous and unemotional traits, Conduct disorder, Eye-tracking, Oppositional defiant disorder, Psychopathy, Humans, Male, Emotions, Young Adult, Adolescent, Autism Spectrum Disorder/psychology, Adult, Female, Conduct Disorder/psychology, Child, Facial Recognition/physiology, Psychiatry and Mental health, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health, Journal Article
ISSN: 1018-8827
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Note: Funding Information: Funding This work was supported by Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, by grants of the National Initiative Brain and Cognition (NIBC; 056-24-011 and 056-24-014, and the European Union 7th Framework programs AGGRESSOTYPE (602805) and MATRICS (EU FP7, 603016). This work was also supported by EU-AIMS (European Autism Interventions), which receives support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement no. 115300, the resources of which are composed of financial contributions from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (grant FP7/2007-2013), from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations companies’ in-kind contributions, and from Autism Speaks. Funding Information: We would like to thank all of our participants, families, and legal guardians for their participation. We would like to thank everyone that helped facilitate the testing and provided information on all kinds of levels. Special thanks to Pierre Herpers and Evita Wiegers for their active role in the CU2 study. In general, we would not have been able to write this manuscript without the collaborative spirit of all that were involved. This article is part of the focused issue ?Conduct Disorder and Aggressive Behaviour in Children and Adolescents?. CC.A.H. Bours, M.J. Bakker-Huvenaars, J. Tramper, N. Bielczyk, A. N. Baanders, K.S. Nijhof, N.N.J. Lambregts-Rommelse, P. Medendorp, and F. Scheepers declared to have no conflicts of interest. J.C. Glennon has been in the past 3?years a consultant to Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH on matters unrelated to this paper. Jan K Buitelaar has been in the past 3?years a consultant to/member of advisory board of/and/or speaker for Janssen Cilag BV, Eli Lilly, Lundbeck, Shire, Roche, Novartis, Medice, and Servier. He is not an employee of any of these companies, and not a stock shareholder of any of these companies. He has no other financial or material support, including expert testimony, patents, and royalties. Publisher Copyright: © 2018, The Author(s).
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