Emotional Empathy in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from Biofeedback Measurement and Eye Movements
Emotional Empathy in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from Biofeedback Measurement and Eye Movements
复制标题
DOI：
10.3724/sp.j.1041.2014.00528
复制
发表时间：
2014-04
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
Ma Weina;Zhu Beibei
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ma Weina;Zhu Beibei
自闭症谱系障碍（Autism Spectrum Disorders，ASD）是一系列广泛性的发育障碍，其特征是社会交往障碍、沟通延迟和偏差、重复性行为、仪式和兴趣。情绪移情是指在感知和情绪感染的共同表征下，人们对他人情绪的无意识体验和对他人情绪的反应以及对他人面部表情的模仿。眼动追踪研究表明，自闭症儿童在社交情境中的视觉注视模式与正常模式不同。自闭症儿童似乎不会像大多数人那样自发地关注社会刺激的显著特征。这可能反映了一种限制共情唤醒的注意力类型。与正常发育的儿童相比，自闭症儿童在观看社会刺激时较少关注面部的眼睛区域，因为他们避免与他人进行眼神接触以减少唤醒。以往的研究探讨了ASD儿童对情感刺激的情绪移情反应，但他们的结果不一致。本研究采用生物反馈测量法和眼动追踪法，对ASD儿童的情绪共情和面孔扫描模式进行了研究。15名ASD儿童、15名正常发育儿童和15名智力障碍儿童分别观看中国面部情绪图片系统中的80张情绪面孔，每种情绪类别由20张图片组成，其中包括快乐、悲伤、恐惧和愤怒。实验过程中记录面部肌电图（EMG）活动、眼球运动和自动生理反应，包括皮肤电导（SCR）、皮肤温度（TEMP）和PLUS。与正常发育儿童相比，ASD儿童表现出非典型的情绪面孔加工模式，自动面部肌电图和自动生理反应（SCR、TEMP、PLUS）减少。这表明自闭症儿童无法感知情绪面孔。此外，眼动追踪的结果显示，ASD儿童比正常发育的儿童更少地观看眼睛区域。同时，ASD儿童的注视时间和注视次数显著少于智力障碍组和典型儿童组。孤独症儿童对恐惧面孔的注视时间显著少于快乐面孔和悲伤面孔。这表明ASD儿童对情绪面孔的有限眼睛注视。结果表明，未能定向到情绪相关的刺激（四个基本的情绪面孔：快乐，悲伤，恐惧和愤怒）可能是由于较低的固定时间的眼睛区域，和回避情绪刺激可能成为默认的应对机制，一些自闭症患者。总之，目前的研究表明，自闭症儿童的情感同理心和有限的眼睛注视存在缺陷，这可能是导致他们在面部扫描模式方面出现问题的原因。
Autism spectrum disorders(ASD) are considered as a series of pervasive developmental disorders, and characterized by deficits in social interaction, delays and deviance in communication, and repetitive behaviors, rituals and interests. Emotional empathy refers to unconscious experience of emotions consistent with and in response to those of others and imitation of the facial expression, induced by shared representations of perception and emotional contagion. Eye-tracking studies have demonstrated that the visual fixation patterns of children with autism in social situations differ from normal patterns. Children with autism do not seem to attend spontaneously to salient features of the social stimulus in the way that most people do. It is possible that this reflects an attentional style that limits empathic arousal. Children with autism, relative to typically developing children, focused less on the eye region of faces when viewing social stimulus, because they avoid eye contact with others in order to decrease arousal. Previous studies explored emotional empathic responses to affective stimuli in children with ASD, but their results are inconsistent. The present research was designed to investigate the emotional empathy and the face scanning patterns of children with ASD using biofeedback measurement and eye-tracking. Fifteen children with ASD, fifteen typically developing(TD) children, and fifteen children with intellectual disability(ID) viewed eighty emotional faces with happiness, sadness, fear and anger from the Chinese Facial Affective Picture System(each emotional category consists of twenty pictures). Facial electromyography(EMG) activity, eye movements and automatic physiological responses, including skin conductance(SCR), skin temperature(TEMP) and PLUS, were recorded during the experiment. Comparing with typically developing children, children with ASD demonstrated atypical processing patterns of emotional faces with reduced responses of automatic facial EMG, and automatic physiological(SCRs, TEMP, PLUS). This suggested that a failure to perceive emotional faces in children with ASD. Furthermore, results of eye-tracking showed that the children with ASD less viewed the eye areas than the typically developing children. At the same time, the fixation time and fixation counts of face for children with ASD were significantly less than the intellectual disability group and the typically children group. The fixation time of fear faces for children with ASD was significantly less than the happy faces and sad faces. This suggested that the limited eye gaze for emotional faces in children with ASD. The results suggest that a failure to orient to emotional relevant stimuli(four basic emotional faces: happiness, sadness, fear and anger) may be caused by the lower fixation time to the eye areas, and avoidance of emotional stimulus may become the default coping mechanism for some individuals with autism. In conclusion, the current study demonstrates deficits in emotional empathy and limited eye gaze in children with ASD, which may be contributing to their problems in the face scanning patterns.