The dynamics of eye-to-eye contact in social anxiety and autism: A naturalistic dyadic eye-tracking paradigm

眼睛传递着大量的社会信息，直接的目光接触参与了社会互动的调节。避免直接的目光接触是社交焦虑障碍（SAD）和自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的常见症状。然而，在SAD和ASD中，避免凝视的动机似乎是不同的。在SAD中，避免直接目光接触被认为是由恐惧介导的，因此预计会随着社交情境中感知到的威胁而增加。在ASD中，直接目光接触的减少可能源于无法理解目光接触（和相互凝视）的社会信息功能，导致忽视与社会相关的刺激。迄今为止，SAD和ASD的凝视行为尚未进行直接比较。此外，大多数先前的研究都使用高度标准化但相对非自然的静态刺激来调查凝视行为。本项目旨在探讨眼神交流在自然社会互动中的作用。为此，我们使用了一种新颖的自然动态双眼追踪范式来同时跟踪参与者在半结构化二元交互背景下的眼睛注视。这个过程使我们能够研究目光接触的动态，并得出结论，在两个人之间的自然对话中，目光接触是何时以及为什么开始、保持、避免和回报的。更具体地说，我们感兴趣的是，与健康对照者相比，ASD和SAD患者在不同程度的社会评价威胁的自然互动中，眼神交流的差异模式。在之前使用观察设计或面部表情静态图片的研究中，ASD和SAD患者表现出明显的回避目光接触。然而，越来越多的证据表明，患有SAD的人对社会威胁高度敏感，因此可能会避免眼神接触，以调节他们在社交场合的恐惧。根据这一假设，我们预期在低评估性威胁条件下，两组患者与对话伙伴的眼神交流都表现出受损但相似，我们预计在高评估性威胁条件下，与ASD和对照组相比，SAD患者的眼神交流表现出明显的受损。该研究结果有望对我们理解社会互动中的凝视行为等非语言因素做出重大贡献。在使用自然眼动追踪范式时，我们期望对二元互动中眼神接触的动力学有新的见解。此外，本研究将提供关于自闭症和社交焦虑的社会互动障碍差异基础的具体结果，从而可能有助于改进这两种疾病的诊断和治疗方法。

The eyes convey a multitude of social information, and direct eye contact is involved in the regulation of social interactions. The avoidance of direct eye contact is a common symptom in both social anxiety disorder (SAD) and Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD). However, there appear to be differences in the motivation to avoid eye gaze in SAD and ASD. In SAD, the avoidance of direct eye contact is thought to be mediated by fear, and thus is expected to increase with the perceived threat in social situations. In ASD, the decreased direct eye contact may be rooted in a failure to understand the socially-informative function of eye contact (and mutual gaze), leading to neglect of socially-relevant stimuli. To date, gaze behavior in SAD and ASD has not been compared directly. Furthermore, most prior studies have used highly standardized - but relatively non-naturalistic - static stimuli to investigate gaze behavior.The present project aims to investigate the role of eye contact in naturalistic social interaction. For this aim, we use a novel naturalistic dynamic dual-eye-tracking paradigm to simultaneously track participants* eye gaze in the context of semi-structured dyadic interactions. This procedure enables us to study the dynamics of eye-to-eye contact and draw conclusions about when and why eye contact is initiated, maintained, avoided and reciprocated during a natural conversation between two individuals.More specifically, we are interested in the differential patterns of eye contact made by individuals with ASD and SAD as compared to healthy controls in naturalistic interactions with varying levels of social evaluative threat. Individuals with ASD and SAD displayed marked avoidance of eye contact in previous studies that used observational designs or static pictures of facial expressions. However, there is accumulating evidence that individuals with SAD are highly sensitive to social threat and might therefore avoid eye contact to regulate their fear in social situations. Following this hypothesis, we expect both clinical groups to demonstrate impaired, yet similar eye contact with their conversation partner under the low evaluative threat condition, we anticipate that the SAD patients will display marked impairment in eye contact under the high evaluative threat condition compared to participants with ASD and the control group.The results of the study are expected to contribute significantly to our understanding of non-verbal factors such as gaze behavior in social interactions. In using a naturalistic eye-tracking paradigm, we expect novel insights regarding the dynamics of eye contact in dyadic interactions. In addition, the present study will provide specific results concerning the differential underpinnings of social interaction impairments in autism and social anxiety and thus might help to improve diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for these two disorders.