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

社交焦虑和自闭症中眼神交流的动态：自然主义的二元眼球追踪范式

• 批准号: 390532448
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Gregor Domes
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Abteilung Biologische Psychologie, Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/390532448?language=en
• 关键词: dynamics; eye; contact; social; anxiety

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.

眼睛传达大量的社会信息，直接的眼神接触参与社会互动的调节。避免直接目光接触是社交焦虑症（SAD）和自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的常见症状。然而，SAD 和 ASD 患者避免目光凝视的动机似乎存在差异。在季节性情感障碍中，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场合中感知到的威胁而增加。在自闭症谱系障碍中，直接眼神接触的减少可能源于未能理解眼神接触（和相互凝视）的社交信息功能，从而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主义的静态刺激来研究凝视行为。本项目旨在研究目光接触在自然主义社交互动中的作用。为此，我们使用一种新颖的自然动态双眼跟踪范例来在半结构化二元交互的背景下同时跟踪参与者*的眼睛注视。这一过程使我们能够研究眼神交流的动态，并得出关于在两个人之间的自然对话中何时以及为何开始、维持、避免和相互进行目光接触的结论。更具体地说，我们对自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）和季节性情感障碍（SAD）个体在不同程度的社会评价威胁的自然互动中与健康对照者进行眼神接触的差异模式感兴趣。在之前使用观察性设计或面部表情静态图片的研究中，自闭症谱系障碍和社交情感障碍患者表现出明显的避免目光接触。然而，越来越多的证据表明，患有季节性情感障碍的人对社会威胁高度敏感，因此可能会避免目光接触，以调节他们在社交场合的恐惧。根据这一假设，我们预计两个临床组在低评估威胁条件下都表现出与对话伙伴的眼神接触受损，但相似，我们预计与 ASD 参与者和对照组相比，SAD 患者在高评估威胁条件下会表现出明显的眼神接触障碍。预计该研究的结果将极大有助于我们理解非语言因素，例如社交互动中的凝视行为。在使用自然主义的眼球追踪范式时，我们期望对二元交互中眼神接触的动态有新的见解。此外，本研究将提供有关自闭症和社交焦虑的社交互动障碍的不同基础的具体结果，因此可能有助于改善这两种疾病的诊断和治疗程序。