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

眼睛传达了大量的社会信息，直接的眼神交流参与了社会互动的调节。避免直接眼神接触是社交焦虑症(SAD)和自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)的常见症状。然而，在SAD和ASD中，避免眼睛注视的动机似乎是不同的。在SAD中，避免直接眼神接触被认为是通过恐惧来调节的，因此预计在社交场合中感觉到的威胁会增加。在自闭症患者中，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)的社会信息功能，导致忽视与社会相关的刺激。到目前为止，SAD和ASD的凝视行为还没有被直接比较。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。本项目旨在调查眼神接触在自然主义社会互动中的作用。为此，我们使用了一种新的自然主义动态双眼跟踪范式来同时跟踪半结构化并元交互背景下的参与者的眼睛凝视。这个过程使我们能够研究眼神接触的动态，并得出结论，在两个人之间的自然对话中，眼神接触何时以及为什么被启动、维持、避免和回报。更具体地说，我们感兴趣的是，在具有不同水平的社会评价威胁的自然主义互动中，患有自闭症和自闭症的人与健康对照的眼神接触模式不同。在之前使用观察性设计或面部表情静态图片的研究中，患有自闭症和自闭症的人表现出明显的避免眼神接触。然而，越来越多的证据表明，SAD患者对社交威胁高度敏感，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，我们预计两个临床组在低评估威胁条件下与交谈对象的眼神交流都受到了损害，但相似，我们预计SAD患者在高评估威胁条件下与ASD参与者和对照组相比，在眼神交流方面会表现出显著的损害。本研究的结果有望对我们理解社交中的非语言因素，如凝视行为，做出重要贡献。在使用自然主义的眼球跟踪范式时，我们期待着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中社交互动障碍的不同基础的具体结果，从而可能有助于改进这两种疾病的诊断和治疗程序。

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.