Main content
Autistic traits and emotional face processing
- Ciara Greene
- Esther Suess
- Yazeed Kelly
Date created: | Last Updated:
: DOI | ARK
Creating DOI. Please wait...
Category: Project
Description: Atypical emotional face processing strategies have been observed in people with autism, and it has been suggested that these may extend in milder form to the general population. The relationship between autistic traits (AT) and gaze behaviour was investigated in a neurotypical adult sample who viewed three videos featuring a happy, fearful and neutral face. Eye-tracking data showed that participants looked longer at the faces (relative to the background) in the emotional conditions than in the neutral condition. As predicted, participants spent more time looking at the eyes during the fearful relative to the happy condition, and more time looking at the mouth during the happy condition. AT did not influence viewing patterns, time to first fixation or number of early fixations in any of the videos. We conclude that AT in the general population does not affect visual processing of emotional faces. More complex social scenes may be needed to reveal a relationship between AT and emotional processing.