Eye Contact Triggers Threat Response in Autistic Children

Scientific American ^ | March 07, 2005 | Sarah Graham

[neverdem]

Children suffering from autism pay very little attention to faces, even those of people close to them. Indeed, this characteristic can become apparent as early as the age of one, and is often used as a developmental sign of the disease. The results of a new study provide additional insight into why autistic children avoid eye contact: they perceive faces as an uncomfortable threat, even if they are familiar.

Kim M. Dalton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her colleagues studied 27 autistic teenagers who looked at pictures of faces (see image) while a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine scanned their brains. The researchers also tracked the subjects' eye movements as they studied the images. "This is the very first published study that assesses how individuals with autism look at faces while simultaneously monitoring which of their brain areas are active," Dalton says. When the image included a direct gaze from a nonthreatening face, brain activity in the amygdala--a brain region associated with negative feelings--was much higher for autistic children than it was in members of the control group. "Imagine walking through the world and interpreting every face that looks at you as a threat, even the face of your own mother," remarks study co-author Richard Davidson, also at UW-Madison.

The results also indicate that a brain area associated with face perception, known as the fusiform region, is fundamentally normal in autistic children; it does exhibit decreased activity, however. Davidson notes that this could result because the over-aroused amygdala makes an autistic child want to look away from faces. In addition, he comments that it was surprising that "when subjects with autism averted their gaze away from the eye region of a face, they showed reduced activity in the amygdala, suggesting that the gaze aversion is serving a functional purpose." The findings are published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

[neverdem]

Image: COURTESY OF K. DALTON

[Screamname]

Eye Contact Triggers Threat Response in Autistic Children

Sort of how I feel when I see a liberal.

THREAT THREAT THREAT THREAT *ALERT* *ALERT*

[The Red Zone]

Wonder if this happens also with faces of domestic animals, e.g. dogs and cats.

[richiehass]

It would be interesting to see if the subjects were verbal or non-verbal.

[richiehass]

"a potential source of a big-time confound."

You got that right! I've worked with both verbal and non-verbal students with autism and I never encountered problems with those who were verbal when I looked at them; however, the non-verbal students had a very difficult time and sometimes it would set them off if you made them look at you. They would mainly look at you with their peripheral vision. Would like to see a more in depth follow up study.

[neverdem]

ping