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- Title
Reading the room: Autistic traits, gaze behaviour, and the ability to infer social relationships.
- Authors
Forby, Leilani; Anderson, Nicola C.; Cheng, Joey T.; Foulsham, Tom; Karstadt, Bradley; Dawson, Jessica; Pazhoohi, Farid; Kingstone, Alan
- Abstract
Individuals high in autistic traits can have difficulty understanding verbal and non-verbal cues, and may display atypical gaze behaviour during social interactions. The aim of this study was to examine differences among neurotypical individuals with high and low levels of autistic traits with regard to their gaze behaviour and their ability to assess peers' social status accurately. Fifty-four university students who completed the 10-item Autism Quotient (AQ-10) were eye-tracked as they watched six 20-second video clips of people ("targets") involved in a group decision-making task. Simulating natural, everyday social interactions, the video clips included moments of debate, humour, interruptions, and cross talk. Results showed that high-scorers on the AQ-10 (i.e., those with more autistic traits) did not differ from the low-scorers in either gaze behaviour or assessing the targets' relative social status. The results based on this neurotypical group of participants suggest that the ability of individuals high in autistic traits to read social cues may be preserved in certain tasks crucial to navigating day-to-day social relationships. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theory of mind, weak central coherence, and social motivation theories of autism.
- Subjects
GAZE; AUTISTIC children; SOCIAL skills; NONVERBAL cues; THEORY of mind; VIDEO excerpts; GROUP decision making
- Publication
PLoS ONE, 2023, Vol 17, Issue 3, p1
- ISSN
1932-6203
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0282310