Reading the room: Autistic traits, gaze behaviour, and the ability to infer social relationships

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 regar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2023-03, Vol.18 (3), p.e0282310-e0282310
Main Authors: Forby, Leilani, Anderson, Nicola C, Cheng, Joey T, Foulsham, Tom, Karstadt, Bradley, Dawson, Jessica, Pazhoohi, Farid, Kingstone, Alan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autism
Autistic Disorder
Behavior
Biology and Life Sciences
Clips
Cognition
College students
Communication
Cues
Decision making
Diagnosis
Emotions
Evaluation
Eye contact
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Medical screening
Medicine and Health Sciences
Mental task performance
Motivation
Peer Group
Peers
Pervasive developmental disorders
Reading
Social behavior
Social factors
Social Interaction
Social interactions
Social Sciences
Social status
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0282310