1. Social Anxiety Reduces Visual Attention to the Eyes of Emotional Faces in Autistic Youth.
- Author
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Franke CJ, Griffin JW, Naples AJ, Wolf JM, and McPartland JC
- Abstract
Autism and social anxiety (SA) share behavioral features like reduced eye contact, variable social attention, and differences in social interactions. However, the impact of the co-occurrence of these conditions (e.g., autism with co-occurring SA) on social attention remains unknown. Therefore, we evaluated whether the degree of SA characteristics in autistic youth modulated (e.g., amplified or lessened) a core hallmark feature of autism: social attention, or looking at faces. Fifty-four autistic and 35 non-autistic children and adolescents completed a gaze-contingent eye-tracking (ET) paradigm, in which faces dynamically expressed happy or fearful expressions contingent on participant eye contact. SA characteristics were assessed via standardized self- and parent-report measures. Social attention was measured by calculating the average percent looking time at the face and eye regions of each emotional expression. Autistic participants looked less at faces than non-autistic participants, and higher self-report SA was associated with less looking at eyes in both autistic and non-autistic participants. SA features affect social attention similarly in autistic and non-autistic youth, highlighting the importance of considering co-occurring psychiatric characteristics when assessing social attention and eye contact in autistic individuals., Competing Interests: Declarations Ethical Approval All study procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Yale University School of Medicine. Informed Consent Written informed consent was obtained from the legal guardians of all study participants. Competing Interests Cassandra J. Franke, Jason W. Griffin, Adam J. Naples, and Julie M. Wolf declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article. James C. McPartland consults or has consulted with Customer Value Partners, Bridgebio, Determined Health, Apple, and BlackThorn Therapeutics, has received research funding from Janssen Research and Development, serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Pastorus and Modern Clinics, and receives royalties from Guilford Press, Lambert, Oxford, and Springer., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)
- Published
- 2024
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