Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Galazka, Martyna A.
• Åsberg Johnels, Jakob
• Zürcher, Nicole R.
• Hippolyte, Loyse
• Lemonnier, Eric
• Billstedt, Eva
• Gillberg, Christopher
• Hadjikhani, Nouchine

Titel

Pupillary Contagion in Autism

Ist Teil von

• Psychological science, 2019-02, Vol.30 (2), p.309-315

Ort / Verlag

Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Pupillary contagion is an involuntary change in the observer’s pupil size in response to the pupil size of another person. This effect, presumed to be an important adaption for individuals living in groups, has been documented in both typical infants and adults. Here, for the first time, we report pupillary contagion in individuals with autism, a disorder of social communication. We found that, compared with a typical group (n = 63), individuals with autism (n = 54) exhibited comparable pupillary contagion when observing pictures of emotional faces, despite less spontaneous attention toward the eye region. Furthermore, the magnitude of the pupillary response in the autism group was negatively correlated with time spent fixating the eye region. The results suggest that even with less looking toward the eyes, individuals with autism respond to the affective and arousal levels transmitted from other individuals. These results are discussed in the context of an overarousal account of socioaffective-processing differences in autism.