Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Sep;27(9):1143-1157.
doi: 10.1007/s00787-018-1174-4. Epub 2018 Jun 19.

Emotional face recognition in male adolescents with autism spectrum disorder or disruptive behavior disorder: an eye-tracking study

C C A H Bours  1 , M J Bakker-Huvenaars  2 , J Tramper  3 , N Bielczyk  2 , F Scheepers  4 , K S Nijhof  5   6 , A N Baanders  7 , N N J Lambregts-Rommelse  8   9 , P Medendorp  3 , J C Glennon  2 , J K Buitelaar  2   8
Affiliations

Emotional face recognition in male adolescents with autism spectrum disorder or disruptive behavior disorder: an eye-tracking study

C C A H Bours et al. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2018 Sep.

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and Conduct Disorder (CD) are often associated with emotion recognition difficulties. This is the first eye-tracking study to examine emotional face recognition (i.e., gazing behavior) in a direct comparison of male adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder, and typically developing (TD) individuals. We also investigate the role of psychopathic traits, callous-unemotional (CU) traits, and subtypes of aggressive behavior in emotional face recognition. A total of 122 male adolescents (N = 50 ASD, N = 44 ODD/CD, and N = 28 TD) aged 12-19 years (M = 15.4 years, SD= 1.9) were included in the current study for the eye-tracking experiment. Participants were presented with neutral and emotional faces using a Tobii 1750 eye-tracking monitor to record gaze behavior. Our main dependent eye-tracking variables were: (1) fixation duration to the eyes of a face and (2) time to the first fixation to the eyes. Since distributions of eye-tracking variables were not completely Gaussian, non-parametric tests were chosen to investigate gaze behavior across the diagnostic groups with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder, and Typically Developing individuals. Furthermore, we used Spearman correlations to investigate the links with psychopathy, callous, and unemotional traits and subtypes of aggression as assessed by questionnaires. The relative total fixation duration to the eyes was decreased in both the Autism Spectrum Disorder group and the Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder group for several emotional expressions. In both the Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder group, increased time to first fixation on the eyes of fearful faces only was nominally significant. The time to first fixation on the eyes was nominally correlated with psychopathic traits and proactive aggression. The current findings do not support strong claims for differential cross-disorder eye-gazing deficits and for a role of shared underlying psychopathic traits, callous-unemotional traits, and aggression subtypes. Our data provide valuable and novel insights into gaze timing distributions when looking at the eyes of a fearful face.

Keywords: Aggression; Autism spectrum disorder; Callous and unemotional traits; Conduct disorder; Eye-tracking; Oppositional defiant disorder; Psychopathy.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

CC.A.H. Bours, M.J. Bakker-Huvenaars, J. Tramper, N. Bielczyk, A. N. Baanders, K.S. Nijhof, N.N.J. Lambregts-Rommelse, P. Medendorp, and F. Scheepers declared to have no conflicts of interest. J.C. Glennon has been in the past 3 years a consultant to Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH on matters unrelated to this paper. Jan K Buitelaar has been in the past 3 years a consultant to/member of advisory board of/and/or speaker for Janssen Cilag BV, Eli Lilly, Lundbeck, Shire, Roche, Novartis, Medice, and Servier. He is not an employee of any of these companies, and not a stock shareholder of any of these companies. He has no other financial or material support, including expert testimony, patents, and royalties.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Distributions of the time to first fixation on the eyes of fearful faces for 100–1000 ms. Timebins are 50 ms each. TD typically developing individuals, ASD autism spectrum disorder, ODD oppositional defiant disorder, CD conduct disorder
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Percentage of total fixation duration on the eyes of fearful faces. TD typically developing individuals, ASD autism spectrum disorder, ODD oppositional defiant disorder, CD conduct disorder
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Time to first fixation in milliseconds on the eyes of fearful faces. TD typically developing individuals, ASD autism spectrum disorder, ODD oppositional defiant disorder, CD conduct disorder
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Spearman correlations between the time to first fixation on the eyes of fearful faces and total score of the YPI. TD typically developing individuals, ASD autism spectrum disorder, ODD oppositional defiant disorder, CD conduct disorder
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Spearman correlations between the time to first fixation on the eyes of fearful faces and proactive aggression (RPQ- proactive subscale). TD typically developing individuals, ASD autism spectrum disorder, ODD oppositional defiant disorder, CD conduct disorder
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. American Psychiatric Association (2013) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th edn)
    1. Andershed HA, Kerr M, Stattin H, Levander S. Psychopaths: current international perspectives. Den Haag: Elsevier; 2002. Psychopathic traits in non-referred youths: a new assessment tool; pp. 131–158.
    1. APA (2013) Autism, psychology topics
    1. Ashwin C, Chapman E, Colle L, Baron-Cohen S. Impaired recognition of negative basic emotions in autism: a test of the amygdala theory. Soc Neurosci. 2006;1(3–4):349–363. doi: 10.1080/17470910601040772. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Association, A. P. (2000) Diagnostic criteria from dsm-iv-tr. American Psychiatric Pub