You can download the poster here.

Autism is often said to be associated with attenuated social attention. In comparison to neurotypical (NT) children, autistic (AUT) children look less at social (SOC) motion scenes and more at geometrical (GEO) ones. Yet, it is unknown whether this imbalance persists in adulthood.

We tested the SOC/GEO motion preference in 32 AUT and 34 NT adults in two passive-viewing tasks, measuring (1) relative looking preference to SOC/GEO paired scenes, and (2) pupillary responses to individual SOC/GEO scenes to index locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system activation (salience detection). We hypothesised increased relative looking preference and pupil sizes for SOC in NT and for GEO in AUT.

A mixed model with random intercepts for participants showed a relatively larger preference for SOC in NT than in AUT (p=.04), with strong SOC looking preference in NT (p_corr<.001) and no looking preference in AUT (p_corr=.88). A simple t-test between the groups without accounting for individual differences, revealed even stronger group differences (p<.001). Further, we built a linear mixed model with third-order polynomial for time which revealed that while the pupillary responses in both groups were larger for SOC than GEO, AUT showed stronger pupil dilation to SOC than NT (p<.001).

Our data support looking preference for social motion in NT and reveal no looking preference for either motion type in AUT adults. According to the pupil data, social motion scenes trigger increased physiological responses in AUT than in NT. Together, our data suggest that social motion preference (or lack thereof) might be a potential autism marker, even in adulthood.

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This poster was presented at the Experimental Psychology Society Meeting, London, UK in January 2024 and at the WTAS 2024, Frankfurt, Germany in March 2024 (it won a best poster award).