ArticleJournal of neurodevelopmental disorders2014
Reactivity to fearful expressions of familiar and unfamiliar people in children with autism: an eye-tracking pupillometry study.
Article in Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 74 citations in OpenAlex.
- Eye-Tracking in Infants and Young Children at Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Visual Stimuli in Experimental Paradigms.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2021Pooled it
- Preserved and non-preserved social attentional processes in Autism and developmental language disorder at early ages.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Deliberate and Self-Conscious Adaptation of Eye-Contact by Autistic Adults.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Pupillometry reveals hyper-arousal in response to auditory stimuli in autistic children.Journal of Zhejiang University. Science. B · 2024Article
- Nearsighted empathy: exploring the effect of empathy on distance perception, with eye movements as modulators.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Impairment of affective and cognitive empathy in high functioning autism is mediated by alterations in emotional reactivity.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Visual Attention to Dynamic Emotional Faces in Adults on the Autism Spectrum.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2024Article
- Temporal progression of pupil dilation and gaze behavior to emotion expressions in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Temporal characteristics of facial ensemble in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: examination from arousal and attentional allocation.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Effects of different types of visual music on the prefrontal hemodynamics of children with autism spectrum disorder based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy.Translational pediatrics · 2023Article
- Eye Tracking Study of Social Intensity on Social Orientation of Autistic Children.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- An on-road examination of daytime and evening driving on rural roads: physiological, subjective, eye gaze, and driving performance outcomes.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2022Article
- Slower Peak Pupillary Response to Emotional Faces in Parents of Autistic Individuals.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Individual pupil size changes as a robust indicator of cognitive familiarity differences.PloS one · 2022Article
- Pupillary Responses Obey Emmert's Law and Co-vary with Autistic Traits.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2021Article
- Resting and Functional Pupil Response Metrics Indicate Features of Reward Sensitivity and ASD in Children.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2021Article
- Pupillary Responses to Faces Are Modulated by Familiarity and Rewarding Context.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Visual preference for social vs. non-social images in young children with autism spectrum disorders. An eye tracking study.PloS one · 2021Article
- Enhanced social learning of threat in adults with autism.Molecular autism · 2020Article
- Autistic Traits Affect Reward Anticipation but not Reception.Scientific reports · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIndividuals with autism are often reported to have difficulty with emotion processing. However, clinical and experimental data show that they are sensitive to familiarity; for example, they show normative attachment to familiar people, and have normative brain activity in response to familiar faces. To date, no study has measured their reactivity to the emotions of familiar vs. unfamiliar people. Thus, our aim was to determine whether individuals with autism would show normative reactivity to emotion in familiar people.
methodsParticipants were 21 children with autism and 21 children with typical development, aged two to five years, matched on age and gender. The children observed videos of familiar people (their child-care teachers) and unfamiliar people expressing fear, whilst their visual attention and pupillary reactions were recorded (the latter as an index of emotional reactivity), using eye tracking technology.
resultsThe children with autism showed normative pupillary reactions (peak magnitude) to fear expressed by familiar people, but a reduced response to fear expressed by unfamiliar people. However, across familiarity conditions, the children with autism had longer latency peak responses than the typically developing children. This pattern of findings was independent of cognitive factors or visual attention as visual attention by group was not related to familiarity condition. The children with autism had reduced visual attention to neutral faces; however, on fearful faces there were no group differences. Abnormalities in pupillary reactivity in the autism group were related to less prosocial behaviour and more severe play and communication deficits.
conclusionsChildren with autism were less atypical in their responses to fearful expressions of people they know, arguing against a pervasive emotional impairment in autism, but rather one that may be mediated by familiarity.
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