Tobii EyeTracking's List: Neuropsychology

ABSTRACT
It is widely reported that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) direct their attention in an atypical manner. When viewing complex scenes, typically developing individuals look at social aspects of scenes more rapidly than individuals with ASD. In the absence of a strong drive to extract social information, is something else capturing attention in these initial fixations, such as visually salient features? Twenty four high-functioning adolescents with ASD and 24 typically developing matched control participants viewed a series of indoor and outdoor scenes while their eye movements were tracked. Participants in both groups were more likely to fixate on salient regions in the first five fixations than later in viewing. Peak saliency at fixation occurred at fixation two for the typically developing participants but at fixation three for ASD participants. This difference was driven by typically developing participants looking at heads earlier than ASD participants – which are often visually salient. No differences between groups were observed for images in which the heads were not salient. We can therefore conclude that visual saliency impacts fixation location in a similar manner in individuals with ASD and those with typical development. It was found that social features in scenes (heads) captured attention much more than visually salient features, even in individuals with ASD.
Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0D-51GRWMW-4&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F17%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1561350701&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9a7aeea41ec8d3d688a1476311bec9a9&searchtype=a

ABSTRACT
Attention has often been conceived as the gateway to consciousness. However, recent research points to the independence of top-down or endogenous attention and conscious perception, while the role of bottom-up or exogenous attention in conscious perception remains largely unexplored. Here, we present behavioural and electrophysiological evidence exploring the role of exogenous attention in conscious perception. Using peripheral non-informative cues, exogenous attention was oriented either to the same location of a near-threshold target (valid cues), or to the opposite location (invalid cues). Confirming previous research, consciously perceived targets elicited a larger P300 than unseen targets. Importantly, analysis of cue-locked potentials revealed the novel finding that there was a systematic relationship between the amplitude of a P100 component elicited by the cues and the conscious perception of the targets. Valid cues led to the conscious perception of the subsequent targets when they captured attention to their location, as indexed by the P100 component distributed over occipito-parietal areas. On the other hand, invalid cues led to the conscious perception of the subsequent targets only when they failed to capture attention at their location (opposite to the target location). These results suggest that exogenous orienting plays a crucial role in conscious perception.

ABSTRACT
The demonstration of an implication of attentional/eye gaze systems in visual mental imagery might help to understand why some patients with visual neglect, who suffer from severe attentional deficits, also show neglect for mental images. When normal participants generate mental images of previously explored visual scenes, their oculomotor behavior resembles that used during visual exploration. However, this could be a case of encoding specificity, whereby the probability of retrieving an event increases if some information encoded with the event (in this case its spatial location) is present at retrieval. In the present study, normal participants were invited to conjure up a mental image of the map of France and to say whether auditorily presented towns or regions were situated left or right of Paris. A perceptual version of the task was administered after the imaginal condition. Thus, in the imaginal condition participants had to retrieve information from long-term memory. Vocal response times and, unbeknownst to participants, also eye movements were recorded. Participants tended to produce similar eye movements on the imaginal and on the perceptual conditions of the task. We concluded that some mechanisms involved in spontaneous oculomotor behavior may be shared in exploration of visuo-spatial mental images. Deficits of these common processes participating in the oculomotor exploration might contribute to imaginal neglect.

ABSTRACT
Individuals with autism spectrum disorders have highly characteristic impairments in social interaction and this is true also for those with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome (AS). These social cognitive impairments are far from global and it seems likely that some of the building blocks of social cognition are intact. In our first experiment, we investigated whether high functioning adults who also had a diagnosis of AS would be similar to control participants in terms of their eye movements when watching animated triangles in short movies that normally evoke mentalizing. They were. Our second experiment using the same movies, tested whether both groups would spontaneously adopt the visuo-spatial perspective of a triangle protagonist. They did. At the same time autistic participants differed in their verbal accounts of the story line underlying the movies, confirming their specific difficulties in on-line mentalizing. In spite of this difficulty, two basic building blocks of social cognition appear to be intact: spontaneous agency perception and spontaneous visual perspective taking.

ABSTRACT
There is a growing amount of evidence suggesting that individuals with autism have difficulty with categorization. One basic cognitive ability that is necessary for categorization and may underlie difficulties with categorization is the ability to abstract and represent categorical information with a central representation or prototype. The current study examined prototype formation abilities in individuals with autism with social (faces) and non-social (dot patterns) stimuli using behavioral methodologies and eye-tracking in high functioning adults with autism and matched controls. Individuals with autism were found to have difficulty forming prototypes of both faces and dot patterns. Relationships were found between performance on the prototype tasks and measures of intelligence, symptoms of autism, and measures of low-level perceptual functioning in the individuals with autism. The eye-tracking data did not reveal any between group differences in the general pattern of attention to the faces or dot patterns during the familiarization period indicating that the difficulties with prototype formation were not due to attentional factors. The results of the current study are consistent with previous studies that have found a deficit in prototype formation and indicate that these deficits exist with both familiar social stimuli such as faces and novel non-social stimuli such as dot patterns.

ABSTRACT
Atypical scan paths on emotional faces and reduced eye contact represent a prominent feature of autism symptomatology, yet the reason for these abnormalities remains a puzzle. Do individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) fail to orient toward the eyes or do they actively avoid direct eye contact? Here, we used a new task to investigate reflexive eye movements on fearful, happy, and neutral faces. Participants (ASDs: 12; controls: 11) initially fixated either on the eyes or on the mouth. By analyzing the frequency of participants' eye movements away from the eyes and toward the eyes, respectively, we explored both avoidance and orientation reactions. The ASD group showed a reduced preference for the eyes relative to the control group, primarily characterized by more frequent eye movements away from the eyes. Eye-tracking data revealed a pronounced influence of active avoidance of direct eye contact on atypical gaze in ASDs. The combination of avoidance and reduced orientation into an individual index predicted emotional recognition performance. Crucially, this result provides evidence for a direct link between individual gaze patterns and associated social symptomatology. These findings thereby give important insights into the social pathology of ASD, with implications for future research and interventions.

ABSTRACT
Eye-movement research on expert visual artists suggests that experts in this particular domain differ from novices in their strategies for encoding to-be-rendered stimuli. However, it remains unclear if such differences are specific to the domain of expertise or independent of it (i.e., if the different strategies are utilized only in relation to perception with goals specific to rendering, or if they generalize to visual perception of any stimulus with perceptual goals other than rendering). Experiment 1 examined eye-movement strategies utilized by experts and novices when rendering familiar and novel stimuli. Experiment 2 examined performance in a recognition task that also utilized novel stimuli. Results suggest that experts possess both domain-specific and domain-independent advantages, in that they have more efficient visual encoding abilities both when rendering and not. The results of a concurrent analysis suggest a link between the encoding advantage and schizotypy, which is correlated with creative advantage, as well as with a neural profile of left hypofrontality. Implications for a two-stage model of creativity are discussed.

ABSTRACT
Visual fixation patterns whilst viewing complex photographic scenes containing one person were studied in 24 high-functioning adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and 24 matched typically developing adolescents. Over two different scene presentation durations both groups spent a large, strikingly similar proportion of their viewing time fixating the person's face. However, time-course analyses revealed differences between groups in priorities of attention to the region of the face containing the eyes. It was also noted that although individuals with ASD were rapidly cued by the gaze direction of the person in the scene, this was not followed by an immediate increase in total fixation duration at the location of gaze, which was the case for typically developing individuals.

ABSTRACT
Social adaptation requires specific cognitive and emotional competences. Individuals with high-functioning autism or with Asperger syndrome cannot understand or engage in social situations despite preserved intellectual abilities. Recently, it has been suggested that oxytocin, a hormone known to promote mother-infant bonds, may be implicated in the social deficit of autism. We investigated the behavioral effects of oxytocin in 13 subjects with autism. In a simulated ball game where participants interacted with fictitious partners, we found that after oxytocin inhalation, patients exhibited stronger interactions with the most socially cooperative partner and reported enhanced feelings of trust and preference. Also, during free viewing of pictures of faces, oxytocin selectively increased patients’ gazing time on the socially informative region of the face, namely the eyes. Thus, under oxytocin, patients respond more strongly to others and exhibit more appropriate social behavior and affect, suggesting a therapeutic potential of oxytocin through its action on a core dimension of autism.

ABSTRACT
Previous research on the neural underpinnings of empathy has been limited to affective situations experienced in a similar way by an observer and a target individual. In daily life we also interact with people whose responses to affective stimuli can be very different from our own. How do we understand the affective states of these individuals? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess how participants empathize with the feelings of patients who reacted with no pain to surgical procedures but with pain to a soft touch. Empathy for pain of these patients activated the same areas (insula, medial/anterior cingulate cortex) as empathy for persons who responded to painful stimuli in the same way as the observer. Empathy in a situation that was aversive only for the observer but neutral for the patient recruited areas involved in self–other distinction (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) and cognitive control (right inferior frontal cortex). In addition, effective connectivity between the latter and areas implicated in affective processing was enhanced. This suggests that inferring the affective state of someone who is not like us can rely upon the same neural structures as empathy for someone who is similar to us. When strong emotional response tendencies exist though, these tendencies have to be overcome by executive functions. Our results demonstrate that the fronto-cortical attention network is crucially involved in this process, corroborating that empathy is a flexible phenomenon which involves both automatic and controlled cognitive mechanisms. Our findings have important implications for the understanding and promotion of empathy, demonstrating that regulation of one's egocentric perspective is crucial for understanding others.

ABSTRACT
Autism is characterized by major difficulties in the social interaction and communication domains. Recent studies suggest that deficits in social information processing could contribute to the expression of autistic traits, as regards communication and socialization skills. The objective of our study with children and adolescents manifesting autistic traits is to examine the characteristics of visual information processing whilst viewing social scenes, in order to evaluate the relationship between autistic trait expression and deficits in processing socially salient information. Our results suggest that children and adolescents presenting autistic traits show patterns of visual processing of social information that are comparable to those observed in adults with autism. These results are discussed from the standpoint of developmental cognitive psychopathology.

Abstract
The neuro‐developmental disorders of Williams syndrome (WS) and autism can reveal key components of social cognition. Eye‐tracking techniques were applied in two tasks exploring attention to pictures containing faces. Images were i) scrambled pictures containing faces or ii) pictures of scenes with embedded faces. Compared to individuals who were developing typically, participants with WS and autism showed atypicalities of gaze behaviour. Individuals with WS showed prolonged face gaze across tasks, relating to the typical WS social phenotype. Participants with autism exhibited reduced face gaze, linking to a lack of interest in socially relevant information. The findings are interpreted in terms of wider issues regarding socio‐cognition and attention mechanisms.

Previous research on the neural underpinnings of empathy has been limited to affective situations experienced in a similar way by an observer and a target individual. In daily life we also interact with people whose responses to affective stimuli can be very different from our own. How do we understand the affective states of these individuals? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess how participants empathize with the feelings of patients who reacted with no pain to surgical procedures but with pain to a soft touch. Empathy for pain of these patients activated the same areas (insula, medial/anterior cingulate cortex) as empathy for persons who responded to painful stimuli in the same way as the observer. Empathy in a situation that was aversive only for the observer but neutral for the patient recruited areas involved in self-other distinction (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) and cognitive control (right inferior frontal cortex). In addition, effective connectivity between the latter and areas implicated in affective processing was enhanced. This suggests that inferring the affective state of someone who is not like us can rely upon the same neural structures as empathy for someone who is similar to us. When strong emotional response tendencies exist though, these tendencies have to be overcome by executive functions. Our results demonstrate that the fronto-cortical attention network is crucially involved in this process, corroborating that empathy is a flexible phenomenon which involves both automatic and controlled cognitive mechanisms. Our findings have important implications for the understanding and promotion of empathy, demonstrating that regulation of one's egocentric perspective is crucial for understanding others.

Abstract
We explore the use of eye movements as a source of implicit
relevance feedback information. We construct a controlled information retrieval experiment where the relevance of each text is known, and test usefulness of implicit relevance feedback with it. If perceived relevance of a text can be predicted from eye movements, eye movement signal must contain information on the relevance. The result is that relevance can be predicted to a considerable extent with discriminative hidden Markov models, and clearly better than randomly already with simple linear models of time-averaged data.

Abstract
The genetic disorder Williams syndrome (WS) is associated with a propulsion towards social stimuli and interactions with people. In contrast, the neuro-developmental disorder autism is characterised by social withdrawal and lack of interest in socially relevant information. Using eye-tracking techniques we investigate how individuals with these two neuro-developmental disorders associated with distinct social characteristics view scenes containing people. The way individuals with these disorders view social stimuli may impact upon successful social interactions and communication. Whilst individuals with autism spend less time than is typical viewing people and faces in static pictures of social interactions, the opposite is apparent for those with WS whereby exaggerated fixations are prevalent towards the eyes. The results suggest more attention should be drawn towards understanding the implications of atypical social preferences in WS, in the same way that attention has been drawn to the social deficits associated with autism.

Abstract
The goal of this paper is to predict future horizontal eye movement trajectories within a specified time interval. To achieve this goal a linear horizontal oculomotor plant mechanical model is developed. The model consists of the eye globe and two extraocular muscles: lateral and medial recti. The model accounts for such anatomical properties of the eye as muscle location, elasticity, viscosity, eye-globe rotational inertia, muscle active state tension, length tension and force velocity relationships. The mathematical equations describing the oculomotor plant mechanical model are transformed into a Kalman filter form. Such transformation provides continuous eye movement prediction with a high degree of accuracy. The model was tested with 21 subjects and three multimedia files. Practical application of this model lies with direct eye gaze input and interactive displays systems as a method to compensate for detection, transmission and processing delays.

Abstract
Intelligence analysts are bombarded with enormous volumes of imagery, which they must visually filter through to identify relevant areas of interest. Interpretation of such data is subject to error due to (1) large data volumes, implying the need for faster and more effective processing, and (2) misinterpretation, implying the need for enhanced analyst/system effectiveness. This paper outlines the Revolutionary Accelerated Processing Image Detection (RAPID) System, designed to significantly improve data throughput and interpretation by incorporating advancing neurophysiological technology to monitor processes associated with detection and identification of relevant target stimuli in a non-invasive and temporally precise manner. Specifically, this work includes the development of innovative electroencephalographic (EEG) and eye tracking technologies to detect and flag areas of interest, potentially without an analyst’s conscious intervention or motor responses, while detecting and mitigating problems with tacit knowledge, such as anchoring bias in real-time to reduce the possibility of human error.

This paper reports an eye-tracking experiment conducted to compare alternative representations of directories typically shown on web pages in search of a best representation for deaf persons. The experiment simulated a directory-based information search task to understand how it is performed when directories are represented in text, labeled-pictograms, or unlabeled-pictograms. Twenty-one deaf and 21 hearing participants were asked to select one of 27 directories represented in one of the three alternative formats for each of 38 queries. The result demonstrated that only in the labeledpictogram representation, the hearing group and the deaf group performed equally well in terms of the eye movement measures.

Abstract
Considerable research effort has been dedicated to exploring how well children with autistic spectrum disorders infer eye gaze direction from the face of an actor. Here we combine task performance (accuracy to correctly label a target item) and eye movement information (‘where’ the participant fixates when completing the task) to understand more about the components involved in completing eye direction detection tasks. Fifteen participants with autism were significantly less accurate at interpreting eye direction and detecting a target item (array sizes 4 and 6 items) than typically developing participants of comparable nonverbal ability. Eye movement data revealed subtly different fixation patterns for participants with and without autism that might contribute to differences in overall task performance. Although the amount of time spent fixating on the target item did not differ across groups, participants with autism took significantly longer to complete several components of the task and fixate upon the regions of the picture required for task completion (e.g. face or target). The data have implications for the design of tasks for individuals with autism and provide insights into the usefulness of including measures of visual attention in understanding task performance.

Abstract
Inattentional blindness, the act of failing to notice clearly visible, salient objects in one’s environment when engaged in a task, is of great interest due to both its commonality and its overall applications. This study attempted to objectively support previous claims made about the inattentional blindness phenomenon using eye tracking data. It was found that even when a stimulus crossed the fovea, not all
individuals saw it. It was also discovered that some participants managed to notice the stimulus without fixating on it, in direct opposition to a hypothesis stating that fixation was required to notice a stimulus.