| 1. |
- Galazka, Martyna A, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Pupillary Contagion in Autism.
- 2019
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Ingår i: Psychological science. - : SAGE Publications. - 1467-9280 .- 0956-7976. ; 30:2, s. 309-315
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 2. |
- Lassalle, Amandine, et al.
(författare)
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Influence of anxiety and alexithymia on brain activations associated with the perception of others' pain in autism.
- 2019
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Ingår i: Social neuroscience. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1747-0927 .- 1747-0919. ; 14:3, s. 359-377
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The circumstances under which empathy is altered in ASD remain unclear, as previous studies did not systematically find differences in brain activation between ASD and controls in empathy-eliciting paradigms, and did not always monitor whether differences were primarily due to ASD "per se", or to conditions overlapping with ASD, such as alexithymia and anxiety. Here, we collected fMRI data from 47 participants (22 ASD) viewing pictures depicting hands and feet of unknown others in painful, disgusting, or neutral situations. We computed brain activity for painful and disgusting stimuli (vs. neutral) in whole brain and in regions of interest among the brain areas typically activated during the perception of nociceptive stimuli. Group differences in brain activation disappeared when either alexithymia or anxiety - both elevated in the ASD group - were controlled for. Regression analyses indicated that the influence of symptoms was mainly shared between autistic symptomatology, alexithymia and anxiety or driven by unique contributions from alexithymia or anxiety. Our results suggest that affective empathy may be affected in ASD, but that this association is complex. The respective contribution of alexithymia and anxiety to decreased affective empathy of people with ASD may be due to the association of those psychiatric conditions with reduced motor resonance/Theory of Mind.
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