PROJECT SUMMARY
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is increasingly prevalent, affecting 1 in every 68 children in the United
States. In addition to presenting children with pervasive social and behavioral challenges, ASD is also
associated with profound deficits in perceiving a person's gaze. This basic impairment in visual perception is
associated with social anxiety, impairments of joint attention, delayed language development, as well as
difficulty understanding another person's mental state and engaging in reciprocal social interactions. Research
on gaze perception among children with ASD is thus of great importance.
Yet despite decades of work, understanding of the mechanisms of gaze perception in ASD is surprisingly
incomplete. This is largely because investigations of gaze in ASD focus exclusively on perception of a person's
eyes, ignoring the more nuanced ways in which gaze is typically seen, as a distinct combination of a person's
head and eye rotation. This integrative process, which we refer to as emergent gaze, has been gaining traction
in research with typical adults, yet consideration of emergent gaze is absent in current theories of gaze
perception in ASD. This is surprising since this is precisely the kind of integrative visual process that may
present challenges to children with ASD. The long-term goal of this proposal is to more completely understand
how children with ASD perceive gaze, determining if they have the visual mechanisms to perceive gaze from
the entire face, and if so, under which circumstances they are likely to use these mechanisms.
Aim 1 of this proposal uses psychophysical methods to examine, for the first time, whether children with
ASD differ from typically-developing children (TDs) in the way they integrate information across a face to
perceive the gaze of a 2D person. In Aim 2, we propose to use a relatively new technology, socially-assistive
robotics, to determine how children with ASD compare to TDs in terms of using emergent gaze when seeing a
realistic 3D face. Pilot data suggest a surprising pair of outcomes—children with ASD see gaze like TDs and
adults when evaluating 3D cues from a robot, but not when evaluating 2D images of a face.
The basic work in this proposal is likely to have several broad, health-related impacts. First, this research
should advance knowledge of visual mechanisms underlying social-perceptual deficits in ASD. Second, this
proposal will directly connect the rapidly growing field of autism research with updated models of gaze
representation already common among typical adults. Third, Aim 2 will lay the foundation for future research
and interventions that utilize new technology to improve gaze perception in ASD. Last, this proposal will bring
new research and interdepartmental collaboration to a growing University and support the integration and
expansion of two successful community outreach programs. By examining how children with ASD interpret
visual cues vital for social interaction, this proposal is squarely in line with the mission of the NICHD,
particularly in terms of helping children to achieve their full potential for healthy productive lives.