Neural and visual processing of social gaze cueing in typical and ASD adults

Atypical eye gaze in joint attention is a clinical characteristic of
autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite this documented symptom, neural
processing of joint attention tasks in real-life social interactions is
not understood. To address this knowledge gap, functional-near infrared
spectroscopy (fNIRS) and eye-tracking data were acquired simultaneously as
ASD and typically developed (TD) individuals engaged in a gaze-directed
joint attention task with a live human and robot partner. We test the
hypothesis that face processing deficits in ASD are greater for
interactive faces than for simulated (robot) faces. Consistent with prior
findings, neural responses during human gaze cueing modulated by face
visual dwell time resulted in increased activity of ventral frontal
regions in ASD and dorsal parietal systems in TD participants.
Hypoactivity of the right dorsal parietal area during live human gaze
cueing was correlated with autism spectrum symptom severity: Brief
Observations of Symptoms of Autism (BOSA) scores (r = -0.86). Contrarily,
neural activity in response to robot gaze cueing modulated by visual
acquisition factors activated dorsal parietal systems in ASD, and this
neural activity was not related to autism symptom severity (r = 0.06).
These results are consistent with the hypothesis that altered encoding of
incoming facial information to the dorsal parietal cortex is specific to
live human faces in ASD. These findings open new directions for
understanding joint attention difficulties in ASD by providing a
connection between superior parietal lobule activity and live interaction
with human faces.