Recognizing biological motion and emotions from point-light displays in autism spectrum disorders

PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e44473. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0044473. Epub 2012 Sep 6.

Abstract

One of the main characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are problems with social interaction and communication. Here, we explored ASD-related alterations in 'reading' body language of other humans. Accuracy and reaction times were assessed from two observational tasks involving the recognition of 'biological motion' and 'emotions' from point-light displays (PLDs). Eye movements were recorded during the completion of the tests. Results indicated that typically developed-participants were more accurate than ASD-subjects in recognizing biological motion or emotions from PLDs. No accuracy differences were revealed on two control-tasks (involving the indication of color-changes in the moving point-lights). Group differences in reaction times existed on all tasks, but effect sizes were higher for the biological and emotion recognition tasks. Biological motion recognition abilities were related to a person's ability to recognize emotions from PLDs. However, ASD-related atypicalities in emotion recognition could not entirely be attributed to more basic deficits in biological motion recognition, suggesting an additional ASD-specific deficit in recognizing the emotional dimension of the point light displays. Eye movements were assessed during the completion of tasks and results indicated that ASD-participants generally produced more saccades and shorter fixation-durations compared to the control-group. However, especially for emotion recognition, these altered eye movements were associated with reductions in task-performance.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Child
  • Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / physiopathology*
  • Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / psychology*
  • Emotions*
  • Eye Movements
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Light*
  • Male
  • Motion*

Grants and funding

Support for this study was provided through grants from the Flanders Fund for Scientific Research (FWO projectsG.0758.10). KA is supported by a FWO postdoctoral Research fellowship grant. This work was also supported by Grant P6/29 from the Interuniversity Attraction Poles program of the Belgian federal government. This study has been conducted in collaboration with the Leuven Autism Research Consortium (LAuRes), funded by the Research Council of the University of Leuven (IDO/08/013). JW is supported by the Methusalem program of the Flemish government (METH/08/02). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.