Autistic Traits and Symptoms of Social Anxiety are Differentially Related to Attention to Others’ Eyes in Social Anxiety Disorder

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Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) have partly overlapping symptoms. Gaze avoidance has been linked to both SAD and ASD, but little is known about differences in social attention between the two conditions. We studied eye movements in a group of treatment-seeking adolescents with SAD ( N = 25), assessing SAD and ASD dimensionally. The results indicated a double dissociation between two measures of social attention and the two symptom dimensions. Controlling for social anxiety, elevated autistic traits were associated with delayed orienting to eyes presented among distractors. In contrast, elevated social anxiety levels were associated with faster orienting away from the eyes, when controlling for autistic traits. This distinction deepens our understanding of ASD and SAD.

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Most cited references 27

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Early social attention impairments in autism: social orienting, joint attention, and attention to distress.

Geraldine Dawson, Karen Toth, Robert Abbott … (2004)

This study investigated social attention impairments in autism (social orienting, joint attention, and attention to another's distress) and their relations to language ability. Three- to four-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 72), 3- to 4-year-old developmentally delayed children (n = 34), and 12- to 46-month-old typically developing children (n = 39), matched on mental age, were compared on measures of social orienting, joint attention, and attention to another's distress. Children with autism performed significantly worse than the comparison groups in all of these domains. Combined impairments in joint attention and social orienting were found to best distinguish young children with ASD from those without ASD. Structural equation modeling indicated that joint attention was the best predictor of concurrent language ability. Social orienting and attention to distress were indirectly related to language through their relations with joint attention. These results help to clarify the nature of social attention impairments in autism, offer clues to developmental mechanisms, and suggest targets for early intervention. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

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Intergenerational transmission of subthreshold autistic traits in the general population.

John Constantino, Richard D Todd (2005)

Autistic disorder (AD) is a disabling oligogenic condition characterized by severe social impairment. Subthreshold autistic social impairments are known to aggregate in the family members of autistic probands; therefore, we conducted this study to examine the intergenerational transmission of such traits in the general population. The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), a quantitative measure of autistic traits, was completed on 285 pairs of twins (by maternal report) and on their parents (by spouse report). Correlation for social impairment or competence between parents and their children and between spouses was on the order of .4. In families in which both parents scored in the upper quartile for social impairment on the SRS, mean SRS score of offspring was significantly elevated (effect size 1.5). Estimated assortative mating explained approximately 30% of the variation in parent SRS scores. Children from families in which both parents manifest subthreshold autistic traits exhibit a substantial shift in the distribution of their scores for impairment in reciprocal social behavior, toward the pathological end. As has been previously demonstrated in children, heritable subthreshold autistic impairments are measurable in adults and appear continuously distributed in the general population.

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Human amygdala responsivity to masked fearful eye whites.

Paul Davis, Andrew S Maxwell, Hackjin Kim … (2004)

The amygdala was more responsive to fearful (larger) eye whites than to happy (smaller) eye whites presented in a masking paradigm that mitigated subjects' awareness of their presence and aberrant nature. These data demonstrate that the amygdala is responsive to elements of.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Johan Lundin Kleberg: +46(0)702197773 , Johan.lundin_kleberg@psyk.uu.se

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Autism Dev Disord

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J Autism Dev Disord

Title: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Publisher: Springer US (New York )

ISSN (Print): 0162-3257

ISSN (Electronic): 1573-3432

Publication date (Electronic): 20 December 2016

Publication date PMC-release: 20 December 2016

Publication date (Print): 2017

Volume: 47

Issue: 12

Pages: 3814-3821

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9457, GRID grid.8993.b, Uppsala Child and Baby Lab, Department of Psychology, , Uppsala University, ; Box 1225, Uppsala, Sweden

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1937 0626, GRID grid.4714.6, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Centre for Psychiatry Research, , Karolinska Institutet, ; Stockholm, Sweden

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2326 2191, GRID grid.425979.4, Stockholm Health Care Services, , Stockholm County Council, ; Stockholm, Sweden

[4 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1937 0626, GRID grid.4714.6, Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (KIND), , Karolinska Institutet, ; Stockholm, Sweden

[5 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2326 2191, GRID grid.425979.4, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Center for Psychiatry Research, , Stockholm County Council, ; Stockholm, Sweden

Article

Publisher ID: 2978

DOI: 10.1007/s10803-016-2978-z

PMC ID: 5676829

PubMed ID: 28000078

SO-VID: e17e83a3-d4dc-4726-890f-35328ba49193

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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Funding

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004359, Vetenskapsrådet;

Award ID: 2015-03670

Award ID: 523-2009-7054

Award Recipient : Sven Bölte Terje Falck-Ytter

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004472, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond;

Award ID: NHS14-1802:1

Award Recipient : Terje Falck-Ytter

Funded by: Strategic Research Area Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet (StratNeuro)

Funded by: Stockholm County Council and Karolinska Institutet

Award ID: PPG 20150032

Award Recipient : Eva Serlachius

Funded by: Swedish Research Council and FORTE

Award ID: 2014-4052

Award Recipient : Eva Serlachius

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Neurology

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder (asd),social anxiety disorder (sad),attention,eye tracking,orienting,avoidance,gaze avoidance,broader autism phenotype

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Neurology

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder (asd), social anxiety disorder (sad), attention, eye tracking, orienting, avoidance, gaze avoidance, broader autism phenotype

Autistic Traits and Symptoms of Social Anxiety are Differentially Related to Attention to Others’ Eyes in Social Anxiety Disorder

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Karger: Neurology and Neuroscience

Most cited references 27

Early social attention impairments in autism: social orienting, joint attention, and attention to distress.

Intergenerational transmission of subthreshold autistic traits in the general population.

Human amygdala responsivity to masked fearful eye whites.

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