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Reduced Pupil Oscillation During Facial Emotion Judgment in People with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show abnormal face perception and emotion recognition. However, it remains largely unknown whether these differences are associated with abnormal physiological responses when viewing faces. In this study, we employed a sensitive emotion judgment task and conducted a detailed investigation of pupil dilation/constriction and oscillation in high-functioning adult participants with ASD and matched controls. We found that participants with ASD showed normal pupil constriction to faces; however, they demonstrated reduced pupil oscillation, which was independent of stimulus properties and participants’ perception of the emotion. Together, our results have revealed an abnormal physiological response to faces in people with ASD, which may in turn be associated with impaired face perception previously found in many studies.

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Funding

Funding was provided by AFOSR (Grant No. FA9550-21-1-0088) and National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. BCS-1945230 and IIS-2114644).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, Aoba-6-3 Aramaki, Aoba Ward, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan

    Sai Sun

  2. Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba Ward, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan

    Sai Sun

  3. Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA

    Paula J. Webster & Shuo Wang

  4. Department of Neurology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Yu Wang

  5. Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Hongbo Yu

  6. Department of Management, School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University, HKSAR, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

    Rongjun Yu

  7. Department of Radiology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, 63110, USA

    Shuo Wang

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  1. Sai Sun
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  2. Paula J. Webster
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  3. Yu Wang
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  4. Hongbo Yu
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SS and SW designed experiments. SW performed research. SS, HY and SW analyzed data. SS, PJW, YW, RY, and SW wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Sai Sun or Shuo Wang.

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Sun, S., Webster, P.J., Wang, Y. et al. Reduced Pupil Oscillation During Facial Emotion Judgment in People with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 1963–1973 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05478-2

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