Hayley Crawford, Joanna Moss, Natasha Elliot, Giles Anderson, Chris Oliver & Joseph McCleery

1. People or Trains? Visual Preference for Social versus Non-Social Information in Genetic Syndromes and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Hayley Crawford, Joanna Moss, Natasha Elliot, Giles Anderson, Chris Oliver & Joseph McCleery

2. Social Information Processing • Social development is critically dependent on attending to social stimuli (Dawson et al., 1998) • Differences in attending to social stimuli in people with different social profiles (Riby and Hancock, 2008; 2009)

3. Social Information Processing • Eye-tracking • How long someone looks at stimuli: information processing • First thing someone looks at: attentional priority • Study 1: ASD • Study 2: Fragile X, Cornelia de Lange, Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes

4. Social Information Processing in ASD • People with ASD spend less time than TD individuals viewing people and faces in static pictures of social interactions (Kirchner et al., 2010; Riby & Hancock, 2008 & 2009)

5. Social Information Processing in ASD • Direct side-by-side comparison: • Toddlers with ASD do not allocate as much attention to social stimuli as TD toddlers (Pierce et al., 2011) (Klin et al., 2009) • Some studies show typical looking times, but… • No preference at first fixation (Fletcher-Watson et al., 2009) • Increased time taken to fixate (Freeth et al., 2010) • Static side-by-side photographs

6. Study 1 • Research Questions: • Do children with ASD spontaneously allocate less attention to naturalistic dynamic social and non-social scenes? • Does the ‘directedness’ of the stimuli affect visual preference? • Two videos were presented side-by-side for 8000ms • One video was social, the other was non-social • The actor/object in both videos were either directed towards, or moved past the participant

7. Example videos

8. Participants • Recruited and tested at local special educational needs secondary school

9. Dwell Time Proportion • No main effect of participant: • No difference in looking time to social or non-social • Main effect of direction: • both groups look more at social directed vs. social non-directed • A priori t-tests: • Participants with ASD look less at social directed than participants with SEN (p = .037) • No difference in social non-directed

10. Time to Fixate • No main effect of participant: • No difference time taken to fixate on social or non-social • Main effect of direction: • both groups look quicker to social directed vs. social non-directed • A priori t-tests: • No difference in speed to fixate on social directed or non-directed.

11. Study 1 • Children with ASD look less at social directed stimuli than children with SEN but fixate on the stimuli at the same speed • Research Questions: • Do children with ASD spontaneously allocate less attention to naturalistic dynamic social and non-social scenes? • No • Does the ‘directedness’ of the stimuli affect this? • Yes

12. Discussion • Similarities in attentional priority, differences in attentional maintenance • Supports previous literature (Pierce et al., 2011; Klin et al., 2009) • Extends previous literature • More natural • Only when social information particularly salient (directed)

13. Study 2 • Genetic syndromes associated with intellectual disability and unique social profiles

14. Study 2 • Genetic syndromes associated with intellectual disability and unique social profiles

15. Study 2 • Genetic syndromes associated with intellectual disability and unique social profiles

16. Social Information Processing in FXS, CdLS & RTS • Limited literature

17. Social Information Processing in FXS, CdLS & RTS • Limited literature

18. Social Information Processing in FXS, CdLS & RTS • Limited literature

19. Research Questions • Research Questions: • Do children with FXS, RTS and CdLS spontaneously allocate similar attention to naturalistic dynamic social and non-social scenes? • Does the ‘directedness’ of the stimuli affect visual preference? • Same method as Study 1

20. Participants

21. Dwell Time • No main effect of participant: • No difference in looking time to social or non-social • Main effect of direction: • All groups look more at social directed vs. social non-directed

22. Time to Fixate • Significant direction x participant group interaction • Difference in how ‘directedness affects speed to fixate to videos • CdLS fixate to social directed videos slower than FXS & RTS • FXS: fixate on social directed and non-directed at similar speed • CdLS: fixate on social non-directed quicker than directed • RTS: fixate on social directed quicker than non-directed

23. Summary of results • Participants with FXS: look at social directed and non-directed for same time, fixate at same speed • Participants with CdLS: look at social directed and non-directed for same time, fixate on social non-directed quicker than directed • Participants with RTS: look at social directed and non-directed for same time, fixate on social directed quicker than non-directed • Participants with CdLS take longer to fixate on social directed than both other groups • NB: TD participants

24. Discussion • Research Questions: • Do children with FXS, RTS and CdLS spontaneously allocate similar attention to naturalistic dynamic social and non-social scenes? • Yes – dwell time • Does the ‘directedness’ of the stimuli affect visual preference? • Yes

25. Discussion

26. General Discussion • Coarse measure of dwell time highlighted differences in those with and without typical social development (Study 1) • Nuanced measure of time taken to fixate on stimuli highlighted differences in those with more subtle differences in their social presentation (Study 2) • Previous studies show social processing differences in groups at polar ends of a sociability spectrum (ASD, WS; Riby and colleagues, 2008 & 2009)

27. Thank you for listening