TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bast, Nico
A1  - Banaschewski, Tobias
A1  - Dziobek, Isabel
A1  - Brandeis, Daniel
A1  - Poustka, Luise
A1  - Freitag, Christine M.
T1  - Pupil dilation progression podulates aberrant social cognition in autism spectrum disorder
T2  - Autism research
N2  - Progression of pupil dilation (PD) in response to visual stimuli may indicate distinct internal processes. No study has been performed on PD progression during a social cognition task. Here, we describe PD progression during the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) test in n = 23 adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and n = 24 age, IQ and sex‐matched neurotypical controls (NTC). The MASC consists of 43 video sequences depicting human social interactions, each followed by a multiple‐choice question concerning characters' mental states. PD progression data were extracted by eye tracking and controlled for fixation behavior. Segmenting PD progression during video sequences by principal component analysis, three sequential PD components were unveiled. In ASD compared with NTC, a distinct PD progression was observed with increased constriction amplitude, increased dilation latency, and increased dilation amplitude that correlated with PD progression components. These components predicted social cognition performance. The first and second PD components correlated positively with MASC behavioral performance in ASD but negatively in NTC. These PD components may be interpreted as indicators of sensory‐perceptual processing and attention function. In ASD, aberrant sensory‐perceptual processing and attention function could contribute to attenuated social cognition performance. This needs to be tested by additional studies combining the respective cognitive tests and the outlined PD progression analysis. Phasic activity of the locus coeruleus–norepinephrine system is discussed as putatively shared underlying mechanism.
KW  - attention modulation
KW  - eye tracking
KW  - pupillary reactivity
KW  - biomarker
KW  - sensory processing
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/56055
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-560555
SN  - 1939-3806
SN  - 1939-3792
N1  - This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in anymedium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 12
IS  - 11
SP  - 1680
EP  - 1692
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Chichester
ER  -