Gaze processing across psychosis proneness, social anxiety, and autism traits: Examining the role of sensory quality and context congruity.

Abstract

The ability to accurately perceive gaze direction is an essential social skill but is impaired across psychopathologies exhibiting social dysfunction (e.g., schizophrenia, social anxiety disorder, autism spectrum disorder). Disrupted sensory processing and self-referential processing may both lead to aberrant gaze perception, but their respective contributions in different psychopathologies are unclear. A general population sample of 106 participants completed an online psychophysical gaze perception task and a battery of psychopathology trait questionnaires. Participants viewed face images with 9 gaze angles, superimposed with 3 levels (no, low, high) of sensory noise and in 2 (forward, deviated) head orientations, and indicated perceived self-directed gaze (yes/no) for each face. Psychophysical properties of the gaze perception curve (width, threshold) were used to index perceptual imprecision and self-referential bias, respectively. Decreased precision was associated with higher autism traits but lower social anxiety, supporting differential contributions of sensory processing among psychopathology dimensions. Subjects showed decreased precision and increased self-referential bias, when viewing stimuli with added visual noise or incongruent gaze-head directions, resembling performance previously observed in patients with schizophrenia. Additionally, higher levels of social anxiety statistically predicted a greater decrease in precision when sensory noise was added. Findings are discussed in relation to the experimental psychopathology literature and in the context of self-referential gaze perception as an adaptive default in ambiguous contexts. Overall, this work enhances our basic scientific understanding of the cognitive components that contribute to gaze perception, while advancing our knowledge of how these components are disrupted as a function of subclinical psychopathology.