Multisensory Integration of Visual and Auditory Emotional Cues in Autism and Related Developmental Disabilities.

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Study Overview: In this study, participants are shown happy and fearful faces and asked to push a button if they think the face looks happy or afraid. While they are looking at the faces, they also hear voices saying short sentences in either a happy, fearful or neutral tone. Later they are asked to decide if the voice is happy, afraid or neither (neutral).

Click below for an example of a voice saying a short sentence.

Research Goal : It is the goal of this research to better understand the basis of the social/emotional deficits that are a core and devastating feature of autism. Converging evidence suggests that the social/emotional deficits associated with autism have their basis in dysfunction of areas of the brain associated with social/emotional processes, suggesting that autism is a disorder of the “social brain”. It is proposed that difficulties in social/emotional processing associated with autism are related to poor integration of visual and vocal emotional cues. Recent advances in brain imaging have allowed for ground breaking progress toward a better understand of the underlying brain processes necessary for the rapid and exquisitely precise decoding and integration of multiple environmental social cues necessary for fluid and successful social interactions. This research is designed to extend our findings of abnormalities in the brain circuitry of emotion and emotion regulation during emotional face and voice processing and integration in individuals with autism using state-of-the-art eye-tracking and brain imaging techniques.
H-2005-0083, PI: Kim Dalton, Richard Davidson

Coordinator: Kim M. Dalton