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cuteness_babyschema_autism_zaharia_2024
Journal article

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Examining the Link Between Social Affect and Visual Exploration of Cute Stimuli in Autistic Children

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  • Zaharia, Alexandra ORCID Faculty of Psychology, UniDistance Suisse, Brig; Institute of Special Education, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland; Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Kojovic, Nada ORCID Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Rojanawisut, Tara Faculty of Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Sander, David ORCID Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Schaer, Marie ORCID Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Fondation Pôle Autisme, Unité de Recherche, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Samson, Andrea C. ORCID Faculty of Psychology, UniDistance Suisse, Brig; Institute of Special Education, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland; Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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  • 2024
Published in:
  • Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. - Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2024
Social affect
Autism spectrum disorder
Cuteness
Baby schema
Eye-tracking
English Baby schema refers to physical features perceived as cute, known to trigger attention, induce positive emotions, and prompt social interactions. Given the reduced visual attention to social stimuli observed in individuals on the autism spectrum, the current study examines whether the sensitivity to baby schema is also affected. We expected that the looking time towards cute-featured stimuli would vary with symptom severity levels and would be associated with social affect. Ninety-four children (31 typically developing; 63 diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder - ASD) aged 20–83 months (M=49.63, SD=13.59) completed an eye-tracking visual exploration task. Autistic participants were separated into two groups based on symptom severity: children with high autism severity symptoms (HS ASD; N=23) and low-moderate autism symptoms (LMS ASD; N=40). Animals and neutral objects were simultaneously presented on the screen along with either human babies (condition 1) or adults (condition 2). The results indicated that visual attention oriented to cute-featured stimuli varied with autism symptom severity: only LMS and TD groups spend more time looking at cute- featured stimuli (babies; animals) than neutral objects. Moreover, children with higher severity in the social affect domain spent less time on the stimuli depicting cute than non-cute stimuli. These findings suggest that autism symptom severity and social skills are linked to variations in visual attention to cute stimuli. Implications of baby schema sensitivity are discussed in relation to the development of social competencies and play, responsiveness to robot-based interventions, as well as appraised relevance in autistic children.
Faculty
Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines
Department
Département de Pédagogie spécialisée
Language
  • English
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/329271
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10803_2024_6504_moesm1_esm
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