THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN FACE PROCESSING: AN ERP STUDY OF ADOLESCENTS WITH AUTISM

Background:   Individuals with autism tend not to spontaneously imbue ambiguous visual stimuli with social meaning, resulting in maladaptive mental representations of the social environment.  Few studies have investigated the proclivity of individuals with autism to naturally impose social meaning on what they see.  Research shows enhanced face-related electrophysiological brain activity (N170) to ambiguous stimuli when typical viewers believe a face is present.  Similarly, face sensitive areas of the fusiform gyrus activate in the absence of a face when the context of a human form is presented.  This suggests that typical individuals spontaneously impose social meaning on ambiguous stimuli; in this example, the N170 may index this cognitive event, vital for adaptive social behavior.

Objectives:   To investigate the N170 as an electrophysiological index of imputation of social meaning in autism.

Methods:   Continuous ERP data was recorded while adolescents with autism and typical controls viewed images of degraded faces in which a face is implied by context (the presence of a human body), degraded faces alone, bodies alone, clear faces alone, and clear faces on bodies. 

Results:   N170 analyses replicated findings of anomalous electrophysiological activity to clear faces in autism relative to typically-developing peers.  Analyses are in progress to determine whether typical individuals, but not individuals with autism, exhibit enhanced N170 to ambiguous stimuli presented in social context.

Conclusions:   Determining whether face-specific N170 responses can be elicited by contextual cues will provide insight into the clinical problem in autism of failing to impose social meaning on the world, a critical ability for optimizing adaptive responses to stimuli.  Investigating this failure in autism has significant implications for intervention and for understanding the early unfolding of social deficits in autism.