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@ARTICLE{Zimmermann:1037610,
      author       = {Zimmermann, Juliane T. and Ellison, T. Mark and Cangemi,
                      Francesco and Wehrle, Simon and Vogeley, Kai and Grice,
                      Martine},
      title        = {{L}ookers and listeners on the autism spectrum: the roles
                      of gaze duration and pitch height in inferring mental
                      states},
      journal      = {Frontiers in communication},
      volume       = {9},
      issn         = {2297-900X},
      address      = {Lausanne},
      publisher    = {Frontiers Media},
      reportid     = {FZJ-2025-00781},
      pages        = {1483135},
      year         = {2024},
      abstract     = {Although mentalizing abilities in autistic adults without
                      intelligence deficits are similar to those of control
                      participants in tasks relying on verbal information, they
                      are dissimilar in tasks relying on non-verbal information.
                      The current study aims to investigate mentalizing behavior
                      in autism in a paradigm involving two important nonverbal
                      means to communicate mental states: eye gaze and speech
                      intonation. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants with
                      ASD and a control group watched videos showing a virtual
                      character gazing at objects while an utterance was presented
                      auditorily. We varied the virtual character’s gaze
                      duration toward the object (600 or 1800 ms) and the height
                      of the pitch peak on the accented syllable of the word
                      denoting the object. Pitch height on the accented syllable
                      was varied by 45 Hz, leading to high or low prosodic
                      emphasis. Participants were asked to rate the importance of
                      the given object for the virtual character. At the end of
                      the experiment, we assessed how well participants recognized
                      the objects they were presented with in a recognition task.
                      Both longer gaze duration and higher pitch height increased
                      the importance ratings of the object for the virtual
                      character overall. Compared to the control group, ratings of
                      the autistic group were lower for short gaze, but higher
                      when gaze was long but pitch was low. Regardless of an ASD
                      diagnosis, participants clustered into three behaviorally
                      different subgroups, representing individuals whose ratings
                      were influenced (1) predominantly by gaze duration, (2)
                      predominantly by pitch height, or (3) by neither,
                      accordingly labelled “Lookers,” “Listeners” and
                      “Neithers” in our study. “Lookers” spent more time
                      fixating the virtual character’s eye region than
                      “Listeners,” while both “Listeners” and
                      “Neithers” spent more time fixating the object than
                      “Lookers.” Object recognition was independent of the
                      virtual character’s gaze duration towards the object and
                      pitch height. It was also independent of an ASD diagnosis.
                      Our results show that gaze duration and intonation are
                      effectively used by autistic persons for inferring the
                      importance of an object for a virtual character. Notably,
                      compared to the control group, autistic participants were
                      influenced more strongly by gaze duration than by pitch
                      height.},
      cin          = {INM-3},
      ddc          = {380},
      cid          = {I:(DE-Juel1)INM-3-20090406},
      pnm          = {5251 - Multilevel Brain Organization and Variability
                      (POF4-525) / DFG project 281511265 - SFB 1252: Prominenz in
                      Sprache (281511265)},
      pid          = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-5251 / G:(GEPRIS)281511265},
      typ          = {PUB:(DE-HGF)16},
      UT           = {WOS:001360545700001},
      doi          = {10.3389/fcomm.2024.1483135},
      url          = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1037610},
}