Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 10-1-2020 11:00 AM Autistic Traits and Cognitive Biases for Emotional Faces in Neurotypicals Meara Stow, The University of Western Ontario Supervisor: Stevenson, Ryan A., The University of Western Ontario A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the Master of Science degree in Psychology © Meara Stow 2020 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Stow, Meara, "Autistic Traits and Cognitive Biases for Emotional Faces in Neurotypicals" (2020). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 7451. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/7451 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract Cognitive biases can involve the tendency to extract some sensory inputs while ignoring others. Cognitive biases impact perception, and subsequent processing decisions made on the basis of perception. Cognitive biases can disrupt accurate and efficient processing of social information, and may underlie core features of social communication difficulties. How cognitive biases contribute to atypical social processing associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) traits is unknown. We examined whether cognitive biases for emotional faces were related to scores from the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), and whether our measures of cognitive biases from a dot- probe paradigm with concurrent eye tracking were comparable. We did not find sufficient evidence to relate ASD traits and cognitive biases. We found limited eye movements made during the paradigm and no relationship between the two concurrent measures. We highlight outstanding questions in the investigation of ASD traits and cognitive biases through the dot- probe paradigm and eye tracking. Keywords Autism Spectrum Disorder, Autistic Traits, Cognitive Bias, Perception, Emotion Processing, Dot-Probe Paradigm, Eye Tracking i Summary for Lay Audience Cognitive biases describe patterns of thinking that affect the decisions people make. We take shortcuts to think quickly about complex problems, and cognitive biases help us to do this. Most biases are stable tendencies that people will continue to display over time, and can affect how we pay attention to, remember, and interpret information. Cognitive biases can look like social and behavioral problems when people deal with information differently, and they may be linked to some of the social and behavioral problems often reported in autism. If there is a link between these two kinds of problems, people with more autism-like features would look at others’ faces differently than people without social and behavioral problems. We largely found people with more autism-like features did not show different cognitive biases when looking at others’ faces, but that factors of our design might have contributed to this being the case. We discuss ways to adapt the current design for future use. ii Acknowledgments I am grateful for the opportunity to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Ryan Stevenson, for his immense patience and encouragement through the completion of this project. I would also like to thank those among my family and friends, the members of the Sensory Perception Lab, and my committee here at Western, whose valuable guidance I will continue to build from. Thank you for tremendous support and for your assistance throughout the completion of this project. iii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................... i Summary for Lay Audience ...........................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ................................................................................................................................................ vi List of Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................................vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................ viii List of Appendices ........................................................................................................................................ ix Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Cognitive Biases and Social Perception ........................................................................................... 3 1.1.1 Adaptive Mechanisms .................................................................................................................. 4 1.1.2 Evolutionary Mechanisms ............................................................................................................ 5 1.2 Outcomes of Cognitive Biases.......................................................................................................... 6 1.2.1 Biased Perception of Threat ......................................................................................................... 6 1.2.2 Biased Perception of Relevance ................................................................................................... 7 1.2.3 Biased Processing of Experience ................................................................................................. 8 1.2.4 Biased Processing of Rationality.................................................................................................. 8 1.3 Cognitive Biases in Major Clinical Disorders .................................................................................. 9 1.3.1 Cognitive Biases in Neurodevelopmental Disorders ................................................................. 10 1.3.2 Cognitive Biases in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) ............................................................. 11 1.3.3 Cognitive Biases and Autistic Traits .......................................................................................... 15 Chapter 2 ...................................................................................................................................................... 19 2 Indices of Cognitive Biases................................................................................................................. 19 2.1 Tools to Measure Cognitive Biases ................................................................................................ 19 2.1.1 The Dot-Probe Paradigm ............................................................................................................ 19 2.1.2 Beyond the Dot-Probe Paradigm................................................................................................ 21 2.1.3 Eye Tracking .............................................................................................................................. 22 2.2 The Current Study .......................................................................................................................... 25 2.3 The Current Objectives ................................................................................................................... 27 2.4 The Current Design......................................................................................................................... 28 Chapter 3 ...................................................................................................................................................... 31 3 Methods ............................................................................................................................................... 31 3.1 Participants ..................................................................................................................................... 31 iv 3.2 General Procedures ......................................................................................................................... 31 3.3 ASD Traits: The Autism-Spectrum Quotient ................................................................................. 32 3.4 Cognitive Biases in the Eye-Tracked Dot-Probe Paradigm ........................................................... 33 3.4.1 Materials ..................................................................................................................................... 33 3.4.2 Procedures .................................................................................................................................. 34 3.4.3 Data Analyses ............................................................................................................................. 37 3.4.4 Hypotheses ................................................................................................................................