Table 1.
Demographic and clinical characteristics of participants with typical development, TD group (n = 56) and autistic participants, ASD group (n = 88), mean±SD.
Fig 1.
The stimuli and experimental paradigm.
A. Experimental design with drawing representing stimuli image position and trial structure. 28 faces from 14 different individuals looking either directly or aside were presented for 3s each; after each face presentation a choice screen was presented with the option “Ne me regarde pas ” (does not look at me) and “me regarde” (looks at me). B. Definition of the Area Of Interest: Right and Left eyes.
Fig 2.
Effects of condition (centered or averted gaze) and group (TD or ASD) on Eye Fixation Index, EFI, counts, and Key-Press Response Time, RT, ms, during gaze discrimination task in direct and averted gaze conditions of participants in TD and ASD groups.
The medians are shown with horizontal lines and inter-quartile intervals are shown with vertical lines. *** p < 0.001, * p < 0.05 for effect of the group (Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon nonparametric test), ### p < 0.001 for effect of the condition (Wilcoxon signed rank test).
Fig 3.
Results of the mediation analysis on three interrelated variables: the independent variable Group (X), the mediator eye fixation index (EFI, M) and the outcome variable Response Time (RT, Y).