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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Humans are social animals. In recent years, psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists have revealed the distinct parts of our brain that allow us to interact, collaborate and communicate with each other. One important way of studying the “social brain” is to look at what happens in the brain during neuro-developmental disorders associated with atypical social abilities. Two such disorders are autism and Williams syndrome, which is a rare genetic disorder. The exciting new study by the psychologist Deborah Riby and Peter Hancock at Newcastle University uses cutting edge methods in eye tracking to investigate the unusual social preferences and behaviors in people with Williams syndrome and autism.
Unusual Social Brains
When studied in conjunction, Williams syndrome and autism provide a set of interesting and informative contrasts. Individuals with autism tend to be socially withdrawn, lack communication skills and find it difficult to understand what others are feeling or thinking. People with Williams syndrome, in contrast, are often hyper-sociable, have good language skills, and are good at understanding certain social cues, such as facial expressions. For this reason, Williams syndrome is sometimes characterized as being “at the opposite end of the [social] spectrum” as autism. People with autism are generally less socially responsive to others, whereas those with Williams syndrome typically have an inability to inhibit social responses.The question, of course, is, What changes in the brain cause such radically divergent social characteristics? By studying these disorders, scientists can learn a lot about human social cognition.
Tracking the Eyes
Enter eye tracking. Eye tracking is the process of measuring the point of gaze, or where a person is looking. Although eye tracking has been used in earlier studies of social attention in people with autism, Riby and Hancock’s study is the first to use eye tracking to study gaze behaviors in people with Williams syndrome. The beauty of eye tracking is that it allows scientists to monitor a person’s attentional focus or preference without the need for them to express what they are doing or even to understand it. This technology therefore affords a new window into the social world of other people. It’s the closest we can get to seeing the world from someone else’s eyes.
Previous work has shown that people with autism pay less attention to socially relevant parts of scenes. For example, a person with autism who is viewing a movie of people in a room will spend a relatively large amount of time looking at non-social objects—such as chairs—and is more likely to look at the mouths or bodies of the characters than their eyes. Riby and Hancock expand on these experimental paradigms by asking participants to view good quality color photographs of a range of different social situations. For example, they had subjects with autism and Williams syndrome look at pictures of a family sharing a meal, a group of teenagers chatting, and a bride and groom on their wedding day. While viewing the photographs, participants’ eye movements were monitored and recorded using a state-of-the-art eye tracker.
Results of the Riby and Hancock study showed that participants with autism and Williams syndrome both exhibited eye movements that significantly differed from the norm. As expected, people with autism spent less time viewing faces. In contrast, those with Williams syndrome spent significantly more time peering at faces than is typical, and they paid particular attention to the eyes. Eyes are important in allowing us to understand other peoples’ mental and emotional states. Riby and Hancock suggest that a lack of attention to eyes in autism, and a contrasting abundance of attention in Williams syndrome, may help explain why people with Williams syndrome tend to be so much better than those with autism in understanding gaze cues and expressions.
Looking to the future
Riby and Hancock point out that the underlying cause of the hyper-sociability of Williams syndrome is not yet known. Why do people with Williams syndrome spend so much time looking at eyes? It could be that people with Williams syndrome find it harder to control their gaze behavior and hence cannot inhibit excessive staring. Alternatively, they might take longer to process and understand the information they are accessing from the eyes. In addition, the authors point to recent work showing deficits in executive function and working memory tasks in Williams syndrome highlighting the possibility of attentional control problems in such patients. This discovery suggests the possibility that people with Williams syndrome find it difficult to disengage their attention from faces. Because attention shifting deficits have also been reported for autism, Riby and Hancock propose that the relationship between the prefrontal cortex (involved in inhibiting behavior) and the amygdala (involved in emotion processing) may be crucial in both of these neuro-developmental disorders. Future work will, I hope, shed light on the neural underpinnings of these disorders and allow us to better understand why humans are such social animals.
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12 Comments
Add CommentAn alternative hypothesis as to why the Williams Syndrome is the only known "unautistic phenotype" is that the Williams syndrome is the only known experiment of nature in which greatly elevated levels of activated vitamin D occur during early infancy and probably during some stages of gestation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLow levels of activated vitamin D in the brain during gestation or early childhood (a genetic enzymatic predisposition combined with an environmentally determined substrate) cause idiopathic autism and greatly elevated levels of activated vitamin D during the same time cause the only known phenotype that is consistently the opposite of autism.
Cannell JJ. Autism and vitamin D. Med Hypoth (2008) 70, 750–759
Do WS people engage socially with everyone or only ones they know through their unique mental cognition to be receptive? What would happen if you had a WS person with an actor trained (or sociopath) to give the wrong social cues? Are WS people able to process negative social cues? What about WS looking at a picture of people with the eyes removed or distorted?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI vaguely recall an impression that WS people may be more likely to 'talk to strangers', etc. - but I could be wrong. I also remember reading that WS people had stars in their eyes - literally, something you can see in the iris - but it's been a long time since I read anything on the matter so I can't guarantee that information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had the pleasure of working with a WS woman in residential housing where she lived with sveral developmentally disabled adults of various mental disorders/IQ.s. She socialized with anyone who was appropriate but shunned anyone who was rude, graceless, violent. She would tilt her head to look into your face/eyes, and ask specifically how one was feeling, or state 'you look happy' or 'you look sad' even if not the case. She would touch a shouder or arm in compassion when asking, and often would misread a mood, but simply seemed to want to engage you for the social aspect. She'd be the first one to answer the front door, practically running to get to it first to greet whoever was there as if they were her long lost relative. She was pleasant and showed a near mock-anger when asked to do things she didn't want to do, she stomp away: like make her bed, or clean or room, or begin a chore before she felt ready to tackle it... she'd rather sit and chat, but would watch people enter a room while doing so. Or if watching TV, she'd keep glancing to find a face to smile at... Unique to her? I have no idea. She was in her forties, but in this case, she was a perpetual pre-teen it seemed. Instead of asking for more food if hungry, she'd take food and hide it in her room to eat late at night, like entire packages of sliced meats. I liked her, and she was more a pleasure than not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn response to all. I have a 16 yr old son with Williams Syndrome. Yes, my son has stars in his eyes. He is very in tuned to people's emotions. He is even in tune to situations, such as deaths or illnesses. Most of the time he is happy, but now teenage rebellious is still an issue. I am not sure if he actually looks into people's eyes or reads body language and facial expressions. He can't always tell if someone is joking with him. The drawback is the emotional rollercoaster he rides. He absorbs others fears, anger, sadness, and of course happiness. We need to redirect his reactions away from these things and that is not always easy. Now take into perspective the child who has Williams syndrome and is also autistic. Autism can be common with this sysndrome. Williams syndrome is a complex condition which has so many spectrums. So in response to the article---the outcome of the research may have been different if the tests were done a child with both. I suggest caution when using this research, due to the different spectrums of Williams Syndrome.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMental Illness is in fact the "eyes" or window we use as a reference point to view ourselves. What defines the norm better than the statistical outliers... the extremes... the maladaptive. Autism spectrum disorder clearly has genetic roots. So does mental retardation (fragile-X syndrome) and even pathologic lying. What continues to amaze me is that the public at large... our popular culture... still does not grasp the fundamental basis for all our myriad behaviors, "normal" or not: genetics. The mutations in FOX-P2 that leads to mute offspring in certain families, allow speech when operating in an evolutionary selected fashion. Ditto for every other aspect of our evolved human selves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEye-tracking is yet another modality to test determined behaviors.
My grandson has been diagnosed with autism but he is so friendly and understands facial expressions better than other children his age, he is easily upset with sadness, anger, or happiness he takes on what ever behavior being presented in the room usually. He says "Hey" to everyone in the shopping markets or on the street and bye bye to everyone as well. With all the expression and energy a two year old can put behind it. He is truly happy to talk to strangers or anyone. Loves to go see family back home, will do his little happy feet dance when he sees them. But when he can't have his way he melts down immediately. And if your not looking at him he will lean down and make eye contact with you whether you want to or not. Which always makes you laugh of course. We are fixing to start the genetics testing and we think he may have Williams Syndrome, we just figured this out a couple days ago. This piece and the comments has really helped. I haven't been able to find a whole lot on the WS so if anyone knows of any good sites please tell me. Thanks
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is a good WS web site?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.williams-syndrome.org has excellant information and links. Make sure to check dates of updates, some are outdated, but he info. is good. I have used that site for 16 years. Also the information on Williams syndrome is much more available now compared to when my son was diagnosed. A genetic doctor was the only one who knew what my son had.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood luck.
My 4 year old son has williams syndrome. I also feel he has autism. I am being told he does not because he answers to his name at times and I have tought him to say hi, how are you. he can not hold a conversation without repeating himself over and over. althought he can be very demanding when he talks he does want you to look at him. he will pull your face to look to him and will, if able to, be nose to nose with you. but you may need to look at how ws childern are raised before suggestings are made that they all read peoples eyes, and how old they are do to a experienced feeling they may have toward another person. I know myself that I can feel uncomfortable with a person that may act, talk, or look at me in a certain way. but my son will not . williams syndrome is overfriendly to all and a definete stranger danger zone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Research Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP), a specialty think tank, published eight articles on the Social Brain in Psychiatric Annals, 35:10, 2005, pp 778-866. We addressed the need in psychiatry for a unifying scientific foundation and focused on the Social Brain as the interface between areas of brain function and the environment. The Social Brain formulation is consistent with current research and clinical data. Moreover, it drives the treatment plan in a rational and comprehensive fashion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChair, Research Committee, GAP
our cortex is infinitely interesting; (just how can they still be hunting whales?); however, Proust is toooo boring. (how could a prune understand a peach?)
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