Nicole Séon Clavaud Defense Thesis - Perception/action coupling in typical development and in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): an eye-tracking approach

Nicole Séon Clavaud (COPHY CRNL) PhD defense « Perception/action coupling in typical development and in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): an eye-tracking approach».

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are characterised by difficulties in social interaction and communication, as well as restricted and repetitive behaviours, interests

and activities, and sensory disorders. Although only considered as comorbidities, motor difficulties and atypicalities impact the construction of action representations, as well as the proper functioning of the perception/action coupling, which nevertheless seems to be modulated by motor experience, familiarity with the action and the person performing the action, including in autism.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate, via measures extracted from visual exploration behaviour and pupillometry, using the eye-tracking technique, the

spontaneous distinction of daily actions presenting a variable perception/action coupling, depending on whether, for the same action, the video was presented in the forward reading direction (Forward, with a strong coupling) or in the backward reading direction (Backward, with a weak coupling) in children and adolescents typically developed (TD), or with ASD with or without Intellectual Development Disorder (IDD), as well as in adults.

The comparison of the looking times of our participants on the Forward vs. Backward videos, as well as the quality of these data, allowed us first to validate our paradigm. Then, measures of the pupil diameter dilation in the exposure phase, and looking times in the visual preference phase, showed that these parameters were all modulated by the strength of the perception/action coupling in TD and adult participants and, to a lesser extent, in participants with ASD. The adult study found a context effect, also used in the developmental study, which appeared to be less influential than looking times.

All of our studies have allowed us to show that an ecological and non-invasive ten-minute paradigm allows to extract behavioural and physiological indices of visual exploration, with an advantage for the physiological index of pupil diameter variation and the behavioural index of context, appearing to be less influential than the overall looking time index.

Key words

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), eye-tracking, action representation, perception/action coupling, motor experience.

 

Jury

- Dr Nadia AGUILLON-HERNANDEZ (MCU), Université de Tours, Examiner

- Pr Magali BATTY (PU), Université Toulouse 2, Reviewer

- Pr Nadia CHABANE  (PU-PH), CH Universitaire Vaudois, Examiner

- Pr Patrick CHAMBRES (PU), Université Clermont Auvergne, Reviewer

- Pr Nicolas FRANCK (PU-PH), CH Le Vinatier/Université Lyon 1, Examiner

- Dr Christina SCHMITZ (CR CNRS), CRNL Lyon, Supervisor

- Dr Bruno WICKER (CR CNRS), LNC Marseille, Examiner

 

The PhD thesis will be defended in French.

Thesis defenses are authorised in person in the respect of the barrier gestures. It is reminded that no health pass is required for these defenses.