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Perception of Art in High Functioning Autism
Art exploration is a complex process conditioned by factors that include both basic visual principles and complex cognitive factors. It has often been reported that people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) possess a different capacity for visual apprehension and artistic expression, explaining their artistic talent, particularly their holistic visual processing. However, no empirical study has explored if people with ASD had a different perception of art in a qualitative way. Conversely, several therapies based on art perception and artistic creativity have been designed to help deal with their socio-emotional deficits. The use of creative art therapy has been put forth to promote adequate emotional state regulation.
Objectives:
The general objective of this project was to investigate, with an eye-tracking technique, the visual explorative behavior of ASD participants. We expected to observe significant differences in the eye-tracking patterns of neurotypical versus ASD participants. A secondary aim was to study if exposure to creative art sessions modify gaze behavior patterns.
Methods:
13 participants with ASD and 11 neurotypical controls (18 to 49 years old) participated were recruited. In a dark and quiet room, participants sat in front of computer screen displaying photographs of 12 paintings taken from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). Paintings were shown sequentially for 15 seconds each. Eye-tracking data were collected and analyzed using an Eye-Tribe camera and the Ogama software. All participants then attended 7 creative arts sessions at the MMFA. These sessions included visits of the museum with a guide explaining the paintings displayed, and creative workshops where participants could create their own art. A second session of eye tracking data acquisition was then performed, where participants viewed the paintings a second time.
Results:
Areas of interest (AOI) were selected on each painting, based on the focus of attention of the neurotypical group. Complete fixation time in the AOIs was calculated for each painting and compared between groups. We first compared the gaze behaviour during the first session of data acquisition. The salience analysis revealed that while neurotypical participants display a very homogenous gaze fixations behaviour which followed some general common principles (e.g., being attracted to saliency regions), a large variability was observed in ASD participants, who did not show the same attraction to salient regions, especially in the case of figurative paintings with social or emotional value. We then explored how the art therapy sessions influenced the gaze behaviour of ASD participants. Results show that gaze behaviour was different from the first session for all subjects, suggesting that art therapy-like workshops had an influence on the way ASD participants look at paintings.
Conclusions:
These preliminary results highlight a peculiarity in gaze behaviour in ASD when observing art paintings. This suggests a different way to perceive information in an art-related context, particularly in social dimensions. This could be due to a diminished influence of top-down processes on painting perception in ASD. We further show that art therapy sessions have an impact on how participants look at paintings.