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Browsing by Author "Trubanova, Andrea"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Eye-Gaze Analyis of Facial Emotion Expression in Adolescents with ASD
    Trubanova, Andrea (Virginia Tech, 2015-11-20)
    Prior research has shown that both emotion recognition and expression in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) differs from that of typically developing children, and that these differences may contribute to observed social impairment. This study extends prior research in this area with an integrated examination of both expression and recognition of emotion, and evaluation of spontaneous generation of emotional expression in response to another person's emotion, a behavior that is characteristically deficient in ASD. The aim of this study was to assess eye gaze patterns during scripted and spontaneous emotion expression tasks, and to assess quality of emotional expression in relation to gaze patterns. Youth with ASD fixated less to the eye region of stimuli showing surprise (F(1,19.88) = 4.76, p = .04 for spontaneous task; F(1,19.88) = 3.93, p = .06 for the recognition task), and they expressed emotion less clearly than did the typically developing sample (F(1, 35) = 6.38, p = .02) in the spontaneous task, but there was not a significant group difference in the scripted task across the emotions. Results do not, however, suggest altered eye gaze as a candidate mechanism for decreased ability to express an emotion. Findings from this research inform our understanding of the social difficulties associated with emotion recognition and expression deficits.
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    Monkeys and Humans Share a Common Computation for Face/Voice Integration
    Chandrasekaran, Chandramouli; Lemus, Luis; Trubanova, Andrea; Gondan, Matthias; Ghazanfar, Asif A. (PLOS, 2011-09-29)
    Speech production involves the movement of the mouth and other regions of the face resulting in visual motion cues. These visual cues enhance intelligibility and detection of auditory speech. As such, face-to-face speech is fundamentally a multisensory phenomenon. If speech is fundamentally multisensory, it should be reflected in the evolution of vocal communication: similar behavioral effects should be observed in other primates. Old World monkeys share with humans vocal production biomechanics and communicate face-to-face with vocalizations. It is unknown, however, if they, too, combine faces and voices to enhance their perception of vocalizations. We show that they do: monkeys combine faces and voices in noisy environments to enhance their detection of vocalizations. Their behavior parallels that of humans performing an identical task. We explored what common computational mechanism(s) could explain the pattern of results we observed across species. Standard explanations or models such as the principle of inverse effectiveness and a ‘‘race’’ model failed to account for their behavior patterns. Conversely, a ‘‘superposition model’’, positing the linear summation of activity patterns in response to visual and auditory components of vocalizations, served as a straightforward but powerful explanatory mechanism for the observed behaviors in both species. As such, it represents a putative homologous mechanism for integrating faces and voices across primates.
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    The Natural Statistics of Audiovisual Speech
    Chandrasekaran, Chandramouli; Trubanova, Andrea; Stillitano, Sébastien; Caplier, Alice; Ghazanfar, Asif A. (PLOS, 2009-07-17)
    Humans, like other animals, are exposed to a continuous stream of signals, which are dynamic, multimodal, extended, and time varying in nature. This complex input space must be transduced and sampled by our sensory systems and transmitted to the brain where it can guide the selection of appropriate actions. To simplify this process, it’s been suggested that the brain exploits statistical regularities in the stimulus space. Tests of this idea have largely been confined to unimodal signals and natural scenes. One important class of multisensory signals for which a quantitative input space characterization is unavailable is human speech. We do not understand what signals our brain has to actively piece together from an audiovisual speech stream to arrive at a percept versus what is already embedded in the signal structure of the stream itself. In essence, we do not have a clear understanding of the natural statistics of audiovisual speech. In the present study, we identified the following major statistical features of audiovisual speech. First, we observed robust correlations and close temporal correspondence between the area of the mouth opening and the acoustic envelope. Second, we found the strongest correlation between the area of the mouth opening and vocal tract resonances. Third, we observed that both area of the mouth opening and the voice envelope are temporally modulated in the 2–7 Hz frequency range. Finally, we show that the timing of mouth movements relative to the onset of the voice is consistently between 100 and 300 ms. We interpret these data in the context of recent neural theories of speech which suggest that speech communication is a reciprocally coupled, multisensory event, whereby the outputs of the signaler are matched to the neural processes of the receiver.
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    The Role of Perspective-Taking on Ability to Recognize Fear
    Trubanova, Andrea; Kim, Inyoung; Coffman, Marika C.; Bell, Martha Ann; Richey, John A.; LaConte, Stephen M.; Gracanin, Denis; White, Susan W. (2015-02-01)
    Impairment in the ability to detect certain emotions, such as fear, is linked to multiple disorders and follows a pattern of interindividual variability and intra-individual stability over time. Deficits in fear recognition are often related to social and interpersonal difficulties but the mechanisms by which this processing deficit might occur are not well understood. One potential mechanism through which impaired fear detection may influence social competency is through diminished perspective-taking, the ability to perceive and consider the point of view of another individual. In the current study, we hypothesized that intraindividual variability in the accuracy of facial emotion recognition is linked to perspective-taking abilities in a well-characterized, non-clinical adult sample. Results indicated that the ability to accurately detect fear in the faces of others was positively correlated with perspective-taking, consistent with initial hypotheses. This relationship appeared to be unique to recognition of fear, as perspective-taking was not significantly associated with recognition of the other basic emotions. Results from this study represent an initial step towards establishing a potential mechanism between some processes of FER and perspective-taking difficulties. It is important to establish the relationship between these processes in a non-clinical adult sample so that we can consider the possibility of a developmental or pathological influence of impoverished perspective-taking on fear perception.
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    Underidentification of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Females: A Case Series Illustrating the Unique Presentation of this Disorder in Young Women
    Trubanova, Andrea; Donlon, Katharine; Kreiser, Nicole L.; Ollendick, Thomas H.; White, Susan W. (Exeley, 2014-05)
    Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is diagnosed more often in males than females, with the male-to-female gender ratio reported to be around 4.3:1 to 5:1. It is possible that the underrecognition of ASD in females partially contributes to this uneven ratio. Recent attention has been placed on understanding the processes that give rise to this gender difference in ASD prevalence. Socialization may contribute to the unique presentation of ASD in females, which may underlie this condition’s subsequent underidentification in this group. The purpose of this case series is to demonstrate how symptoms of ASD may uniquely manifest in females without co-occurring intellectual impairment. An examination of three case examples of young women diagnosed with ASD will illustrate the processes that contribute to the atypical manifestation and underidentification of ASD in females. Across cases, the females in this study demonstrated shared symptom presentations within three domains: 1) unique core symptom manifestation (insistence on sameness, lack of social engagement, and social processing difficulties); 2) heightened psychiatric comorbidities with internalizing disorders (anxiety, depression, and borderline personality traits); and 3) emotional dysregulation. These three domains reflect specific processes that may help to explain the underidentification of ASD in females via diagnostic overshadowing. Consideration of atypical symptom presentations, heightened comorbidities, and emotion regulation difficulties may help with the understanding of why ASD symptoms in females are commonly underidentified or identified later than they are in males. Social difficulties in combination with internalizing psychiatric disorders and emotional dysregulation may lead to the development of a specific symptom presentation in females that obscures the detection of ASD symptoms. Suggestions for clinical practice are made to promote the accurate identification of ASD and to inform case formulation and treatment planning.