耶魯大學近期的一個實驗

瑞雪

這是六月十一日登在<紐約時報> (New York Times) 的報道。它顯示了教孩子和人有目光接觸有多麼重要。我把它檢要緊的翻了翻﹐原文附在後面。



<通過自閉症患者的眼睛看世界>

耶魯大學的科研人員利用高科技軍用眼睛跟蹤系統﹐向我們展示自閉症患者眼中的世界。

在發表在近期的<美國心理雜誌>的一個實驗中﹐科研人員讓一位高功能自閉症成人和一位同樣年齡﹐性別﹐IQ的人一同觀看一部充滿情感衝突的電影﹐然後比較他們眼睛的移動情況。

實驗顯示兩個人看電影的方式是完全不同的。當影片中酗酒的先生和喋喋不休的太太臉對臉的對峙時﹐非自閉症成人的眼光在他們的眼睛中間游走﹐自閉症成人也來回看--但是集中在演員的嘴上。

當影片中的太太和一個小伙子打情罵俏﹐先生在背景裡時隱時現時﹐非自閉症成人的眼光追隨著三個人成三角形﹐自閉症成人的眼光從沒看先生或任何人的眼睛。

實驗的領導者Klin博士認為自閉症的中心問題是“嚴重社交障礙”。這個實驗令科研人員明白自閉症患者是如何收集信息的。另外一個跟進實驗結果--自閉症患者傾向看嘴或物體﹐非自閉症看眼睛--解釋自閉症患者少有眼光接觸和難于記住別人的臉。

正常嬰兒可以早在三個月大就學會看眼睛而不是看嘴來搜尋感情和意向的信息。

儘管一些人認為自閉兒在出生前就有腦損傷﹐大部份自閉兒都是三至四歲﹐語言和行為問題很明顯了才確診。耶魯大學已經開始實驗跟蹤眼睛能否早確診。

耶魯大學的實驗和一個正在發展中的學說(theory)一致。自閉症的問題不僅在于腦子結構不正常﹐也在于腦子發展由於有限的輸入(集中在物而不是人)而受影響。



就是在患難中也是歡歡喜喜的；因為知道患難生忍耐，忍耐生老練，老練生盼望； --罗马书 5:3-4



<font size="1" color="darkblue">Edited by - 瑞雪 on 2002/07/10  05:57:12</font>

瑞雪

Experiment Offers Look Through Eyes of Autism

By JOHN O'NEIL



Enlisting Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and a high-tech eye-tracking device developed for the military, researchers at Yale ran experiments that came closer than anything yet to offering a look at the world as seen through the eyes of people with autism.



In one experiment, described in the current issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry, the researchers compared the eye movements of a highly intelligent autistic adult and a control subject of the same age, sex and I.Q. as they watched the relentless emotional conflicts of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"



What the experiment showed was that the two subjects were seeing the movie in starkly different ways. When Mr. Burton and Ms. Taylor, playing an alcoholic professor and his shrewish wife, confronted each other face to face, the gaze of the nonautistic adult swung intently between their eyes, while the autistic subjects looked back and forth, as well — but focused on the actors' mouths.



When Ms. Taylor flirted with George Segal, playing a young professor, as her husband lurked in the background, the gaze of the nonautistic adult described a triangle as he followed the expressions of all three. The autistic man never looked at Mr. Burton or anyone's eyes.



Dr. Ami Klin, a psychologist at the Yale Child Study Center who was the lead author of the study, said his team chose the movie because it presented complex social situations that involved just four characters and had few distracting inanimate objects.



To track eye movements, the researchers used a device made by Iscan of Burlington, Mass., said Warren Jones, a research associate who worked on the technical end of the experiment. He said eye-tracking technology had originally been developed largely with military funds to create a look-and-load system for fighter pilots.



The system in the Yale experiment looked like a baseball cap with two cameras attached. One camera, at cheek level, faces forward and records the field of view. An infrared camera on the bill points down to a piece of glass that hangs in front of the eyes and acts as a mirror, letting the cameras capture eye position changes without blocking the subject's view.



Dr. Klin said the device offered a tool to deal with one of the most frustrating research problems in studying autism, a little-understood brain disorder whose diagnosis has become increasingly common. Although autism affects a broad range of skills, the Yale researchers consider its central feature to be "a profound social disability," in Dr. Klin's words.



But when social tasks are broken down into discrete components suitable for research, autistic children can perform far better than in the hurly-burly of real social challenges like recess, he said.



The eye-tracking device allows researchers "to see what they see" while engaged in a more natural task, said Dr. Klin. "But we're less interested in what they understood than in how they searched for meaning," he said.



What the researchers saw in the "Virginia Woolf" study and in a larger follow-up trial — that autistic people tend to look at mouths or extraneous objects when nonautistic people look at eyes — fits in with other classic signs of autism like limited eye contact and difficulty in remembering faces.



Dr. Klin called it especially intriguing because normally developing infants learn, often as early as 3 months, to look at people's eyes instead of their mouths when searching for information about feelings and intentions.



Although autism is thought to affect brain development even before birth, in most children it is not diagnosed until age 3 or 4 or even later, when symptoms like language deficiencies or repetitive behaviors become evident. The Yale group has begun experiments to see whether eye-tracking tests could lead to earlier diagnoses because the best results come from intensive treatments that begin as soon as possible.



Dr. Klin said eye-tracking fitted into a developing theory about the delay in symptoms. The problem is not just abnormal brain structure, but a stunting of brain development because of the limited social input that comes from a focus on objects rather than people.



"We are," he said, "the sum of all our experiences."



http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/11/health/11EYE.html



就是在患難中也是歡歡喜喜的；因為知道患難生忍耐，忍耐生老練，老練生盼望； --罗马书 5:3-4

wzyb

谢谢瑞雪，让我们更加深刻地认识到教自闭症孩子目光接触的极端重要性。

xcl

瑞雪：

    你好！前段时间还有家长说不要过于强迫孩子改掉习惯，而我看了几个取得进步孩子的家长都是在强迫孩子学会做一些事情后，让他们对不容易学会的事情感兴趣。目光对视也是一种交流。我要把你的这篇译文推荐给武汉康复训练基地的老师。建议她们加强这方面的训练。谢谢你！！！