Abstract
BackgroundVisual behavior is known to be atypical in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Monitor-based eye-tracking studies have measured several of these atypicalities in individuals with Autism. While atypical behaviors are known to be accentuated during natural interactions, few studies have been made on gaze behavior in natural interactions. In this study we focused on i) whether the findings done in laboratory settings are also visible in a naturalistic interaction; ii) whether new atypical elements appear when studying visual behavior across the whole field of view.Methodology/Principal FindingsTen children with ASD and ten typically developing children participated in a dyadic interaction with an experimenter administering items from the Early Social Communication Scale (ESCS). The children wore a novel head-mounted eye-tracker, measuring gaze direction and presence of faces across the child's field of view. The analysis of gaze episodes to faces revealed that children with ASD looked significantly less and for shorter lapses of time at the experimenter. The analysis of gaze patterns across the child's field of view revealed that children with ASD looked downwards and made more extensive use of their lateral field of view when exploring the environment.Conclusions/SignificanceThe data gathered in naturalistic settings confirm findings previously obtained only in monitor-based studies. Moreover, the study allowed to observe a generalized strategy of lateral gaze in children with ASD when they were looking at the objects in their environment.
Highlights
Impairments in social interaction and communication are the main characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) [1]
Our study proposes focuses on the natural interaction between a child and an unknown experimenter in a semistructured setting, and comprises a subset of the Early Social Communication Scale (ESCS) [37,38], an instrument designed to assess social development before the development of language, which is used both in clinical assessment of ASD and in research studies on ASD [38]
Gaze episodes to faces We begin with the results on the analysis of gaze episodes directed towards the face of the experimenter. Both groups kept the face of the experimenter within their field of view (In FoV) for comparable amounts of time
Summary
Impairments in social interaction and communication are the main characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) [1]. Individuals with ASD show a weaker tendency to initiate and maintain eye to eye contact with other people, and give less attention to faces [7,8]. This is true when the face stimuli are shown as isolated images [9,10] and is accentuated when faces are presented in a natural social interaction [11,12]. Visual behavior is known to be atypical in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). In this study we focused on i) whether the findings done in laboratory settings are visible in a naturalistic interaction; ii) whether new atypical elements appear when studying visual behavior across the whole field of view
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