The impact of social complexity on the visual exploration of others' actions in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder

F Robain,B Glaser,N Kojovic,M Schaer,S Solazzo,M Franchini

doi:10.1186/s40359-021-00553-2

Abstract

BackgroundTypical development of socio-communicative skills relies on keen observation of others. It thus follows that decreased social attention negatively impacts the subsequent development of socio-communicative abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In addition, studies indicate that social attention is modulated by context and that greater social difficulties are observed in more socially demanding situations. Our study aims to investigate the effect of social complexity on visual exploration of others’ actions in preschoolers.MethodsTo investigate the impact of social complexity, we used an eye-tracking paradigm with 26 typically developing preschoolers (TD, age = 3.60 ± 1.55) and 37 preschoolers with ASD (age = 3.55 ± 1.21). Participants were shown videos of two children engaging in socially simple play (parallel) versus socially complex play (interactive). We subsequently quantified the time spent and fixation duration on faces, objects, bodies, as well as the background and the number of spontaneous gaze shifts between socially relevant areas of interest.ResultsIn the ASD group, we observed decreased time spent on faces. Social complexity (interactive play) elicited changes in visual exploration patterns in both groups. From the parallel to the interactive condition, we observed a shift towards socially relevant parts of the scene, a decrease in fixation duration, as well as an increase in spontaneous gaze shifts between faces and objects though there were fewer in the ASD group.LimitationsOur results need to be interpreted cautiously due to relatively small sample sizes and may be relevant to male preschoolers, given our male-only sample and reported phenotypic differences between males and females.ConclusionOur results suggest that similar to TD children, though to a lesser extent, visual exploration patterns in ASD are modulated by context. Children with ASD that were less sensitive to context modulation showed decreased socio-communicative skills or higher levels of symptoms. Our findings support using naturalistic designs to capture socio-communicative deficits in ASD.

Highlights

Typical development of socio-communicative skills relies on keen observation of others
Our results suggest that similar to typically developing (TD) children, though to a lesser extent, visual exploration patterns in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are modulated by context
Our analyses revealed that the ASD and TD groups attended to both scenes for equivalent amounts of time, we did not identify an effect of diagnosis (F(1,61) = 3.496; p > 0.05) on the percentage of time spent looking at the scenes

Summary

Introduction

Typical development of socio-communicative skills relies on keen observation of others. It follows that decreased social attention negatively impacts the subsequent development of socio-communicative abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Robain et al BMC Psychol (2021) 9:50 link between atypical visual exploration and social difficulties in autism using eye-tracking technology The majority of these studies have shown decreased attention to social stimuli in individuals with ASD (often referred to as a lack of social orienting) and less time spent on the eye region compared to people with typical development [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9] which were more evident when using dynamic (as opposed to static) stimuli [10] and naturalistic social interactions [2]. While such study designs allow for the quantification of joint attention impairments at differential stages in ASD [22,23,24], they can be unrepresentative of daily life

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