A systematic review and meta-analysis of eye-tracking studies in children with autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

Aberrant eye gaze mechanisms have been implicated in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Studies of eye movements in children with ASD reveal diminished eye gaze duration and lack of specific eye gaze fixation to the eyes and/or mouth compared with controls. However, findings to date have been contradictory. We examined eye-tracking studies on face processing in children with ASD and conducted meta-analyses to examine whether these children demonstrate atypical fixation on primary facial regions. Twenty eye-tracking studies in children with ASD were reviewed, of which the results from 14 studies were incorporated in the meta-analyses that evaluated fixation duration on (i) eyes (eight studies) and (ii) mouth (six studies). The results reveal that children with ASD have significantly reduced gaze fixation to the eye region of faces. The results of the meta-analyses indicate that ASD patients have significant impairments in gaze fixation to the eyes. On the other hand, no significant difference was uncovered in terms of fixation to the mouth region; however, this finding needs to be interpreted with caution because of the significant heterogeneity in the mouth fixation studies. The findings of this meta-analysis add further clarity to an expanding literature and suggest that specific eye gaze fixation to the eye region may represent a robust biomarker for the condition. The heterogeneity associated with the mouth fixation data precludes any definitive statement as to the robustness of these findings.

Neurogenetic analysis of childhood disintegrative disorder

“…As shown in Fig. 6, we replicate prior findings [32–34] of decreased fixation on the eyes [ t (44)  =  -2.28, P  = 0.03, Cohen’s d  = 0.77] and increased fixation on the mouth [ t (44)  =  2.16, P  = 0.04, Cohen’s d  = 0.76] in HFASD relative to TD. However, while the percentage of time subjects with LFASD spent looking at the eyes did not differ significantly from the HFASD group [ t (37)  =  0.43, P =  0.67, Cohen’s d  = 0.17], CDD subjects fixated eyes significantly more than the HFASD group [ t (35) = 2.19, P  = 0.04, Cohen’s d  = 1.08].…”

Development of an Objective Autism Risk Index Using Remote Eye Tracking

“…The combined sample size of the present study was larger than most of the recently reviewed eye tracking studies in children and included a developmental disability control group larger than almost all previous studies. 8 The group with non-ASD represented a challenging comparison cohort of children referred for clinical evaluation of ASD, with a wide range of clinician-observed and parent-reported autism symptoms, high levels of other behavior problems, and highly overlapping levels of receptive language relative to the group with ASD. In spite of its use in the diagnostic evaluation, several children in the group with non-ASD had ADOS-2 scores overlapping the group with ASD, and all but two children with non-ASD had some form of developmental neuropsychiatric diagnosis.…”

Methods Investigating How Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder Spontaneously Attend to Social Events

“…Although there have been several comprehensive reviews relating to the spontaneous social processing of individuals with ASD when viewing social scenes (Guillon et al 2014;Papagiannopoulou et al 2014), they mainly focused on the eye-tracking paradigm. Such methodologies are typically implemented by presenting participants with static images or video clips of people interacting, and then measuring their visual patterns (Klin et al 2002a).…”