Visual Scanning and Pupillary Responses in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Using eye-tracking technology we investigated visual scanning and pupillary responses to face and non-face stimuli in nine children (M = 49.6 months) with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to six mental-age and nine chronological-age matched children. The results revealed a significant decrease in visual scanning to landscapes. In addition, the ASD group showed pupillary constriction to children's faces, while control groups showed pupillary dilation. Visual scanning responses to landscapes had a negative correlation with the Behavior subscale of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Generic for the ASD group. Potential use of these measures as early indicators of ASD is discussed.

Extinction of Over-selected Stimuli Causes Emergence of Under-selected Cues in Higher-functioning Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

“…In support of such a suggestion, analysis of eye movements in children with learning disabilities, who also exhibit stimulus over-selectivity, reveal that these children do not scan all the stimuli present . Similar findings have been reported for populations with ASD (see Anderson et al 2006;Van der Geest et al 2002). However, it should be noted the literature has yielded some inconsistent results (cf.…”

Abnormal Transient Pupillary Light Reflex in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…van Engeland et al (1991) used geometric figures of differing complexity as the visual stimuli in a habituation paradigm and found no significant differences in baseline pupil size or constriction amplitude in children with autism. Using face and non-face social stimuli (e.g., children's and animal's faces vs. toy and landscape images), Anderson et al (2006) induced changes in pupil size. Children with autism showed pupillary constriction in response to human faces, whereas age-matched controls showed pupillary dilation.…”

Classificador para auxílio ao diagnóstico de TEA baseado em um modelo computacional de atenção visual

“…Nevertheless, the sample size is also pointed as a limitation in the majority of the studies [27,32,53,52]. As demonstrated in section 3.2, only 19% of the studies made experiments with more then a hundred individuals.…”

“…Other reasons that explain the exclusion of some participants are: visual impairments [27,28], failure to meet all the criteria used for the study [29,30,31], the participants lack of attention caused by agitation, sleep, crying or complaining during the experiment [32,33,34] or the fact that the participant could not remain with the equipment -in case of the head-mounted device [35].…”

“…There are some works that use the chronological age as a matching criteria among the groups with ASD, control group and other disorders group [37,23,27,38,25]. Other studies use verbal or nonverbal intelligence measurements, [39,40].…”