Attention Allocation in ASD: a Review and Meta-analysis of Eye-Tracking Studies

Chita-Tegmark, Meia

doi:10.1007/s40489-016-0077-x

Cited by 98 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…A prominent theory of autism is that abnormalities in early gaze behaviors may explain why children with ASD develop difficulties with social interactions (Klin et al, 2015). The hypothesis is that weaker gaze preferences to social stimuli (Bedford et al, 2012;Chawarska et al, 2012;Chita-Tegmark, 2016;Constantino et al, 2017;Falck-Ytter et al, 2013;W Jones et al, 2008;Warren Jones & Klin, 2013;Klin et al, 2009;Papagiannopoulou et al, 2014;Riby & Hancock, 2009;Rice et al, 2012;Q. Wang et al, 2018) create a situation where children with ASD lack exposure to socially important information and develop gaze behaviors that are less appropriate for social interactions.…”

Section: The Importance Of Gaze Behavior In Social Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been proposed that gaze abnormalities in children with ASD may reduce their early exposure to social information and impair their ability of learn basic social skills (Klin, Shultz, & Jones, 2015). Indeed, a common behavioral symptoms of ASD is reduced eye contact (Senju & Johnson, 2009;Tanaka & Sung, 2016) and previous eye tracking studies have reported that children with ASD exhibit weaker gaze preferences for people (Moore et al, 2018;Pierce et al, 2016), faces (Chawarska, Macari, & Shic, 2012;Chita-Tegmark, 2016;Constantino et al, 2017;W Jones, Carr, & Klin, 2008;Warren Jones & Klin, 2013;Papagiannopoulou, Chitty, Hermens, Hickie, & Lagopoulos, 2014;Riby & Hancock, 2009;Rice, Moriuchi, Jones, & Klin, 2012;Q. Wang, Campbell, Macari, Chawarska, & Shic, 2018), biological motion (Falck-Ytter, Rehnberg, & Bölte, 2013;Klin, Lin, Gorrindo, Ramsay, & Jones, 2009), and following the gazes of others (Bedford et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Children with autism observe social interactions in an idiosyncratic manner

Avni

Meiri

Bar-Sinai

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Previous eye tracking studies have reported that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) fixate less on faces in comparison to controls. To properly understand social interactions, however, children must gaze not only at faces, but also at actions, gestures, body movements, contextual details, and objects, thereby creating specific gaze patterns when observing specific interactions. We presented three different movies of social interactions to 111 children (71 with ASD) who watched each of the movies twice. Typically developing children viewed the movies in a remarkably predictable and reproducible manner, exhibiting gaze patterns that were similar to the mean gaze pattern of other controls, with strong correlations across individuals (inter-subject correlations) and across movie presentations (intra-subject correlations). In contrast, children with ASD exhibited significantly more variable/idiosyncratic gaze patterns that differed from the mean gaze pattern of controls and were weakly correlated across individuals and presentations. Most importantly, quantification of gaze idiosyncrasy in individual children, enabled separation of ASD and control children with higher sensitivity and specificity than traditional measures such as time gazing at faces.Individual magnitudes of gaze idiosyncrasy were also significantly correlated with ASD severity and significantly correlated across movies and movie presentations, demonstrating their clinical sensitivity and reliability. These results suggest that gaze idiosyncrasy is a potent behavioral abnormality that characterizes many children with ASD and may contribute to their impaired social development. Quantification of gaze idiosyncrasy in individual children may aid in assessing their ASD severity over time and in response to treatments. Lay SummaryTypically developing children watch movies of social interactions in a reliable and predictable manner, attending faces, gestures, body movements, and objects that are relevant to the social interaction and its narrative. Here, we demonstrate that children with ASD watch such movies with significantly more variable/idiosyncratic gaze patterns that differ across individuals and across movie presentations. We demonstrate that quantifying this variability is a very potent way of identifying children with ASD and determining the severity of their social ASD symptoms.

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Section: The Importance Of Gaze Behavior In Social Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children with autism observe social interactions in an idiosyncratic manner

Avni

Meiri

Bar-Sinai

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…10 The massive methodological and sampling heterogeneity across studies makes definitive conclusions regarding the exact nature of gaze abnormalities unclear. Recent meta-analyses have suggested small-to-medium reductions in looking to socially relevant regions, particularly eye and whole face regions, 7 and increased gaze to less relevant regions of the stimulus (e.g., nonsocial regions), 11,12 including extraneous objects and non-core face regions (e.g., hair, ears, etc.). However, these reviews had limited focus, emphasized single effects within studies when most studies include multiple comparisons across different stimuli and ROIs, and/or examined only one or two types of stimuli.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Meta-Analysis of Gaze Differences to Social and Nonsocial Information Between Individuals With and Without Autism

Frazier

Strauss

Klingemier

et al. 2017

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psych

257

221

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Objective Numerous studies have identified abnormal gaze in individuals with autism. Yet only a limited number of findings have been replicated, the magnitude of effects is unclear, and the pattern of gaze differences across stimuli remains poorly understood. To address these gaps, we conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of autism eye tracking studies. Method PubMed and manual search of 1,132 publications were used to identify studies comparing looking behavior to social and/or nonsocial stimuli between individuals with autism and controls. Sample characteristics, eye tracking methods, stimulus features, and regions-of-interest (ROI) were coded for each comparison within each study. Multivariate mixed-effects meta-regression analyses examined the impact of study methodology, stimulus features, and ROI on effect sizes derived from comparisons using gaze fixation metrics. Results The search revealed 122 independent studies with 1,155 comparisons. Estimated effect sizes tended to be small-to-medium, but varied substantially across stimuli and ROI. Overall, nonsocial ROIs yielded larger effect sizes than social ROIs; however, eye and whole face regions from stimuli with human interaction produced the largest effects (Hedge’s g=.47 and .50, respectively). Studies with weaker study designs/reporting yielded larger effects, but key effects remained significant and medium-sized, even for high-rigor designs. Conclusion Individuals with autism show a reliable pattern of gaze abnormalities that suggests a basic problem with selecting socially-relevant versus irrelevant information for attention and that is persistent across age and worsens during perception of human interactions. Aggregation of gaze abnormalities across stimuli and ROI could yield clinically useful risk assessment and quantitative, objective outcome measures.

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“…These findings build on the promise of eye-tracking as a feasible and reliable biomarker INTRODUCTION Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant impairments in social communication, restricted interests, and the presence of repetitive and stereotyped behaviors (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Within the research on social communication deficits in ASD, there has been specific interest in attention to faces or social stimuli across the lifespan (for review, see Guillon et al, 2014;Chita-Tegmark, 2016). Specifically, it has been hypothesized that deficits in social attention (e.g., reduced attention to social stimuli as a whole or atypical allocation of attention to social stimuli) may cause reduced social processing and a loss of relevant information necessary for the development of appropriate social functioning.…”

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confidence: 99%

Atypical Social Attention and Emotional Face Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Insights From Face Scanning and Pupillometry

Reisinger

Shaffer

Horn

et al. 2020

Front. Integr. Neurosci.

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Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience | www.frontiersin.org February 2020 | Volume 13 | Article 76 Reisinger et al. Social Attention in ASDfor identifying social attention and emotion recognition deficits in ASD. Detecting differences in emotion recognition explicitly through facial scanning was not as clear. Specific mechanisms within the eye-tracking paradigm may be viable options for assessing treatment-specific outcomes.

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Attention Allocation in ASD: a Review and Meta-analysis of Eye-Tracking Studies

Cited by 98 publications

References 86 publications

Children with autism observe social interactions in an idiosyncratic manner

Children with autism observe social interactions in an idiosyncratic manner

A Meta-Analysis of Gaze Differences to Social and Nonsocial Information Between Individuals With and Without Autism

Atypical Social Attention and Emotional Face Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Insights From Face Scanning and Pupillometry

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