Do minimally verbal and verbally fluent individuals with autism spectrum disorder differ in their viewing patterns of dynamic social scenes?

Skwerer, Daniela Plesa; Brukilacchio, Briana; Chu, Andrea; Eggleston, Brady; Meyer, Steven; Tager–Flusberg, Helen

doi:10.1177/1362361319845563

Cited by 19 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…Our findings indicated that individuals with ASD with a higher IQ appear to look less at heads and bodies specifically in the context in which shared focus was on the activity, suggesting that individuals with higher cognitive ability direct more attention to the focus of the actors’ gaze. This finding suggests caution regarding the specificity of head-looking across the heterogeneity of ASD and is consistent with other recent work demonstrating that children with ASD who are minimally verbal are less likely to follow gaze shifts relative to age-matched verbal children with ASD within a spontaneous looking task [ 60 ]. One possibility is that children with a higher IQ are more likely to share focus with other people, unlike children with lower IQ, which may ultimately impact opportunities for implicit social learning.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Social attention to activities in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder: effects of context and age

et al. 2020

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Background Diminished visual monitoring of faces and activities of others is an early feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It is uncertain whether deficits in activity monitoring, identified using a homogeneous set of stimuli, persist throughout the lifespan in ASD, and thus, whether they could serve as a biological indicator (“biomarker”) of ASD. We investigated differences in visual attention during activity monitoring in children and adult participants with autism compared to a control group of participants without autism. Methods Eye movements of participants with autism (n = 122; mean age [SD] = 14.5 [8.0] years) and typically developing (TD) controls (n = 40, age = 16.4 [13.3] years) were recorded while they viewed a series of videos depicting two female actors conversing while interacting with their hands over a shared task. Actors either continuously focused their gaze on each other’s face (mutual gaze) or on the shared activity area (shared focus). Mean percentage looking time was computed for the activity area, actors’ heads, and their bodies. Results Compared to TD participants, participants with ASD looked longer at the activity area (mean % looking time: 58.5% vs. 53.8%, p < 0.005) but less at the heads (15.2% vs. 23.7%, p < 0.0001). Additionally, within-group differences in looking time were observed between the mutual gaze and shared focus conditions in both participants without ASD (activity: Δ = − 6.4%, p < 0.004; heads: Δ = + 3.5%, p < 0.02) and participants with ASD (bodies: Δ = + 1.6%, p < 0.002). Limitations The TD participants were not as well characterized as the participants with ASD. Inclusion criteria regarding the cognitive ability [intelligence quotient (IQ) > 60] limited the ability to include individuals with substantial intellectual disability. Conclusions Differences in attention to faces could constitute a feature discriminative between individuals with and without ASD across the lifespan, whereas between-group differences in looking at activities may shift with development. These findings may have applications in the search for underlying biological indicators specific to ASD. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02668991.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Social attention to activities in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder: effects of context and age

et al. 2020

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“…To account for within-participant variability in % Valid Time, the model included a participant identifier as the random intercept. The model was fit by using the R package "nlme" (Pinheiro et al, 2018) and maximizing the restricted log-likelihood function. Significance of the fixed effects was assessed using the analysis of variance type III sum of squares and the Wald χ 2 test (Supplementary Table 2), as implemented in the R package "car" (Fox & Weisberg, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context Modulates Attention to Faces in Dynamic Social Scenes in Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Kaliukhovich

Manyakov

Bangerter

et al. 2021

J Autism Dev Disord

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Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been found to view social scenes differently compared to typically developing (TD) peers, but results can vary depending on context and age. We used eye-tracking in children and adults (age 6–63) to assess allocation of visual attention in a dynamic social orientation paradigm previously used only in younger children. The ASD group (n = 94) looked less at the actor’s face compared to TD (n = 38) when they were engaged in activity (mean percentage of looking time, ASD = 30.7% vs TD = 34.9%; Cohen’s d = 0.56; p value < 0.03) or looking at a moving toy (24.5% vs 33.2%; d = 0.65; p value < 0.001). Findings indicate that there are qualitative differences in allocation of visual attention to social stimuli across ages in ASD.ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02668991.

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“…Beyond characterizing the lexical profile of PV-MV children with ASD, we tested whether the observed differences could be attributed to social weaknesses that are characteristic of ASD. The lower proportion of people words could be related to lower rates of social orienting and reduced attention to people’s faces that have been identified in children with ASD and specifically minimally verbal children with ASD (Dawson et al, 2004; Plesa Skwerer et al, 2019). Our word-level data also provide extra detail to the reduced proportion of people words that we identified.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, early social abilities may link to later language abilities. A recent study tracked eye-gaze patterns 8 CHARACTERIZING MINIMALLY VERBAL ASD LEXICONS of minimally verbal and verbally fluent children with ASD while they viewed social scenes and found minimally verbal children with ASD spent less time looking at faces at critical moments that provided insight into the actor's behaviors (Plesa Skwerer et al, 2019). The study also found that, during a social scene with an adult, a moving object, and static object, minimally verbal children spent a similar amount of time looking at the moving object, but verbally fluent children spent more time looking at the adult's face.…”

Section: Social Attentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Taken together, the evidence is consistent with some of the language impairments observed in children with ASD being rooted in their social deficits, rather than a specific language impairment or aberrant learning mechanism per se. Although social engagement and attention have been emphasized as important intervention targets in minimally verbal children with ASD (DiStefano et al, 2016; Plesa Skwerer et al, 2019), it is important to note that other child characteristics, such as motor skills, also have shown associations with social skills and language skills in broad samples of children with ASD (Bhat et al, 2012; LeBarton & Landa, 2019; Mody et al, 2017). In a recent study of minimally verbal children with ASD, Pecukonis and colleagues (2019) demonstrated that motor imitation abilities, a skill classified as a social communication variable, were associated with concurrent expressive vocabulary abilities even after controlling for nonverbal cognitive skills.…”

Section: Social Attentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Characterizing the early vocabulary profiles of preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder

Haebig

Jiménez

Cox

et al. 2020

Autism

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Children with autism spectrum disorder often have significant language delays. But do they learn language differently than neurotypical toddlers? We compared the lexical skills of 64 preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder to 461 vocabulary-size-matched typically developing toddlers. We also examined social features of verb knowledge using a novel collection of social ratings. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more verbs than typically developing toddlers. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more action and food words, while typically developing toddlers produced proportionally more animal, people words, and animal sounds and sound effects. Children with autism spectrum disorder also produced “mommy” and “daddy” at lower rates. We discuss how these differences may reflect an association between lexical development and weaknesses in social communication. Lay abstract Although preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder represent a significant portion of the autism spectrum disorder population, we have a limited understanding of and characterization of them. Although it is a given that their lexical profiles contain fewer words, it is important to determine whether (a) the words preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder produce are similar to the first words typically developing children produce or (b) there are unique features of the limited words that preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder produce. The current study compared the early word profiles of preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder to vocabulary-matched typically developing toddlers. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more verbs than typically developing toddlers. Also, children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more action and food words, while typically developing toddlers produced proportionally more animal words, animal sounds and sound effects, and people words. Children with autism spectrum disorder also produced “mommy” and “daddy” at lower rates. Our findings identified several areas of overlap in early word learning; however, our findings also point to differences that may be connected to core weaknesses in social communication (i.e. people words). The findings highlight words and categories that could serve as useful targets for communication intervention with preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder.

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Do minimally verbal and verbally fluent individuals with autism spectrum disorder differ in their viewing patterns of dynamic social scenes?

Cited by 19 publications

References 73 publications

Social attention to activities in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder: effects of context and age

Social attention to activities in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder: effects of context and age

Context Modulates Attention to Faces in Dynamic Social Scenes in Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Characterizing the early vocabulary profiles of preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder

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