Eye‐Tracking as a Measure of Responsiveness to Joint Attention in Infants at Risk for Autism

Abstract

Reduced responsiveness to joint attention (RJA), as assessed by the Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS), is predictive of both subsequent language difficulties and autism diagnosis. Eye-tracking measurement of RJA is a promising prognostic tool because it is highly precise and standardized. However, the construct validity of eye-tracking assessments of RJA has not been established. By comparing RJA in an eye-tracking paradigm to RJA during the ESCS, the current study evaluated the construct validity of an eye-tracking assessment of RJA for 18-month-old infant siblings of children with autism. Relations between measures of RJA and concurrent language skills and autistic symptomatology were assessed. Correlations between measures of ESCS RJA and eye-tracking RJA were statistically significant, but few relations between either ESCS or eye-tracking assessments of RJA and language or symptoms were observed. This study establishes the construct validity of eye-tracking assessments of RJA.

Preference for Dynamic Human Images and Gaze‐Following Abilities in Preterm Infants at 6 and 12 Months of Age: An Eye‐Tracking Study

“…De Schuy- 234 mer et al (2011) reported that compared with full-term infants, preterm infants showed less time looking toward the object cued by an experimenter at 9 months, but 3-and 6-month-old preterm and full-term infants' gaze followed equally during a triadic social interaction. The discrepancy between our results and the results of De Schuymer et al (2011) might be due to a difference of the experimental setting because a previous study indicates that there are some distinctive parts concerning the gaze-following performance of infants in-between the eye-tracking assessment and naturalistic face-to-face interaction (Navab, Gillespie-Lynch, Johnson, Sigman, & Hutman, 2012). Using eye tracking, a previous study showed that the proportion of accurate first gaze following was significantly lower in 4-month-old full-term infants compared with 4and 7-month-old healthy preterm and 7-month-old full-term infants (Peña et al, 2013), indicating that early visual experience accompanied by preterm birth might accelerate gaze following at 4 months, not 7 months corrected age.…”

Decreased attention to object size information in scale errors performers

“…The final sample of young children consisted of 52 children (age M = 22.1 months, SD=2.3; 33 girls).Out of the 36 older children, eye-tracking data from 13 children who did not meet our data quality criteria were excluded, leaving a final sample of 23 children (M = 51.7 months, SD=3.6; 8 girls). The large number of participants excluded based on their eye-tracking data (30% of young children and 36% of older children) is common in eye-tracking studies (e.g.,Daum, Attig, Gunawan, Prinz, & Gredebäck, 2012;McMurray & Aslin, 2004;Navab, Gillespie-Lynch, Johnson, Sigman, & Hutman, 2012).…”

Advances in Eye Tracking in Infancy Research

“…Since that time, there has been an explosion of research using eye tracking with infants. Researchers have examined infants’ memory processes (Richmond & Nelson, 2009), perceptual learning (Johnson, Slemmer, & Amso, 2004), understanding of joint attention (Navab, Gillespie Lynch, Johnson, Sigman, & Hutman, 2011), face processing (Liu et al., 2010; Peltola, Leppänen, Vogel‐Farley, Hietanen, & Nelson, 2009), and many other topics. Eye‐tracking procedures have been successfully implemented in infants as young as 3 months (Turati, Di Giorgio, Bardi, & Simion, 2010) and have been used with atypically developing populations or infants at risk of atypical developmental outcomes (Farzin, Rivera, & Whitney, 2010; Merin, Young, Ozonoff, & Rogers, 2007).…”