Gazefinder as a clinical supplementary tool for discriminating between autism spectrum disorder and typical development in male adolescents and adults

Abstract

BackgroundGaze abnormality is a diagnostic criterion for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, few easy-to-use clinical tools exist to evaluate the unique eye-gaze patterns of ASD. Recently, we developed Gazefinder, an all-in-one eye-tracking system for early detection of ASD in toddlers. Because abnormal gaze patterns have been documented in various ASD age groups, we predicted that Gazefinder might also detect gaze abnormality in adolescents and adults. In this study, we tested whether Gazefinder could identify unique gaze patterns in adolescents and adults with ASD.MethodsWe measured the percentage of eye fixation time allocated to particular objects depicted in movies (i.e., eyes and mouth in human face movies, upright and inverted biological motion in movies that presented these stimuli simultaneously, and people and geometry in movies that presented these stimuli simultaneously) by male adolescents and adults with ASD (N = 26) and age-matched males with typical development (TD; N = 35). We compared these percentages between the two groups (ASD and TD) and with scores on the social responsiveness scale (SRS). Further, we conducted discriminant analyses to determine if fixation times allocated to particular objects could be used to discriminate between individuals with and without ASD.ResultsCompared with the TD group, the ASD group showed significantly less fixation time at locations of salient social information (i.e., eyes in the movie of human faces without lip movement and people in the movie of people and geometry), while there were no significant groupwise differences in the responses to movies of human faces with lip movement or biological motion. In a within-group correlation analysis, a few of the fixation-time items correlated with SRS, although most of them did not. No items significantly correlated with SRS in both ASD and TD groups. The percentage fixation times to eyes and people, which exhibited large effect sizes for the group difference, could differentiate ASD and TD with a sensitivity of 81.0 % and a specificity of 80.0 %.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that Gazefinder is potentially a valuable and easy-to-use tool for objectively measuring unique gaze patterns and discriminating between ASD and TD in male adolescents and adults.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13229-016-0083-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

In Search of Biomarkers for Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…A few studies in high‐functioning adolescents and young adults with ASD have investigated the correlations of the eye tracking with standardized assessments of clinical dimensions. Some of these have found an association between the total fixation times in looking at the mouth and stronger language and social skills in various measures of socialization, ADOS [Klin et al, ], VABS [McPartland, Webb, Keehn, & Dawson, ; Norbury et al, ], Social Responsiveness Scale [Fujioka et al, ], and Autism Diagnostic Interview‐Revised (ADI‐R) [Zamzow et al, ]. Moreover, correlations between fixation on faces and the overall severity of autism as assessed by the Childhood Autism Rating Scale and the ADI‐R [Grynszpan & Nadel, ] have also been described.…”

Application of eye trackers for understanding mental disorders: Cases for schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder

“…The other part of the reason is the data analysis. In some studies, the analyzed data were simply the density of the gaze point in a picture, while in others, a temporal analysis of eye movement was conducted . A few studies included additional interpretations of eye movement data, such as a discrimination analysis of patients and an interpretation of eye movement in combination with the participant's genetic background …”

“…As stated above, ASD is diagnosed in early childhood, but the majority of research experiments involving eye movement has been conducted in adults or adolescents . Some reports have described oculomotor behavior in school‐age children with ASD and compared it with age‐matched controls .…”

“…In 2016, a study group conducted a discrimination analysis using an eye tracker on adolescents and adults with ASD . They measured the eye movements of 26 ASD patients and 35 age‐matched controls and differentiated between both groups efficiently.…”

Attenuated relationship between salivary oxytocin levels and attention to social information in adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder: a comparative study

“…For example, individuals with ASD tend to gaze less at the face [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], especially at the eye region [3,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], look less at biological motion [20][21][22], and pay greater attention to geometric shapes when people and geometric shapes are presented simultaneously [11,[23][24][25][26] than do typically developed (TD) individuals. These unique gaze patterns for the face, eyes, and geometry have been reported in both children [3-5, 7-10, 13-15, 19, 23-26] and adults [6,11,12,[16][17][18][19], although the unique gaze pattern for biological motion was reported only in children. Furthermore, fixation times for social information have also been shown to be negatively correlated with the severity of social deficits [12,14,15,25].…”