Visual Exploration in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Exploring Age Differences and Dynamic Features Using Recurrence Quantification Analysis

Abstract

Eye‐tracking studies have demonstrated that individuals with autism spectrum disorder sometimes show differences in attention and gaze patterns. This includes preference for certain nonsocial objects, heightened attention to detail, and more difficulty with attention shifting and disengagement, which may be associated with restricted and repetitive behaviors. This study utilized a visual exploration task and replicates findings of reduced number of objects explored and increased fixation duration on high autism interest objects in a large sample of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (n = 129, age 6–54 years) in comparison with a typically developing group. These findings correlated with parent‐reported repetitive behaviors. Additionally, we applied recurrent quantification analysis to enable identification of new eye‐tracking features, which accounted for temporal and spatial differences in viewing patterns. These new features were found to discriminate between autism spectrum disorder and typically developing groups and were correlated with parent‐reported repetitive behaviors. Original and novel eye‐tracking features identified by recurrent quantification analysis differed in their relationships to reported behaviors and were dependent on age. Trial Registration: NCT02299700. Autism Research 2018, 11: 1554–1566. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Lay Summary Using eye‐tracking technology and a visual exploration task, we showed that people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) spend more time looking at particular kinds of objects, like trains and clocks, and look at fewer objects overall than people without ASD. Where people look and the order in which they look at objects were related to the restricted and repetitive behaviors reported by parents. Eye‐tracking may be a useful addition to parent reports for measuring changes in behavior in individuals with ASD.

Exploring Social Biomarkers in High-Functioning Adults with Autism and Asperger’s Versus Healthy Controls: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

“…The failure to replicate previous eye tracking findings may be explained by several factors: firstly, potential under-reporting of negative and inconclusive results, because of the dearth of studies investigating eye pattern differences in adults with and without ASD or subgroups within the ASD population (Zamzow et al 2014 ); divergent eye gaze patterns may depend on the nature of the stimuli presented (dynamic or static, real-life and naturalistic or non-naturalistic, social or non-social) (Hanley et al 2015 ; Hanley et al 2013 ; Speer et al 2007 ; Manyakov et al 2018 ). More likely, however, is the possibility that high-functioning adults with ASD might ultimately succeed in reaching the developmental level of neurotypicals with overall minor differences in eye gaze patterns (Baez et al 2012 ; Ullman and Pullman 2015 ) by developing compensatory mechanisms, or implementation of strategies to read faces (Bauminger 2002 ; Dawson et al 2005 ; Hwang and Hughes 2000 ) and/or detect biological motion.…”

An Observational Study With the Janssen Autism Knowledge Engine (JAKE®) in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Also, the more time ASD participants spent looking at the eye region of images of faces in the direct and averted gaze paradigm, the better they scored on the ABI social communications domain (Figure 5C). Detailed presentations of results on FACET and eye-tracking are available elsewhere (Manfredonia et al, 2018; Manyakov et al, 2018) and manuscripts of additional results from these and other sensors are in preparation.…”

“…System reliability, quality, user feedback, and representative examples of results from the various components of JAKE are described herein as well as participant demographics and safety. Detailed methodology and results of the ABI, other components of My JAKE, and the various sensors and tasks are published elsewhere (Bangerter et al, 2017, In press; Manfredonia et al, 2018; Manyakov et al, 2018; Jagannatha et al, In press) or are in preparation.…”

Visual Preference for Biological Motion in Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study

“…This biological motion task was part of a large, observational, multi-center study conducted from 06 July 2015 to 14 October 2016 at nine study sites in the US (ClinicalTrials. gov, NCT02668991) and consisted of passive viewing tasks 12.0 (6-54) 11.5 (6-63) P-value 0.69 ADOS-2 total score, mean (SD, range) 7.6 (1.7, 4-10) -KBIT-2 IQ composite score, mean (SD, range) 98.5 (20.0, 60-136) - (Bangerter et al 2020a(Bangerter et al , 2020bJagannatha et al 2019;Manfredonia et al 2018;Manyakov et al 2018;Ness et al 2019;Sargsyan et al 2019). In this study, both groups of participants completed the same set of biosensor tasks.…”