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Eye Tracking Young Children with Autism
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Eye Tracking Young Children with Autism

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Gaze behaviour to lateral face stimuli in infants who do and do not gain an ASD diagnosis

Georgina Donati1, Rachael Davis2, Gillian S Forrester3

  • 1Department of Psychological Sciences, School of Science, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK.

Scientific Reports
|August 9, 2020
PubMed

Insights

Infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show early differences in visual attention to faces. These early gaze patterns at 6 months may predict later language and motor skills.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Genetics

Background:

  • Cerebral lateralization is common in vertebrates and linked to cognitive fitness in humans.
  • Early development of lateralized gaze behavior in infants is crucial for understanding neurodevelopmental trajectories.
  • The British Autism Sibling Infant Study (BASIS) provides a unique cohort to investigate early behavioral markers in infants at high and low risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the early development of lateralized gaze behavior towards face stimuli in infants at high and low risk for ASD.
  • To examine differences in gaze patterns between infants who do and do not develop ASD.
  • To explore longitudinal associations between early gaze behavior and later cognitive outcomes, including language and motor abilities.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized eye-tracking data from a face pop-out task administered at 6 and 14 months of age.
  • Compared gaze behavior in infants categorized into low-risk, high-risk typically developing, high-risk atypically developing, and high-risk ASD diagnostic groups at 3 years.
  • Analyzed longitudinal associations between lateral looking behavior at 6 months and language/motor assessments at 14 months.

Main Results:

  • Non-ASD groups exhibited a left-sided gaze bias at both 6 and 14 months.
  • At 6 months, the ASD group showed a right-sided gaze preference and slower responses to left-sided faces compared to neurotypical infants.
  • By 14 months, these group differences in gaze behavior diminished.
  • Early lateral looking behavior at 6 months was longitudinally associated with language and motor abilities at 14 months.

Conclusions:

  • Infants later diagnosed with ASD display distinct early gaze behaviors, particularly a rightward bias and delayed leftward attention to faces at 6 months.
  • These early visual attention differences may be associated with subsequent cognitive development in children diagnosed with ASD.
  • The findings highlight the potential of early gaze patterns as predictive markers for neurodevelopmental outcomes in the context of autism risk.

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