Language development, reading and word learning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): a review on eye tracking studies

Objectives: The purpose of this article is to review research that has been conducted over the past five years on language development, reading skills and word learning with the use of the eye tracking machine as regards the population with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in comparison to typically developed population. Materials and methods: A combination of relevant terms from Google Scholar, Research Gate and PsychINFO databases was used and as a result 24 studies emerged. The total number of studies that met the inclusion criteria was 21. Results: Studies focusing on the language development of people with ASD have presented significant findings regarding vocabulary processing and the preferential focus on specific stimuli (images, audio) over a wide range of ages that in some cases have not been investigated until then. Furthermore, studies on reading have found that adults with ASD showed a strong preference for images and symbols over texts, longer reading time and performances similar to the typical population in vocabulary processing. Studies on word learning demonstrated that adults with ASD are able to rely on gaze cues in order to learn a new word and they have the ability to use syntactic bootstrapping. For preschool and early school-aged children with ASD the results showed that they are capable of cross-situational learning. Conclusions: This review provides information on the effectiveness of the eye tracking method as a tool that can contribute to the identification of deficits in language processing on the part of individuals with ASD from early childhood to adulthood, and more specifically as regards the domains of language development, reading and word learning.