Characteristics of Visual Attention in Young Children with Autism During A Hide-And-Seek Video Viewing Task

By implementing eye tracking technology to a hide-and-seek game, this study aimed to provide empirical evidence for characteristics of visual attention in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One hundred and seventy-six children (aged between 18 and 48 months) with ASD (n = 58), global developmental delay (GDD, n = 59), and typical developing (TD, n = 59) watched a video in which a boy hid himself and popped out from an opaque screen. The boy made three facial expressions (i.e., neutral, smiling, and funny) after popping out from the screen. Smiling and funny expressions elicited significantly more visual fixations on the boy's face and mouth. As compared to children with TD, children with ASD looked significantly less at the boy's face and more at the body after he popped out from the screen. No significant differences in all eye tracking measures were found between the ASD and GDD groups. This study offers new perspectives on the visual attention patterns of young children with ASD during a hide-and-seek game viewing task. The inclusion of GDD provides valuable insights into identifying unique patterns of visual attention in ASD, while the lack of a significant ASD-GDD difference underscores the need for future tasks to identify visual behaviors specific to ASD. Additionally, our results suggest that facial expressions play a critical role in visual attention, highlighting their potential importance in the development of targeted interventions aimed at improving social engagement in children with ASD.