Bright Lights, Silent Signals: Colour-Specific Attention-Arousal Decoupling in Autistic Children Revealed by...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Ophthalmology

Background:

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by atypical visual exploration patterns.
• The influence of chromatic properties on oculomotor behavior in ASD remains poorly understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how hue, luminance, and saturation affect visual exploration in children with ASD.
• To compare oculomotor behavior in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) peers.

Main Methods:

• Eye movements were recorded in 34 children with ASD and 40 TD peers (ages 6-16).
• Participants viewed images with manipulated hue, luminance, and saturation.
• Nine eye-movement metrics were analyzed using mixed-effects ANOVAs with stringent statistical corrections.

Main Results:

• Children with ASD exhibited significantly reduced total fixation time (29%), fixation count (19%), and saccades (42%).
• Individual fixations were also shorter in the ASD group.
• Highly saturated stimuli amplified these group differences in visual exploration.

Conclusions:

• Children with ASD demonstrate less dwell time and execute fewer, briefer fixations and saccades, especially with high saturation.
• These oculomotor differences are likely linked to how visual brightness influences attention and arousal in ASD.
• Findings persisted after rigorous statistical correction and were independent of pupil size.