Eye tracking may help differentiate children with, without autism spectrum disorder

Lockard BS, et al. Saccadic eye movement variability and scattered patterns in children with autism spectrum disorder. Presented at: American Neurological Association annual meeting; Sept. 9-12, 2023; Philadelphia.

Key takeaways:

PHILADELPHIA — Tracking to chart various eye movements including saccadic and fixation may be effective in differentiating neurological differences between children with ASD and neurotypical children, according to a poster presentation.

“Children with autism often have different eye movements than neurotypical children, they might have different fixation patterns, pupil dilations, saccadic eye movements,” Blake S. Lockard, BS, of the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, told Healio at the American Neurological Association annual meeting.

Since prior research has established that children with ASD can have shorter fixation times due to saccade interruption, Lockard and colleagues investigated whether saccades and fixation could predict differences between children with ASD and neurotypical children.

Their study included 16 children, six diagnosed with ASD and 10 neurotypical, who were required to sit in front of a screen, with an eye tracker on the bottom, to view a 1-minute video of a person interacting with a dog while the individual recounts, in three separate frames, the dog’s name as well as its likes and dislikes.

Eye-tracking data for all participants were collected using Tobii Pro Nano, facial expressions captured with a computer mounted camera, while Tobii Pro Lab and IBM SPSS V 27.1 were utilized for data analysis. Saccades ratio was obtained for each participant and linear regression was conducted to assess the predictability of each group by Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) scores and saccades ratio as predictor variables.

Results showed that M-CHAT scores averaged 14 ± 2.53 for the ASD group and 1.90 ± .568 for the neurotypical group. Saccades ratio averaged .389 ± .156 for the ASD group and .173 ± .052 for the control group, while independent t-test for saccades ratio showed significant differences (t = 4.1, P < .001) between groups.

Researchers further found in examination of facial expressions and eye-movement visuals that children with ASD had more scattered eye movement patterns and random fixations on background and irrelevant objects on the screen.

“The more we look into eye movements, the more we could be able to discover differences between those two groups and potentially help with diagnostics in the future,” Lockard told Healio.

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