Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos

Summary

This is a qualitative comparative case study analysis of eye-tracking data on the first moments of social video scenes as viewed by three participants: one with autism spectrum disorder, one with comorbid attention deficit-hyperactive disorder, and one neurotypical control.

Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have sensory-perceptual processing deficits that weaken their abilities to attend and perceive social stimuli in daily living contexts. Since daily social episodes consist of subtle dynamic changes in social information, any failure to attend to or process subtle human nonverbal cues, such as facial expression, postures, and gestures, might lead to inappropriate social interaction. Traditional behavioral rating scales or assessment tools based on static social scenes have limitations in capturing the moment-to-moment changes in social scenarios. An eye-tracking assessment, which can be administered in a video-based mode, is therefore preferred, to augment clinical observation. In this study, using the single-case comparison design, the eye-tracking data of three participants, a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), another with comorbid attention deficit-hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and a neurotypical control, are captured while they view a video of social scenarios. The eye-tracking experiment has helped answer the research question: How does social attention differ between the three participants? By predefining areas of interest (AOIs), their visual attention on relevant or irrelevant social stimuli, how fast each participant attends to the first social stimuli appearing in the videos, for how long each participant continues to attend to those stimuli within the AOIs, and the gaze shifts between multiple social stimuli appearing concurrently in the same social scene are captured, compared, and analyzed in a video-based eye-tracking experiment.

Introduction

Persons with ASD are known to be characterized by behavioral deficits in social communication, based on conventional behavioral evidence from structured observational assessments and parent interviews. In addition, sensory processing abnormalities have been recently incorporated into the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria of ASD¹. Social information processing involves the lower level sensory-perceptual processing and higher level social cognitive processing of social information. Sensory-perceptual processing refers to the ability to attend to social stimuli and encode them in a short-term memory bank for instant retrieval and response-planning, while ....

Protocol

Parental and participant consent was obtained during the recruitment process in a primary school and a children service center for ASD in Hong Kong and the study was approved by the university ethical review committee of the Education University of Hong Kong.

1. Use of a Video-based Assessment

1. Produce several social videos, about one minute long, that consist of daily life scenarios involving several people in a social context (Figure 1).
   1. Produce several social videos, about one minute long, that consist of daily life scenarios involving several people in a social context. For th....

Results

The eye-tracking data of the three Cantonese-speaking children (with ASD, with ASD-ADHD, and a control) aged between the ages of 7 and 9 viewing three social videos using the aforementioned paradigm is presented here (Table 1).

The first fixation duration (per 500 ms target AOI) was longer for the neurotypical child (150 ms) than for the ASD and ASD-ADHD children (both 110 ms). The total fixation duration (per 5.......

Discussion

The first-moment fixation duration was shorter for the ASD-ADHD and ASD children than for the neurotypical child. The total fixation duration was shorter for the ASD-ADHD child than for the neurotypical child, demonstrating a general reduction in visual attention to social stimuli. This showed that the ASD-ADHD child showed a delay in attending to the entry of social stimuli in a social scene. This delay might cause the child to skip registering important momentary social information, which may lead to the misinterpretat.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Tobii Pro TX300	Tobii	N/A	Screen based eye-tracker (300Hz refreshing rate)
Tobii Pro Studio	Tobii	N/A	Software for analyzing eyetracking data