Attention Allocation During Exploration of Visual Arrays in ASD: Results from the ABC-CT Feasibility Study

Abstract

Visual exploration paradigms involving object arrays have been used to examine salience of social stimuli such as faces in ASD. Recent work suggests performance on these paradigms may associate with clinical features of ASD. We evaluate metrics from a visual exploration paradigm in 4-to-11-year-old children with ASD (n = 23; 18 males) and typical development (TD; n = 23; 13 males). Presented with arrays containing faces and nonsocial stimuli, children with ASD looked less at (p = 0.002) and showed fewer fixations to (p = 0.022) faces than TD children, and spent less time looking at each object on average (p = 0.004). Attention to the screen and faces correlated positively with social and cognitive skills in the ASD group (ps < .05). This work furthers our understanding of objective measures of visual exploration in ASD and its potential for quantifying features of ASD.

Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder; Eye-tracking; Visual exploration; Visual processing; Visual search.

Figure 1.

Sample stimulus from the visual exploration paradigm. Each circular array had 5 image stimuli featuring one colored photo from the following categories: faces, scrambled faces, mobile phones, birds, and cars. *Note, black bar over eyes of lower right face was not shown to participants.

Figure 2.

A) Percentage of on-screen looking time ASD and TD groups spent looking at face and non-face objects, with on-screen looking time (Valid Looking) percentage of stimulus display time also shown for reference. B) Number of fixations on objects by item type and group (i.e. detail orientation). C) Number of objects viewed per trial out of a maximum of 5 (i.e. exploration). D) Amount of time spent looking at a viewed object on average (i.e., perseveration). *p<.05, **p<.01