Shifting Preferences for Primate Faces in Neurotypical Infants and Infants Later Diagnosed With ASD

A systematic review and meta-analysis of atypical visual attention towards non-social stimuli in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder

Research on attention towards non-social stimuli in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has increased over the past decade; however, findings have been inconsistent. It has been suggested that stimuli relating to common circumscribed interests (CIs) elicit more attention than non-CI related stimuli. This meta-analysis synthesizes results from 31 studies that compared attention towards non-social stimuli in children with ASD under the age of five with typically developing (TD) controls using eye-tracking. Additional subgroup analysis comparing studies that employed non-social stimuli related to CIs frequently reported in adults with ASD to studies using non-CI related stimuli were conducted. Meta-regressions with age, sex, stimulus dimension, nonverbal DQ, and symptom severity were conducted. Results show small (g = 0.39) but significantly higher attention towards non-social stimuli for the ASD group. However, when studies were split based on stimulus type no significant differences for non-CI related stimuli was found. Meanwhile studies employing CI related stimuli reported significant large effects on attention allocation (g = 0.69). None of the conducted regressions reached significance. The findings show increased non-social attention in children with ASD is driven by CI related content rather than a general non-social attentional bias. The findings and future research directions are discussed.

Evaluating the validity of eye-tracking tasks and stimuli in detecting high-risk infants later diagnosed with autism: A meta-analysis

Gaze abnormalities are well documented in infants at elevated risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, variations in experimental design and stimuli across studies have led to mixed results. The current meta-analysis aimed to identify which type of eye tracking task and stimulus are most effective at differentiating high-risk infants (siblings of children with ASD) who later meet diagnosis criteria from low-risk infants without familial autism. We synthesized 35 studies that used eye tracking to investigate gaze behavior in infants at high genetic risk for autism before 2 years of age. We found that stimulus features, regions of interest (ROIs) and study quality moderated effect sizes across studies. Overall, dynamic stimuli and socially-relevant regions in the social stimuli (i.e. the target and activity of characters' shared focus) reliably detected high-risk infants who later develop ASD. Attention disengagement task and stimuli depicting interactions between human and nonhuman characters could identify high-risk infants who later develop ASD and those who have autism-related symptoms but do not meet the diagnostic criteria as well. These findings provide sensitive and reliable early markers of ASD, which is helpful to develop objective and quantitative early autism screening and intervention tools.

How Do Children and Adolescents with ASD Look at Animals? A Scoping Review

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by interaction and communication differences, entailing visual attention skill specificities. Interactions with animals, such as in animal-assisted interventions or with service dogs, have been shown to be beneficial for individuals with ASD. While interacting with humans poses challenges for them, engaging with animals appears to be different. One hypothesis suggests that differences between individuals with ASD's visual attention to humans and to animals may contribute to these interaction differences. We propose a scoping review of the research on the visual attention to animals of youths with ASD. The objective is to review the methodologies and tools used to explore such questions, to summarize the main results, to explore which factors may contribute to the differences reported in the studies, and to deduce how youth with ASD observe animals. Utilizing strict inclusion criteria, we examined databases between 1942 and 2023, identifying 21 studies in international peer-reviewed journals. Three main themes were identified: attentional engagement and detection, visual exploration, and behavior. Collectively, our findings suggest that the visual attention of youths with ASD towards animals appears comparable to that of neurotypical peers, at least in 2D pictures (i.e., eye gaze patterns). Future studies should explore whether these results extend to real-life interactions.