Table 1 Eye-tracking studies exploring response to joint attention (RJA) behaviours in ASD individuals, sorted by age of participants
Article | Groups | Age | Nature of Stimuli | Main Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Chawarska, et al. [19] | HR, LR | 6Â months | Dynamic stimuli of an actress, four toys and a table with ingredients for making sandwiches | 6-month-old infants later diagnosed with ASD had less fixation duration to the social scene and face |
Bedford, et al. [31] | HR, LR, ASD | 6–10 months, 11–18 months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress moves her head to gaze at one of the two objects and fixates on that object | No group difference in gaze following accuracy, but at-risk infants with socio-communication difficulties ASD spent less time looking at the target object |
Thorup, et al. [22] | HR, LR | 10Â months | Live interaction (not pre-recorded stimuli) | Infants in the HR group were more likely to follow gaze in the Eyes/Head condition than in the Eyes-Only condition |
Nyström, et al. [39] | HR, LR | 10 months | Live interaction with two conditions (Eyes/Head vs Eyes-Only condition) | No group differences in gaze following accuracy in Eyes/Head, Eyes-Only or combined conditions |
Nyström, et al. [28] | HR, LR | 10 months | Live interaction with an adult holding an object | Infants in the HR group spent less time looking at the stimuli during 300-1000 ms after bid of joint attention. Further analysis of the whole experiment revealed no significant group differences |
Chawarska, et al. [20] | ASD, TD | 13–25 months | Dynamic stimuli of an actress, four toys and a table with ingredients for making sandwiches | ASD children spent less time looking at stimuli and face. The decreased time spent looking at the scene was associated with increased symptom severity and lower non-verbal functioning. The decreased time spent looking at the face was associated with atypical language profiles |
Franchini, et al. [16] | 25 ASD, 21 TD | 14–57 months | Dynamic stimuli of the same actress with varying intensity of facial expression in response to a moving object (1 out of 2 identical objects in the scene) | ASD participants were less responsive to bids of joint attention and spent less time looking at stimuli and face. Gaze accuracy differed depending on bids of joint attention |
Parsons, et al. [26] | 116 HR, 27 LR | 15Â months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress teaches word-object associations by shifting her head to an object and with varying exclamations | No group differences in gaze following accuracy, but children later diagnosed with ASD spent less time looking at either object. Attention distribution was correlated with both concurrent and later language abilities |
Billeci, et al. [25] | 17 ASD, 15 TD | 18–30 months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress moves her head towards one of the two blocks and fixates on that block | No group differences in gaze following accuracy, number of transitions and fixation durations on objects in the scene |
Gliga, et al. [40] | 35 HR, 18 LR | 36Â months | Dynamic stimuli with a moving salient object and a stationary referent object. An actress says word-object associations and shifts her head to the referent object | No group differences observed in gaze following accuracy and amount of time looking at stimuli |
Falck-Ytter, et al. [24] | 13 ASD, 14 TD | 34–60 months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress moves her head to gaze at one of the two objects and fixates on that object | No group differences observed in gaze following accuracy, but ASD children exhibit weaker processing bias for gazed-at objects |
Vivanti, et al. [17] | 35 ASD, 20 TD | 48 months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress moves her head to gaze at one of the two objects and fixates on that object | ASD participants spent less time looking at the actor’s face and exhibited reduced gaze following when compared to TD participants. ADOS, VABS and MSEL items were found to be correlated with eye-tracking variables |
Current study | 60 ASD, 17 TD | 31–73 months | Dynamic stimuli with two conditions (Eyes/Head vs Eyes-Only condition) | ASD participants were less like to follow gaze compared to TD participants in both conditions |
Cilia, et al. [30] | 28 ASD, 56 TD | 31–154 months | Static and dynamic stimuli where an actor looks and/or verbalised or pointed and/or verbalised at a target | No group differences in time spent looking at the stimuli |
Gillespie-Lynch, et al. [21] | 21 ASD, 42 TD | 28–80 months | Static stimuli for gaze cueing and dynamic stimuli for world learning task. Head and eye movements were used as a bid of joint attention | ASD participants exhibited reduced gaze following |
Thorup, et al. [41] | 16 ASD, 17 TD | 38–112 months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress is seated behind a table with four objects. The study tested whether objects perceived as highly interesting by ASD children affect gaze following behaviours | No group differences in gaze following accuracy. ASD participants exhibited lower first fixation durations in the baseline case where ordinary objects were used |
Congiu, et al. [29] | 25 ASD, 25 TD | 45–103 months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress showed an object, hid the object under one of two identical cups, shuffled the cups, looked at the camera and gazed towards the cup that contains the object. The study contained two conditions: (1) perceptual and (2) representational (where the shuffling was not shown) | ASD participants were less accurate in following gaze and spent less time looking at the gaze-at object during representational condition |
Falck-Ytter, et al. [18] | 40 ASD, 21 TD | 72Â months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress gazed, pointed or did both at one out of three objects | ASD participants were less accurate in following gaze. Difference score (DS) and gaze accuracy were positively correlated with VABS-II communication scores. DS was also positively correlated with VABS-II socialisation scores. ASD participants were slower to look at the gaze-at object |
Swanson and Siller [42] | 21 ASD, 24 TD | 84Â months | Dynamic stimuli where an actress moved her head and gazed at one of the four corners of the screen. There were two conditions: (1) congruent condition where the actress looked at a corner where the object is located and (2) incongruent condition where the actress looked at a corner where the object is not located | TD participants spent longer first fixation duration to the target object in the congruent condition than in the incongruent condition. ASD participants viewed the targets in an indistinguishable manner in both conditions. ASD children who scored high in SRS Social Awareness subscale failed to follow gaze |
Griffin and Scherf [43] | 35 ASD, 35 TD | 10–18 years old | Dynamic stimuli where an actress directed eye gaze to a single target object in a complex scene | ASD participants exhibited difficulties in their ability to correctly follow eye gaze to identify gazed-at objects. No group differences in the amount of time spent looking at faces and gazed-at objects |
Riby, et al. [44] | ASD, TD | 11 years old | Static stimuli where a person’s gaze was directed to a target object in a complex scene. The study includes two conditions: (1) participants were initially told to look at the pictures then (2) asked to identify the gazed-at object | In both conditions, ASD participants recorded less fixation duration to faces, eyes and gazed-at objects. In the second condition, ASD participants looked more at the face and eyes but did not follow the gaze direction. Higher functioning ASD individuals scored more accurately in identifying the gazed-at object |
Caruana, et al. [34] | 17 ASD, 17 TD | 26Â years old | Dynamic stimuli where participants played a cooperative game with a human face avatar that cues for the location of the target using eye gaze or displaying an arrow | In the eye gaze condition, ASD adults were less accurate at responding to joint attention and initially slower to respond but their performance improved significantly. This indicates that ASD adults have difficulties responding to gaze cues |