Eye-tracking Devices Used in Autism Research

Eye-tracking Devices in Autism Research



Eye-tracking devices are being developed to do mainstream jobs; like replace the mouse sitting next to your keyboard. While those mainstream activities and distributions are still in the works, eye-scanning devices are already being used for medical endeavors. They have been used to assist in surgeries and also help record what the surgeon’s eyes are doing during the surgery .

The eye-scanning devices that are currently being used in autism research are like the ones being developed to replace your computer’s mouse; they record what the person’s eyes are looking at on-screen and measure the amount of time that the person looks at the object(s) on-screen . Before we proceed; a quick reminder for those who may be new to investigations about autism disorder.


Autism is a social developmental disorder, so developing a healthy social life and engaging in social interaction, such as a two-way conversation, is much more difficult for a young child growing up with autism. Researchers are curious as to how children with autism do socially develop and interact. So these researchers, such as Dr. Ami Klin, have been using eye-tracking devices to get a glimpse at what children with Autism are paying attention to at young ages, during their key social development phases. What Dr. Klin has found is of interest to the investigation of autism and its relationship to early childhood television watching.

The study took toddlers who were growing up with Autism and using eye-tracking devices, Dr. Klin and his research team watched what the toddlers with Autism were paying attention to on-screen. They compared what toddlers who were growing up with Autism were paying attention to with toddlers who had other developmental delays and toddlers who were typically developing.

The toddlers watched point-light cartoons (where a moving human figure is shown only as points of light; the elbow is a point of light, the knee, the foot, and so forth are points of light). The typically developing toddlers, along with the toddlers with non-autistic developmental delays favored viewing the point-light cartoons of people playing when the people were facing upwards. Toddlers with autism did not favor the people facing upwards, they favored both the point-light cartoons of people that were facing up and the ones that were upside-down. The toddlers with autism did not favor the movement of the human body, what they did favor was the movement of the points of light corresponding with sound. When the sounds did not match the upside-down video, that was also playing in reverse, the sound did not correspond to the repetitive movements and the children with autism favored the video where the sound matched the movements.


Dr. Klin’s study suggests that while toddlers growing up with Autism pay attention to the details of the corresponding relationship between sound and movement, they do not pay attention to the details of social cues from body movement. Also the toddler may not notice the social meaning placed in the detail of the look in their parent’s eyes, instead of being naturally inclined toward eye-contact, Klin’s study points to toddlers with autism being more inclined to pay attention to the movement of the parent’s mouth corresponding with the sound of their voice. And although other studies find adolescents with autism (8-12 years old) paying attention to people’s eyes as much as typically developing adolescents, it is clear that the adolescents with autism still have a much more difficult time discerning what social cues that eyes are giving mean, and that still points to not being as engaged with, simply the meaning of social cues in peoples’ eyes when the adolescent was a toddler with autism.


Sources:

Jose Fermoso. “Six technologies that may or may not kill the mouse in five years.” (Wired News, July 2008. www.wired.com).

Administration Post. “The future of Eyetracking.” (Web Analytics Book, September 2007. webanalyticsbook.com)
Jose Fermoso. “Six technologies that may or may not kill the mouse in five years.”

Bruce Bower. “Autism Immerses 2-year-olds in a Synchronized World.” (Science News, April 2009, www.sciencenews.org).