Different Eye Tracking Patterns in Autism Spectrum Disorder in Toddler and Preschool Children

Frontiers in Psychiatry

Xue-Jun Kong¹  Binbin Sun²  Zhe Feng²  Zhen Wei²  Guobin Wan²  Mark Vangel³  Georgia Wilson⁴  Joel Park⁴  Ming Cheng⁴  Jian Kong⁴  Yiheng Tu⁴  Yiting Huang⁴  Siyi Yu⁴ 

[1] Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States;Department of Child Psychiatry and Rehabilitation, Shenzhen Maternity and Child Healthcare Hospital, Southern Medical University, Shenzhen, China;Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States;Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States;

关键词: autism;    eye tracking;    percentage of fixation time;    machine learning;    toddler;    preschool;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyt.2022.899521

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundChildren with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been observed to be associated with fixation abnormality as measured eye tracking, but the dynamics behind fixation patterns across age remain unclear.Materials and MethodsIn this study, we investigated gaze patterns between toddlers and preschoolers with and without ASD while they viewed video clips and still images (i.e., mouth-moving face, biological motion, mouthing face vs. moving object, still face picture vs. objects, and moving toys).ResultsWe found that the fixation time percentage of children with ASD showed significant decrease compared with that of TD children in almost all areas of interest (AOI) except for moving toy (helicopter). We also observed a diagnostic group (ASD vs. TD) and chronological age (Toddlers vs. preschooler) interaction for the eye AOI during the mouth-moving video clip. Support vector machine analysis showed that the classifier could discriminate ASD from TD in toddlers with an accuracy of 80% and could discriminate ASD from TD in preschoolers with an accuracy of 71%.ConclusionOur results suggest that toddlers and preschoolers may be associated with both common and distinct fixation patterns. A combination of eye tracking and machine learning methods has the potential to shed light on the development of new early screening/diagnosis methods for ASD.

【 授权许可】

Unknown