Distance from Typical Scan Path When Viewing Complex Stimuli in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and its Association with Behavior.
Elena J Tenenbaum, Samantha Major, Kimberly L H Carpenter and 3 others
PMID 33387244WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism whose gaze deviated from typical patterns during social scenes showed lower communication skills and higher autism severity.
However, these links depended heavily on the specific video context and did not hold consistently when age-matched.
Key findings
01Greater distance from the typical scan path during social segments (dyadic bids and joint attention) was correlated with higher autism severity scores on the ADOS-2.
02Distance from the typical scan path was negatively correlated with communication skills on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, meaning children with more atypical gaze had lower communication abilities.
03Findings regarding stereotypies and some communication links did not remain significant when the analysis was restricted to an age-matched subset of children with ASD.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was exploratory and did not correct for multiple comparisons, increasing the risk of false-positive findings. The ASD and typically developing groups were not perfectly matched for age and cognitive function, requiring statistical controls that may not fully account for these differences. Key findings, particularly regarding stereotypies and specific communication links, did not hold up when the sample was restricted to age-matched children. The results describe group-level trends and correlations; they do not demonstrate that gaze distance can accurately diagnose or assess an individual child.
Declared interests
Dr. Dawson is on advisory boards for several pharmaceutical companies (Janssen, Roche, etc.), is a consultant to others, and is CEO of DASIO, LLC, which develops eye-tracking technology for ASD screening. She and other authors have patents and financial benefits related to this technology.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the correlations between gaze distance and clinical scores as evidence that eye-tracking can diagnose autism or assess communication severity in a single patient. The relationships were inconsistent across contexts and weakened significantly when age-matching was applied, indicating these are group-level research trends rather than robust clinical markers.