Goal prediction in 2-year-old children with and without autism spectrum disorder: An eye-tracking study.
Sheila Krogh-Jespersen, Zsuzsa Kaldy, Annalisa Groth Valadez and 2 others
PMID 29405645WHAT IT FOUND
When a person’s hand moved toward an object, 2-year-old children with ASD anticipated the goal as well as typically developing peers.
When the hand paused without movement cues, children with ASD tended to look at the prior location, not the prior goal.
Key findings
01When the actor’s hand moved toward an object, both 2-year-old typically developing children and 2-year-old children with ASD anticipated the goal, while 17-month-old typically developing children looked more reactionarily.
02When the hand paused without trajectory cues, children with ASD showed a trend toward predicting the prior location rather than the prior goal, while 2-year-old typically developing children did not systematically predict the goal.
03The time taken to make goal-based versus location-based predictions did not differ significantly in any group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The groups were small: 20, 19, and 36 children. The ASD group had lower overall cognitive scores than both typically developing groups. The ambiguous-trial patterns were reported as trends (P=.064 and P=.0662), and were significant only after a false discovery correction at 10%. The ASD sample was predominantly male (32 of 36), and the authors state gender differences cannot be excluded. The study measured eye movements in a laboratory video task, not communication, social interaction, or clinical intervention outcomes. The test trials changed both object locations and removed trajectory cues, so the authors note this leaves open whether children would perform similarly if locations did not change.
Declared interests
The publication types list NIH and U.S. government research support. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that children with ASD cannot predict others’ actions. They anticipated the goal when trajectory information was present. The location-based pattern appeared only when the hand paused without cues, and the study did not test whether this changes communication or clinical intervention outcomes.