Investigating Gaze Behaviour of Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders in a Classroom Setting.
Aideen McParland, Stephen Gallagher, Mickey Keenan
PMID 33590429WHAT IT FOUND
Ten children with autism in this pilot looked at faces less often during direct talk than two-adult talk.
After brief reward-based face-looking training, children who completed it looked longer at faces at re-test; controls did not show this change.
Key findings
01During baseline, children with autism looked at faces more often during the two-adult conversation than during direct conversation, while typically developing children looked at faces more often during direct conversation.
02On average, participants who completed the training package looked at faces for longer at re-test than at baseline, while control participants who did not train showed no clear change.
03Children with autism who had higher teacher-rated social impairment scores looked at faces for less time during baseline.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only twenty children from one school, and six children acted as controls. The design was a single-subject pilot with only one training phase, so it cannot show how well the training would work with more training or repeated sessions. The re-test happened immediately after training, so maintenance and generalisation to other settings were not tested. The training was delivered as a package of face videos, a fixation trigger, and point rewards, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated. One typically developing child did not improve at re-test, and video review suggested distraction by items on the desk. The study did not measure whether better face looking improved understanding of conversation or social interaction.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as proof that eye-tracking training reliably improves social communication. The study was a small pilot with a single short training phase and no follow-up, and it did not separate which part of the training package mattered.