Links between looking and speaking in autism and first-degree relatives: insights into the expression of genetic liability to autism.
Kritika Nayar, Peter C Gordon, Gary E Martin and 6 others
PMID 30338047WHAT IT FOUND
People with autism and their parents show slower naming and different eye movement patterns during a rapid naming task.
These basic language processing differences link to repetitive behaviors and narrative ability, suggesting they may reflect underlying genetic risk for autism.
Key findings
01Individuals with ASD had slower naming times and shorter eye-voice spans compared to controls, indicating less fluent coordination of gaze and speech.
02Parents of individuals with ASD, particularly those with the broad autism phenotype, showed similar but milder differences in naming speed and eye movements compared to control parents.
03In individuals with ASD, slower naming and more eye refixations were associated with poorer narrative ability and more severe restricted and repetitive behaviors.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study only included participants with an IQ of 80 or higher, so results may not apply to individuals with lower cognitive abilities or minimal verbal skills. There was a significant age range in the ASD group, which may influence RAN performance. The sample of females with ASD was very small (n=9), limiting conclusions about sex differences. Eye-voice span differences in ASD became non-significant when excluding participants who overlapped with a previous study, suggesting this specific finding may be less robust.
Declared interests
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. No commercial conflicts of interest were reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret these eye movement and naming differences as diagnostic tools for clinical practice. The study identifies group-level trends related to genetic liability and processing fluency, not individual diagnostic markers. The findings are correlational and do not prove that these gaze patterns cause the language impairments.