Preference for biological motion is reduced in ASD: implications for clinical trials and the search for biomarkers.
L Mason, F Shic, T Falck-Ytter and 19 others
PMID 34911565WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic participants showed a preference for biological motion, but it was smaller than in neurotypical controls.
This difference was stable from age 6 to 30. However, looking preference did not track changes in social symptoms over time, limiting its use as a clinical marker.
Key findings
01Both groups preferred biological motion, but the preference was significantly smaller in the ASD group.
02Biological motion preference did not correlate with concurrent or prospective measures of social symptoms in the ASD group.
03The study suggests biological motion preference is not a sensitive marker for tracking symptom severity or treatment efficacy.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The non-autistic group had a higher average full-scale IQ (107.0) than the autistic group (100.0), although IQ was controlled for in the analysis. There was a high degree of overlap in preference scores between the two groups, meaning individual scores cannot reliably distinguish autistic from non-autistic people. Approximately 18% of the recruited sample was excluded from the analysis due to technical issues or insufficient valid trial data. The study used a passive viewing task; results may not generalize to active social interaction or tasks requiring a response. Attrition at follow-up reduced the sample size for longitudinal symptom change analysis to 153 participants before data quality exclusions.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative and the Medical Research Council. No commercial conflicts of interest were declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that a patient's lack of attention to biological motion indicates a specific deficit in social understanding or predicts poor therapy outcomes. The study found no significant correlation between visual preference scores and clinical symptom severity or change over time, so this measure does not track the social-communication difficulties therapists treat.