Puppets facilitate attention to social cues in children with ASD.
Suzanne Macari, Xinyuan Chen, Ludivine Brunissen and 6 others
PMID 34350712WHAT IT FOUND
When a human spoke, children with autism looked less at the human face than typical peers.
When a puppet spoke, their attention to the puppet face matched typical peers. Puppets did not increase attention to the human face.
Key findings
01Children with ASD looked less at the human face than TD children, and this was clearest when the human was speaking.
02Attention to the puppet face did not differ significantly between ASD and TD children.
03Children with ASD preferred the speaker's face only when the puppet spoke; when the human spoke, they looked at speaker and listener equally.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The children only watched a 1.5-minute video. This does not show what happens during live therapy or whether looking becomes learning. 16 children were excluded because eye-tracking calibration was poor. That may affect how well the groups represent all children. The study did not test whether puppets improve communication, social engagement, or learning. Looking at the puppet face does not explain why children looked there. It could be social cues or the puppet's color, contrast, or motion. Embedding a puppet in the video did not increase attention to the human face.
Declared interests
The authors reported no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that puppets improve therapy outcomes or increase attention to human faces. The children only watched a short video, and the puppet did not raise attention to the human face.