The Influence of Irrelevant Visual Distractors on Eye Movement Control in Chinese Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from the Remote Distractor Paradigm.
Li Zhang, Guoli Yan, Li Zhou and 2 others
PMID 31673908WHAT IT FOUND
Young children with autism showed normal basic eye movements but took longer to look at a target when a distractor appeared directly over it.
This delay reflects difficulty disengaging attention from central stimuli, not a motor problem.
Key findings
01Children with ASD had intact basic eye movement control, showing the same relationship between saccade amplitude, velocity, and duration as typically developing children.
02In the distractor task, children with ASD had significantly longer saccade latencies than typically developing children only when the distractor was presented centrally, overlapping the fixation point.
03Both groups made high error rates (approx. 45%) directing eyes to distractors, but quickly corrected these errors, suggesting the delay is an attentional disengagement issue rather than a failure to understand the task.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used a small sample size (n=16 ASD in the main distractor task). Diagnoses were confirmed via DSM-V criteria and AQ scores rather than gold-standard observational tools like ADOS or ADI-R. The high error rates in both groups suggest the task may have been too difficult for the age range, potentially masking subtler differences.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the delayed saccade latency as a motor deficit or a general inability to move the eyes. The basic eye movement measures were normal; the delay was specific to attentional disengagement from central distractors.