Spatiotemporal Eye Movement Dynamics Reveal Altered Face Prioritization in Early Visual Processing Among Autistic Children.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Reduced social attention-looking at faces-is one of the most common manifestations of social difficulty in autism that is central to social development. Although reduced social attention is well characterized in autism, qualitative differences in how social attention unfolds across time remains unknown.

Methods

We used a computational modeling (i.e., hidden Markov modeling) approach to assess and compare the spatiotemporal dynamics of social attention in a large, well-characterized sample of children with autism (n = 280) and neurotypical children (n = 119) (ages 6-11) who completed 3 social eye-tracking assays at 3 longitudinal time points (baseline, 6 weeks, 24 weeks).

Results

Our analysis supported the existence of 2 common eye movement patterns that eme

SUBMITTER: Griffin JW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11710975 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature