Atypical Visual Saliency in Autism Spectrum Disorder Quantified through Model-Based Eye Tracking.

ABSTRACT: The social difficulties that are a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are thought to arise, at least in part, from atypical attention toward stimuli and their features. To investigate this hypothesis comprehensively, we characterized 700 complex natural scene images with a novel three-layered saliency model that incorporated pixel-level (e.g., contrast), object-level (e.g., shape), and semantic-level attributes (e.g., faces) on 5,551 annotated objects. Compared with matched controls, people with ASD had a stronger image center bias regardless of object distribution, reduced saliency for faces and for locations indicated by social gaze, and yet a general increase in pixel-level saliency at the expense of semantic-level saliency. These results were further corroborated by direct anal

SUBMITTER: Wang S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4662072 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature