Faster eye movements in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Autistic kids move their eyes faster, but the speed can steer them to the wrong spot, so accuracy stays low.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Kovarski et al. (2019) watched the eyes of the kids. Half had autism, half were typical. All were 2-11 years old.
The team used a desk-top eye tracker. Kids looked at simple pictures and busy social scenes. The computer timed how fast each child moved their eyes to a new spot.
What they found
Kids with autism started eye jumps 30 ms faster than peers. Yet they found fewer targets in messy pictures.
Speed did not help accuracy. Fast eyes often landed on the wrong spot.
How this fits with other research
Keehn et al. (2016) seems to disagree. They saw kids with autism search SLOWER when the target changed color and shape. The gap is task type. Brandon used a hard 'find-the-odd-one' game; Klara used free looking. Fast eyes can hurt you when rules keep changing.
Lindor et al. (2018) helps explain the mix. They showed the visual 'plus' in autism shows up only when motor skills are on par. Klara’s kids had average motor scores, so their quick saccades fit this rule.
Avni et al. (2020) adds why accuracy drops. They tracked ‘odd’ scan paths and found autistic kids look at odd spots, not wrong spots. Fast jumps to odd places miss the goal but reveal unique viewing styles.
Why it matters
Do not assume fast looking equals sharp looking. When you test visual skills, give extra time for hard search tasks and note WHERE the child looks, not just how fast. Use clear, uncluttered materials and repeat targets in the same spot to help the child use their speed wisely.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Atypical visual exploration of both social and nonsocial scenes is often reported in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) with less precise and longer saccades, potentially reflecting difficulties in oculomotor control. To assess a subset of oculomotor functions in ASD, 20 children with ASD and 21 age-matched typically developing (TD) children (2.6-11.5 years) partook in three tasks of increasing complexity, while no explicit instruction was provided: a prosaccade gap task, a color and a "categorical" visual search tasks (a face among butterflies and vice-versa). In addition to classical saccade metrics, we measured Distance error, (the distance between the target and the closest gaze position) and Time-to-target (the time taken to reach the target). In the prosaccade task, children with ASD were as accurate as TD children, yet faster to reach the stimulus. In the color visual search task, children with ASD were faster but less precise than TD children. In the categorical visual search, while TD children were more precise in orienting their gaze towards the face, children with ASD performed similarly in the two conditions; Time-to-target did not differ. Our results provide contradictory evidence regarding enhanced visual search ability in ASD: when considering response times, enhanced visual search performance was found in one task only, while when considering gaze precision no advantage was found. These three experiments demonstrate that the automatic saccadic system may function more rapidly in children with ASD. Nonetheless, a diminished sensitivity to bottom-up saliency and top-down influence might suppress this advantage in more complex visual environments. Autism Res 2019, 12: 212-224 © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Three experiments with no instructions were designed to assess oculomotor functions in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In a saccade task, children with ASD were faster than but as accurate as control children. In visual search tasks, accuracy and speed decreased with increasing complexity of visual environment. Children with ASD showed faster automatic visual orientation, but this might hinder exploratory behaviors, leading to difficulties in complex and social situations.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2019 · doi:10.1002/aur.2054