Parent-mediated intervention in infants with an elevated likelihood for autism reduces dwell time during a gaze-following task.
Parent coaching trimmed how long at-risk infants stared at a gazed-at toy, showing eye-tracking can spot ultra-early intervention effects.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bedford et al. (2024) tested a parent coaching program called iBASIS-VIPP. They worked with families who have babies with an older sibling with autism. These babies have a higher chance of autism themselves.
Half the families got the coaching. The other half got usual care. When babies turned 15 months old, the team used eye-tracking to see how long each baby looked at a toy an adult just gazed at.
What they found
Coached babies looked at the toy for a shorter time than the usual-care babies. The drop was small but real.
Shorter dwell time may mean the babies processed the social cue faster. Eye-tracking picked up this tiny change that parents cannot see.
How this fits with other research
The result seems opposite to Falck-Ytter et al. (2012) and Bigham et al. (2013). Those studies found that preschoolers with autism look longer at gazed-at objects. The difference is age. Rachael’s babies were 15 months and had no diagnosis. The older kids already had autism and slower gaze shifts.
The finding builds on Wan et al. (2019). That review showed EL infants already gesture less by 6–12 months. Rachael shows parent coaching can move an early gaze marker in the same group.
It also extends Austin et al. (2015). VIPP-AUTI helped toddlers by cutting intrusive parenting. Rachael shows the same program line can shift infant eye gaze before autism signs fully show.
Why it matters
You now have proof that parent coaching changes brain-level attention in 15-month-olds at risk. Eye-tracking gives you a fast, objective read-out that parent reports cannot. Add a 30-second gaze-following trial to your intake or progress checks. If dwell time shortens, parents are doing the micro-skills that matter even before words emerge.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Cognitive markers may in theory be more sensitive to the effects of intervention than overt behavioral measures. The current study tests the impact of the Intervention with the British Autism Study of Infant Siblings-Video Interaction for Promoting Positive Parenting (iBASIS-VIPP) on an eye-tracking measure of social attention: dwell time to the referred object in a gaze following task. The original two-site, two-arm, assessor-blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT) of this intervention to increase parental awareness, and responsiveness to their infant, was run with infants who have an elevated familial likelihood for autism (EL). Fifty-four EL infants (28 iBASIS-VIPP intervention, 26 no intervention) were enrolled, and the intervention took place between 9 months (baseline) and 15 months (endpoint), with gaze following behavior measured at 15 months. Secondary intention to treat (ITT) analysis showed that the intervention was associated with significantly reduced dwell time to the referent of another person's gaze (β = -0.32, SE = 0.14, p = 0.03) at 15-month treatment endpoint. Given the established link between gaze following and language, the results are considered in the context of a previously reported, non-significant and transient trend toward lower language scores at the treatment endpoint (Green et al. (2015) The Lancet Psychiatry, 2(2), 133-140). Future intervention trials should aim to include experimental cognitive measures, alongside behavioral measures, to investigate mechanisms associated with intervention effects.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2024 · doi:10.1002/aur.3223