Name: comparing eye-tracking data of children with high-functioning asd, comorbid adhd, and of a control watching social videos
Uploaded: 2018-12-07T13:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos at JoVE.com

The authors acknowledge that the wider study from which this paper is generated is financially supported by the General Research Fund under the University Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China (grant number: GRF 844813); and by the Research Support Scheme 2017/18 of the Department of Special Education and Counselling at the Education University of Hong Kong.

Parental and participant consent was obtained during the recruitment process in a primary school and a children service center for ASD in Hong Kong and the study was approved by the university ethical review committee of the Education University of Hong Kong.
1. Use of a Video-based Assessment
<ol>
	<li>Produce several social videos, about one minute long, that consist of daily life scenarios involving several people in a social context (Figure 1).
	<ol>
		<li>P...

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The first-moment fixation duration was shorter for the ASD-ADHD and ASD children than for the neurotypical child. The total fixation duration was shorter for the ASD-ADHD child than for the neurotypical child, demonstrating a general reduction in visual attention to social stimuli. This showed that the ASD-ADHD child showed a delay in attending to the entry of social stimuli in a social scene. This delay might cause the child to skip registering important momentary social information, which may lead to the misinterpretat...

Persons with ASD are known to be characterized by behavioral deficits in social communication, based on conventional behavioral evidence from structured observational assessments and parent interviews. In addition, sensory processing abnormalities have been recently incorporated into the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria of ASD1. Social information processing involves the lower level sensory-perceptual processing and higher level social cognitive processing of social information. Sensory-perceptual processing refers to the ability to attend to social stimuli and encode them in a short-term memory bank for instant retrieval and response-planning, while social cognitive processing refers to the interpretation of social information by social reasoning and problem-solving2,3. As such, social information-processing deficits often lead to other psychobehavioral characteristics, such as social anxiety and inattentiveness. This can be illustrated by the high comorbid prevalence rate of ASD with attention deficit-hyperactive disorder (ADHD). The range of comorbidity for ADHD in ASD has been estimated at 30% to 80%, whereas the presence of comorbid ASD in ADHD has been estimated at 20% to 50%4.
Two major hypotheses have been put forward to account for the deficits in social information processing&#8212;namely, enhanced perceptual functioning (EPF) and weak central coherence (WCC). EPF refers to the overattentiveness to or preoccupation with specific parts by individuals with ASD, whereas WCC refers to their weakness to derive the essence of wholes by pulling together the interelement relationships of the parts5. Both theoretical frameworks attest to their failure to globally configure or process the multiple stimuli concurrently presented in a confined social context6,7. In an earlier face emotion recognition study using static face expression photos8, it was found that the ASD group tended to show localized processing of facial features (such as the shape of the mouth) using EPF, but seem to be weaker in configural processing, which demands pulling together the more abstract perceptual concepts as postulated by WCC, such as the spatial relationships between multiple facial components (e.g., the distance between the eyebrows and the intensity of the eye gaze)9,10.
Since daily social episodes consist of dynamic moment-to-moment subtle changes in social information, any failure to attend or engage in the sensory-perceptual processing of subtle human nonverbal cues, such as facial expression, postures, and gestures, and to make sense of the relationships of the different social stimuli might lead to inappropriate social cognitive processing. Eye-tracking experiments have been increasingly used to supplement clinical observation in social information processing studies. Eye-tracking data, in the form of scanpath patterns, visual fixation counts, and visual duration, have been major biomarkers to investigate social information processing in ASD11,12,13,14,15.
In this study, we illustrate the use of the eye-tracking technique to investigate whether the two participants with ASD and with ASD-ADHD process the first moments of social video scenes differently than the neurotypical child. The eye tracker equipment captures four major indices during viewing: the number of visual fixations, the first fixation duration, the total fixation duration, and the scanpath patterns in the form of spatial arrangement and sequence of fixation points. In this way, how fast each participant attends to the audio-visual stimuli predefined by AOIs as they first appear into the social scenes, for how long they continue to look at those AOIs, and their gaze shifts between multiple AOIs appearing concurrently in the same social scene can be captured. Any delay to fixate AOIs during the first moments (i.e., 500 ms) and the trajectory of the scanpaths provide important evidence for data analysis. Representative findings from the qualitative analysis of this single-case comparative study using this paradigm are reported.

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:741px;" width="741">
	<tbody>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:227px;">Tobii Pro TX300</td>
			<td style="width:79px;">Tobii</td>
			<td style="width:123px;">N/A</td>
			<td style="width:313px;">Screen based eye-tracker (300Hz refreshing rate)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:227px;">Tobii Pro Studio</td>
			<td style="width:79px;">Tobii</td>
			<td style="width:123px;">N/A</td>
			<td>Software for analyzing eyetracking data</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

comparing eye-tracking data of children with high-functioning asd, comorbid adhd, and of a control watching social videos

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have sensory-perceptual processing deficits that weaken their abilities to attend and perceive social stimuli in daily living contexts. Since daily social episodes consist of subtle dynamic changes in social information, any failure to attend to or process subtle human nonverbal cues, such as facial expression, postures, and gestures, might lead to inappropriate social interaction. Traditional behavioral rating scales or assessment tools based on static social scenes have limitations in capturing the moment-to-moment changes in social scenarios. An eye-tracking assessment, which can be administered in a video-based mode, is therefore preferred, to augment clinical observation. In this study, using the single-case comparison design, the eye-tracking data of three participants, a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), another with comorbid attention deficit-hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and a neurotypical control, are captured while they view a video of social scenarios. The eye-tracking experiment has helped answer the research question: How does social attention differ between the three participants? By predefining areas of interest (AOIs), their visual attention on relevant or irrelevant social stimuli, how fast each participant attends to the first social stimuli appearing in the videos, for how long each participant continues to attend to those stimuli within the AOIs, and the gaze shifts between multiple social stimuli appearing concurrently in the same social scene are captured, compared, and analyzed in a video-based eye-tracking experiment.

The eye-tracking data of the three Cantonese-speaking children (with ASD, with ASD-ADHD, and a control) aged between the ages of 7 and 9 viewing three social videos using the aforementioned paradigm is presented here (Table 1).
The first fixation duration (per 500 ms target AOI) was longer for the neurotypical child (150 ms) than for the ASD and ASD-ADHD children (both 110 ms). The total fixation duration (per 5...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos at JoVE.com

Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos

This is a qualitative comparative case study analysis of eye-tracking data on the first moments of social video scenes as viewed by three participants: one with autism spectrum disorder, one with comorbid attention deficit-hyperactive disorder, and one neurotypical control.

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have sensory-perceptual processing deficits that weaken their abilities to attend and perceive ...

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