Orienting Response, Viewing Preference, and Exploration Patterns in Young Children with ASD

Background:   Some evidence suggests that when children with typical development (TD) view pictures of faces they exhibit an orienting response and preference for faces over other stimuli (Gliga et al., 2009).  Findings in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) vary with evidence for a diminished preference for faces (Chawarska et al., 2010), preference for objects of high interest (Sasson et al., 2011), or no difference in attention (Fischer et al., 2013) compared to TD peers.  Causes for differing results could be complexity or saliency of images, age, developmental level, or amount of intervention received.

Objectives: To investigate orienting response, preference, and exploration patterns of young children with ASD while viewing complex visual arrays of faces and objects.

Methods:   To date, 14 children with ASD (10 male) with mean age 28.86 (SD = 5.48) and 15 children with TD (10 male) with mean age 23.20 (SD = 5.19) have completed the protocol.  Children in the ASD group were either receiving less than 10 hours a week of intervention or had not been enrolled in intensive intervention for longer than two months.  Participants were presented with 10 different circular visual arrays.  Each array contained 3 smiling adult faces varying in gender and ethnicity (Caucasian, African American, East Asian, Indian, and Hispanic) and 3 novel, colorful toys.   Each array was not displayed unless the child was fixated at the center of the screen and was then presented for six seconds.  We measured orienting response (percent of first fixations to a face), preference (percent of looking time to faces), and exploration (number of images viewed).

Results: Within group t-tests revealed that first look to face versus object images in both the ASD and TD groups was at chance (ASD t(13) = .20, p = .85; TD t(14) = .88, p = .39).   There was no group difference in percent of first look to a face (t(27) = .66, p = .51).  There was also no group difference in percent of looking time to faces (t(27) = .89, p = .38).  Children in the ASD group explored more object images than the TD group (t(27)2.58, p = .02), but there was no group difference in exploration of face images (t(27) .46, p =.65).

Conclusions:   In an array of complex images of objects and faces, children with ASD and TD showed no preference for either type of image, either through an orienting response or overall looking time.  Children with ASD demonstrated more exploration behavior of object images.  Evidence in older children suggests that children with ASD engage in more visual exploration when viewing highly interesting objects (Sasson et al., 2011).  High exploration in the ASD group may be influenced by the novelty or saliency of the objects.