Measuring social attention and motivation in autism spectrum disorder using eye‐tracking: Stimulus type matters
Open accessAbstract
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by social impairments that have been related to deficits in social attention, including diminished gaze to faces. Eye‐tracking studies are commonly used to examine social attention and social motivation in ASD, but they vary in sensitivity. In this study, we hypothesized that the ecological nature of the social stimuli would affect participants' social attention, with gaze behavior during more naturalistic scenes being most predictive of ASD vs. typical development. Eighty‐one children with and without ASD participated in three eye‐tracking tasks that differed in the ecological relevance of the social stimuli. In the “Static Visual Exploration” task, static images of objects and people were presented; in the “Dynamic Visual Exploration” task, video clips of individual faces and objects were presented side‐by‐side; in the “Interactive Visual Exploration” task, video clips of children playing with objects in a naturalistic context were presented. Our analyses uncovered a three‐way interaction between Task, Social vs. Object Stimuli, and Diagnosis. This interaction was driven by group differences on one task only—the Interactive task. Bayesian analyses confirmed that the other two tasks were insensitive to group membership. In addition, receiver operating characteristic analyses demonstrated that, unlike the other two tasks, the Interactive task had significant classification power. The ecological relevance of social stimuli is an important factor to consider for eye‐tracking studies aiming to measure social attention and motivation in ASD. Autism Res 2015, 8: 620–628 . © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Dynamic stimuli have a more substantial impact on eliciting social impairments in ASD than static stimuli.
“For instance, dynamic stimuli have been shown to have a more substantial impact on eliciting social impairments in ASD than static stimuli (Che vallier et al., 2015).”
From Convergence of oxytocin and dopamine signalling in neuronal circuits: Insights into the neurobiology of social interactions across species (2024) · cites this paper as Chevallier et al., 2015
The Discussion reports that ASD–TD differences in social attention appeared only with dynamic stimuli depicting interaction, not with the static or dynamic non-interactive tasks. The claim captures the contrast with static stimuli but overgeneralizes it to dynamic stimuli as a whole; the paper identifies social interaction as an important condition. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredDifferences in social attention between ASD and typically developing samples only emerged with naturalistic (rather than static) stimuli capturing the dynamics of social interactions.
“This finding aligns with observations that differences in social attention between ASD and typically developing samples only emerged with naturalistic (rather than static) stimuli capturing the dynamics of social interactions (Chevallier et al. 2015).”
From Measuring Theory of Mind in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (2017) · cites this paper as Chevallier et al. 2015
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References 46 · Cited by 256
- Authors
- Chevallier, C., Parish‐Morris, J., McVey, A., Rump, K. M., Sasson, N. J., Herrington, J. D., & Schultz, R. T.
- Affiliations
- Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (US)
- The University of Texas at Dallas (US)
- Corresponding author
- Chevallier, Coralie
- Venue
- Autism Research
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2015-06-10
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 620-628
- ISSN
- 1939-3792 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-3806
- PMC
- PMC4624010
- OpenAlex
- W1773684352
- Cited by
- 256
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 44 · 2019: 33 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 5 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 11.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Autism Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (RC1MH08879)
- Pennsylvania Department of Health (SAP # 4100047863)
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-10-LABX-0087 IEC, ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL*)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, social attention, social motivation, eye tracking, gaze behavior, face gaze, children, diagnostic classification, task sensitivity
- MeSH terms
- Autism Spectrum Disorder, Adolescent, Attention, Bayes Theorem, Child, Female, Fixation, Ocular, Humans, Male, Motivation, Photic Stimulation, Social Behavior
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