Patterns of gaze behavior during an eye-tracking measure of joint attention in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder

• This research evaluated children's eye gaze while viewing social videos.
• Two groups: autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typical development (TD).
• ASD and TD groups differed in timing of children's eye gaze, not overall duration.
• Continuous measures of social abilities predicted eye gaze across both groups.

This study evaluated whether diagnostic classifications or features of ASD were associated with individual differences in children's gaze pattern during an eye-tracking measure of joint attention. The sample included 21 children with ASD (mean age, 7.3 ± 1.5 years) and 24 typically developing children (mean age, 6.8 ± 1.6 years), matched on receptive language abilities. Results revealed no significant group differences on global measures of gaze allocation (total gaze time allocation). However, significant group differences emerged using a measure evaluating a microstructure of children's gaze (duration of first fixation). In addition, individual differences in children's gaze pattern were reliably predicted by parent report measures of children's social abilities. The majority of children in this sample (including all typically developing children and those children with ASD who scored lowest on the SRS Social Awareness subscale) showed significant modulation in eye-gaze between the two experimental conditions. In contrast, children with ASD who also scored the highest on the SRS Social Awareness subscale consistently failed to modulate their eye gaze in accordance with the experimental condition. This failure to flexibly modulate gaze in the context of a joint attention eye-tracking paradigm may reveal children's limited awareness of social cues that may further limit social learning.