Social Attention in ASD and TD Children

Dynamic Gaze Strategies in ASD Children During Social Interactions: An Eye-Tracking Investigation Under Intention-Congruent and -Incongruent Conditions

To examine whether the spatiotemporal organization of gaze strategies differs between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children during a staged joint attention interaction, and to identify at which phase differences emerge.

This cross-sectional observational study involved children with ASD and their typically developing (TD) peers freely viewing dynamic social interaction videos. The videos were segmented into four theory-driven phases: Introduction (scene establishment), Joint Attention (mapping another's gaze to an object preference), Intentional Comprehension (inferring the model's intention), and Emotional Feedback (evaluating outcomes that were either congruent or incongruent with the established preference). Participants' eye movements were recorded throughout using a remote eye-tracker.

Inclusion Criteria:

- For ASD group: confirmed clinical diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. For TD group: Typically developing children without any developmental or neurological disorders.

Both groups: Normal or corrected-to-normal vision, no color vision deficiencies, and legal guardian provided written informed consent.

Exclusion Criteria:

- Failure to meet the study's group-specific screening cutoffs on the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) and Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) Known genetic syndromes, significant hearing loss, or uncorrectable visual impairment