Gaze Following as an Early Diagnostic Marker of Autism in a New Word Learning Task in Toddlers

Raquel Camero; Carlos Gallego; Verónica Martínez

doi:10.1007/s10803-023-06043-1

Gaze Following as an Early Diagnostic Marker of Autism in a New Word Learning Task in Toddlers

J Autism Dev Disord. 2023 Jul 6. doi: 10.1007/s10803-023-06043-1. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Raquel Camero¹, Carlos Gallego², Verónica Martínez³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Plaza Feijóo s/n, 33003, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain.
² Department of Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Processes and Speech Therapy, University of Complutense of Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas, Pozuelo de Alarcón, 28223, Madrid, Spain.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Plaza Feijóo s/n, 33003, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain. martinezveronica@uniovi.es.

PMID: 37410255
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-023-06043-1

Abstract

The aim was to test the use of eye-tracking methodology for the early detection of ASD in a task of association between unfamiliar objects and pseudowords. Significant differences were found between ASD (n = 57) and TD (n = 57) Spanish speaking toddlers in the number and time of fixation. The TD children showed more and longer fixations on eyes and mouth while the ASD children attended almost exclusively to objects, making it difficult to integrate lexical and phonological information. Moreover, the TD toddlers looked at the mouth when the pseudoword was produced while the ASD toddlers did not. Gaze fixation on eyes and mouth during word learning recorded by eye-tracking may be used as a biomarker for the early diagnosis of ASD.

Keywords: Autism spectrum disorders; Early diagnosis; Eye-tracking; Gaze following; Learning new words.