Distance from Typical Scan Path When Viewing Complex Stimuli in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and its Association with Behavior

Eye-tracking is often used to study attention in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous research has identified multiple atypical patterns of attention in children with ASD based on areas-of-interest analysis. Fewer studies have investigated gaze path, a measure which is dependent on the dynamic content of the stimulus presented. Here, rather than looking at proportions of looking time to areas of interest, we calculated mean fixations frame-by-frame in a group of typically developing children (36 to 72 months) and determined the distance from those typical fixations for 155 children with ASD (27–95 months). Findings revealed that distance from the typical scan path among the children with ASD was associated with lower communication abilities and greater ASD symptomatology.