Review articleSocial attention in ASD: A review and meta-analysis of eye-tracking studies
Section snippets
Sample of studies
Studies for this meta-analysis were collected by searching the PubMed database for articles prior to July 27, 2015 using the following Boolean search phrase: ((ASD) OR (autism) OR (Asperger)) AND ((eye-tracking) OR (eye tracking) OR (eye gaze)).
From the initial sample of 371 articles, the studies meeting the following criteria were selected (see Fig. 1): (1) the article was an empirical study published in English; (2) the article compared the two groups of interest ASD and TD; (3) the study was
Overall effect size
The random effects analysis of overall effect size indicated a mean effect size of 0.55, with 95% confidence limits from 0.38 to 0.73. This is a medium effect size (Cohen, 1988) and indicates that overall, individuals with autism spend less time than typically developing controls attending to social stimuli. Therefore, the general finding across studies is that social attention is reduced in individuals with ASD when compared to TD individuals. As a test of publication bias, the effect sizes
Discussion
This study examined research on social attention in ASD and typical controls focusing on eye-tracking studies, which compared attention to social as opposed to non-social stimuli. Two key results were found. First, participants with ASD have an overall diminished social attention. The average Cohen's d effect size across studies was 0.55, a medium effect. Second, of eight study characteristics only one predicted effect size: the number of people shown in the stimuli. This analysis can help to
Conclusion
The present meta-analysis showed that individuals with ASD have overall reduced social attention as compared to typically developing controls, and that social attention in ASD is influenced by social content, which matches the conclusion reached by Guillon et al. (2014). The most important contribution of this meta-analysis is that it directs future research aimed at identifying differences between ASD and TD individuals toward studying social attention in the context of high social content
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Max Tegmark for advice about the data processing and analysis, Helen Tager-Flusberg and Peter Blake for helpful comments, and all the authors who have responded to requests for data in their papers.
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