How children with autism look at events

Patterns of eye movements were studied in a group of 10 preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and in two reference groups with typically developing (TD) children, 12 3-year-olds and 12 1-year-olds. Three hypotheses were tested regarding the origins of problems experienced by children with ASD in dynamic situations. The first one stated that the children with ASD have deficient motion perception. The second one stated that children with ASD are deficient in predicting events, and the third one that the roots are to be found in deficient social perception. The results show that the children with ASD tracked moving objects with smooth pursuit and predicted the reappearance of temporarily occluded moving object in the same way as the TD children. Their eye movements, however, revealed deficient social perception. They looked at a video-taped conversation much less than the TD children, they did not predict the onset of the next turn in the conversation, and the fixations on the speakers were shorter. These effects did not appear in a control video with objects taking turns and making sounds in a similar alternating way to the two participants in the conversation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.