Visual Attention toward Human Face Recognizing for Autism Spectrum Disorder and Normal Developing Children: An Eye Tracking Study

Abstract

The paper discusses an eye tracking analysis study to let us understand the visual behavior and pattern of Normal Developing children and Autistic children while viewing human face stimulus. An eye tracking experiment consists of displaying different images with human face embedded in different locations (left, center and right) and the eye tracker captured and tracked the child's eye gaze movements, then analyzed to identify where specifically in the stimulus is the child looking at. The finding indicates a significant difference was found between the two groups viewing patterns and behavior when they presented with a scene that have human face. The study also reveals that large percentage of Autistic participants expressed minimum interest and time looking at face area, evident by significant time spent fixations on non-face regions, comparing to the normal developing children. The results can be used to improve the life style of other children who have a risk to develop Autism as well as discover earlier signs of ASD.