Using Eye Tracking to Explore Visual Attention in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Video social stories are used to facilitate understanding of social situations for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study explored the use of eye tracking technology to understand how adolescents with and without ASD visually attend to video social story content and whether visual attention is related to content comprehension. Six adolescents, with and without ASD, viewed a video social story of visiting a dental office. Eye gaze metrics, including fixation duration and count, and visit duration were collected to measure visual attention, and a knowledge assessment was administered for comprehension. Results indicated adolescents with ASD fixated and maintained visual attention at rates lower than peers without ASD. Adolescents with ASD scored higher (M=77.78) than peers without ASD (M=72.22) on the assessment indicating no relationship between eye gaze metrics and knowledge accuracy. Impact and implications of visual image type on frequency and duration of visual attention generated by participants is discussed.