Investigating Gaze of Children with ASD in Naturalistic Settings.

BACKGROUND: Visual behavior is known to be atypical in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Monitor-based eye-tracking studies have measured several of these atypicalities in individuals with Autism. While atypical behaviors are known to be accentuated during natural interactions, few studies have been made on gaze behavior in natural interactions. In this study we focused on i) whether the findings done in laboratory settings are also visible in a naturalistic interaction; ii) whether new atypical elements appear when studying visual behavior across the whole field of view. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Ten children with ASD and ten typically developing children participated in a dyadic interaction with an experimenter administering items from the Early Social Communication Scale (ESCS). The children wore a novel head-mounted eye-tracker, measuring gaze direction and presence of faces across the child's field of view. The analysis of gaze episodes to faces revealed that children with ASD looked significantly less and for shorter lapses of time at the experimenter. The analysis of gaze patterns across the child's field of view revealed that children with ASD looked downwards and made more extensive use of their lateral field of view when exploring the environment. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The data gathered in naturalistic settings confirm findings previously obtained only in monitor-based studies. Moreover, the study allowed to observe a generalized strategy of lateral gaze in children with ASD when they were looking at the objects in their environment

The Modified-Classroom Observation Schedule to Measure Intentional Communication (M-COSMIC): Evaluation of reliability and validity

The Modified – Classroom Observation Schedule to Measure Intentional Communication (M-COSMIC) was developed as an ecologically valid measure of social-communication behaviour, delineating forms, functions, and intended partners of children’s spontaneous communication acts. Forty one children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) aged 48 to 73 months were filmed within small-group settings at school. Communication behaviours during a five-minute teacher-led activity and a 10-minute free play session were coded from video-tape. Inter-rater reliability was high. Many M-COSMIC codes were significantly associated as predicted with Social and Communication domain scores on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and with scores on standardised language assessments. Agreement was more variable, however, at the level of individual M-COSMIC codes and ADOS items. Higher rates of responding, compliance behaviours and following pointing gestures and gaze occurred during the more structured teacher-led activity, compared to the free play. Results demonstrate preliminary construct validity of the M-COSMIC, showing its potential to describe and evaluate spontaneous social-communication skills in young children with ASD for research and applied purposes

Using social robots to study abnormal social development

Social robots recognize and respond to human social cues with appropriate behaviors. Social robots, and the technology used in their construction, can be unique tools in the study of abnormal social development. Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that is characterized by social and communicative impairments. Based on three years of integration and immersion with a clinical research group which performs more than 130 diagnostic evaluations of children for autism per year, this paper discusses how social robots will make an impact on the ways in which we diagnose, treat, and understand autism

The use of joint attention in the naturalistic setting in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study investigates the deficits in the quantity and quality of joint attention in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). To obtain a holistic measure of joint attention, the following four aspects were considered: a) the quantity of Initiation Joint Attention (IJA) and Response Joint Attention (RJA), b) non-verbal behaviours which were atypically used during joint attention, c) the quality of joint attention and d) the association between quality and quantity of joint attention in children with ASD. These aspects were measured in three children with ASD and three typically-developing children (TDC). Measures were derived from 30-minute video recordings of a play session between each child and his/her caregiver and compared. This study established that there was a statistically significant difference in the quantity of joint attention in both IJA and RJA. The difference in the quality of joint attention was not statistically significant. However, when analysing children with ASD individually, a deficit in the quality of joint attention was identified in two of the three subjects. Compared to TDC, children with ASD engaged significantly less in IJA through manipulation of objects and eye-gaze and significantly more in IJA and RJA through challenging behaviour. In addition, there was no association between the deficits in quality and quantity of joint attention within individuals with ASD, as the three subjects portrayed diverse profiles. Children with ASD exhibited atypical joint attention skills when compared to the control group. Moreover, the frequency of initiations of joint attention bids was the most negatively affected aspect in children with ASD. Quality of joint attention is rarely researched and to the researchers’ knowledge, no other study has measured both quality and quantity of joint attention in children with ASDpeer-reviewe

Requirements for Robotic Interpretation of Social Signals “in the Wild”: Insights from Diagnostic Criteria of Autism Spectrum Disorder

The last few decades have seen widespread advances in technological means to characterise observable aspects of human behaviour such as gaze or posture. Among others, these developments have also led to significant advances in social robotics. At the same time, however, social robots are still largely evaluated in idealised or laboratory conditions, and it remains unclear whether the technological progress is sufficient to let such robots move “into the wild”. In this paper, we characterise the problems that a social robot in the real world may face, and review the technological state of the art in terms of addressing these. We do this by considering what it would entail to automate the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Just as for social robotics, ASD diagnosis fundamentally requires the ability to characterise human behaviour from observable aspects. However, therapists provide clear criteria regarding what to look for. As such, ASD diagnosis is a situation that is both relevant to real-world social robotics and comes with clear metrics. Overall, we demonstrate that even with relatively clear therapist-provided criteria and current technological progress, the need to interpret covert behaviour cannot yet be fully addressed. Our discussions have clear implications for ASD diagnosis, but also for social robotics more generally. For ASD diagnosis, we provide a classification of criteria based on whether or not they depend on covert information and highlight present-day possibilities for supporting therapists in diagnosis through technological means. For social robotics, we highlight the fundamental role of covert behaviour, show that the current state-of-the-art is unable to characterise this, and emphasise that future research should tackle this explicitly in realistic settings

How accurate are autistic adults and those high in autistic traits at making face-to-face line-of-sight judgements?

Being able to follow the direction of another person’s line-of-sight facilitates social communication. To date, much research on the processes involved in social communication has been conducted using computer-based tasks that lack ecological validity. The current paradigm assesses how accurately participants can follow a social partner’s line-of-sight in a face-to-face scenario. In Study 1, autistic and neurotypical adults were asked to identify which location, on a grid of 36 potential locations, the experimenter was looking at on a series of discrete trials. All participants (both autistic and neurotypical) were able to effectively make line-of-sight judgements, scoring significantly above chance. Participants were also just as effective at making these judgements from either a brief, 1s, glance or from a prolonged, 5s, stare. However, at the group level, autistic participants were significantly less accurate than neurotypical participants overall. In Study 2, potential variation in performance along the broad autism phenotype was considered using the same paradigm. Bayesian analyses demonstrated that line-of-sight judgement accuracy was not related to the amount of autistic traits. Overall, these findings advance the understanding of the mechanistic processes of social communication in relation to autism and autistic traits in a face-to-face setting