An Examination of Eye Tracking in Videos and 3D Animations in Children with ASD and TD Children

Abstract

Visual attention impairments of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been investigated in many studies over the past two decades. The purpose of this study was to examine the visual attention of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children in different social interaction contexts. Videos and 3D animations with three different levels of social interaction content (low, medium, and high) were created for the current study. The participants included 21 children with ASD (𝑋̅ = 7.6, SD = 1.7) and 22 TD children (𝑋̅ = 8.5, SD = 1.0), all aged between 5 and 12 years. The participants observed the video and 3D animation presentations on a computer screen as a passive viewing task. While the children watched the social interaction scenarios, eye-tracking data was collected to analyze their total fixation duration. The findings indicated that both children with ASD and TD children exhibited the longest total fixation duration on the Eyes and Mouth regions, particularly during the Chocolate Bread scenario, which featured low-level social interaction. When we examined visual attention during the presentation of videos and 3D animations, we found that both groups of children displayed significantly more fixation duration on the face region, especially the Eyes region during the 3D animation presentation compared to the video presentation. The research findings were discussed, and recommendations for future studies were provided.