Action Prediction in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background:

Individuals with ASD have difficulties interpreting the goals of others. Previous studies with neurotypical adults have found that they exhibit proactive rather than reactive eye movements when observing goal-directed actions. In this context, the participants’ eye movements predicted the goals of another’s actions, rather than simply tracking their movements.

Objectives:

Using eye-tracking technology, this study investigates the prediction of other’s goals in individuals with ASD. We will examine whether adults with ASD engage in reactive or proactive eye movements while watching both themselves and others perform simple goal-directed movements (i.e. stacking blocks).

Methods:

Participants consist of 30 adults- 15 with ASD and 15 neurotypical controls. Eye gaze from each participant are recorded using a video-based ETL 500 pupil/ corneal eye-tracking system. Additionally, the position of the participant’s thumb is recorded using FASTRAK miniature electromagnetic sensors attached to the nail in order to calibrate eye movements. Eye movements are measured to determine whether the participants predict the actions of their own movements (“action” condition) and those of others (“action observation” condition), or simply track those movements (reactive gaze).

Results:

We are still in the process of data collection. Data will be analyzed to determine if there is a significant difference between amounts of predictive gaze during both “action” and “action observation” tasks between the two groups.

Conclusions:

If adults with ASD exhibit reactive rather than proactive eye movements during “action observation” task, we would hypothesize that the difficulties individuals with ASD have in social understanding may be derived from a very low-level inability to understand goal-directed movement. If adults with ASD exhibit proactive eye movements during the “action observation task”, this would suggest that their pervasive social difficulties derive from a deficit in a higher-level cognitive ability rather than simple goal perception.