ASD Toddlers Present Deficits in Their Ability to Track Social Cues of Others

Background: The ability to attend to the actions and social cues of others is critical to understanding what others are doing and why. A previous study has shown that the monitoring of the social activities of others is disrupted by the second year of life in ASD (Shic et al., 2010), with toddlers with ASD showing less attention towards activities and a greater focus on non-social background elements as compared to typically developing (TD) peers. It is unknown, however, under what conditions do these atypical attention processes manifest.

Objectives: To examine (1) how socially directed cues (looking, talking and/or pointing) by the adult toward the child effects the gaze patterns of observers (child-directed); (2) how patterns of attention vary depending on the presence and absence of social cues (e.g eye contact, talking, pointing, etc..) and (3) what associations exist between viewing patterns under these conditions and social and cognitive functioning in ASD.

Methods: Eye-tracking data was collected from toddlers with ASD (22 months; n=30) and TD controls (20 months, n=32). Subjects were shown a 30-second video of a female adult and a male toddler playing with a puzzle. To assess the influence of child-directed cues, three one-second intervals representing before, during and after the onset of the child-directed cues were analyzed. In addition, times without any directed cues were isolated (i.e. the only activity is the child playing with the puzzle), to assess looking patterns in the absence of social cues. The proportion of looking time at different regions of interest within the scene for these specified times were analyzed between diagnostic groups (ASD or TD).

Results: In the absence of social cues, TD toddlers looked longer toward the interaction (p<.01), while ASD toddlers looked longer toward the background (p<.01). This pattern was also seen before the presence of a child-directed cue by the adult, with TD toddlers looked more toward the activity (p<.01) and ASD toddlers looked more toward the background (p<.01). Furthermore, during these times, no differences were seen in looking time toward people. However, during and after the social cue, TD toddlers looked significantly longer toward the actors’ heads (p<.01, for both increments) while during the cue, ASD toddlers continued to look significantly longer at the background (p<.01). The significant between group differences in activity monitoring disappeared with the presentation of the child-directed cue.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that TD toddlers have an acute sensitivity in their ability to track characters and align with the characters’ focus of attention. With the introduction of a child-directed social cue, TD toddlers were able to redirect their attention from the activity to the expected areas of interest, while ASD toddlers were not. Even in the absence of child-directed cues, the ASD toddlers have limited activity monitoring, confirming previous findings. These supplementary results suggest that ASD toddlers have a deficit in their ability to the track the social cues of others, suggesting that they may have difficulties with either acknowledging the cue, knowing how to react toward the cue, or possibly reacting slower.