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An Eye Tracking Study of the Visual Behavior of Children in Social Interaction

Authors:
Emad Bataienh
Basel Almourad

Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Eye Tracking; Socially relevant information; Visual behavior

Abstract:
The paper presents an eye tracking analysis study to help us understand the visual behavior and pattern of normal developing children and autistic children while viewing a socially rich stimulus consisting of human and social interactions, as well as the factors that influence their behavior. Eye tracking is a technology that allows the assessment of one’s spontaneous visual attention and eye gaze preference and pattern. An eye tracking experiment consists of displaying different images with social stimuli (containing human faces) to the child. The eye tracker captures and tracks the child’s eye gaze movements, then analyzes the data to identify where specifically in the stimulus is the child looking at. Sixty-four participants (normal and autistic) were divided into two groups. The participants were asked to view a socially rich information stimulus for a limited and set time. Based on the data analysis conducted in the study, the findings show a significant difference was found between the two groups viewing patterns and behavior when the subjects were presented with a scene included material with human and social interaction content. The study also reveals that a large percentage of autistic participants expressed minimum interest and time looking at the face area, evident by a significant time spent fixating on non-face regions. This is linked to a lack of interest in socially relevant information, especially the two small areas of interest which are the eyes and the mouth regions, when compared to the normal developing children. The results can be used to help improve the life style of other children who have a potential to develop autism as well as discover earlier signs of autism spectrum disorder.

Pages: 36 to 44

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2019

Publication date: July 28, 2019

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3972

ISBN: 978-1-61208-728-3

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from July 28, 2019 to August 2, 2019