Gaze Following in Children with Autism: Do High Interest Objects Boost Performance?

This study tested whether including objects perceived as highly interesting by children with autism during a gaze following task would result in increased first fixation durations on the target objects. It has previously been found that autistic children differentiate less between an object another...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 626 - 636
Main Authors: Thorup, Emilia, Kleberg, Johan, Falck-Ytter, Terje
Format: pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Springer Nature Mar2017
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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Summary:This study tested whether including objects perceived as highly interesting by children with autism during a gaze following task would result in increased first fixation durations on the target objects. It has previously been found that autistic children differentiate less between an object another person attends to and unattended objects in terms of this measure. Less differentiation between attended and unattended objects in ASD as compared to control children was found in a baseline condition, but not in the high interest condition. However, typically developing children differentiated less between attended and unattended objects in the high interest condition than in the baseline condition, possibly reflecting reduced influence of gaze cues on object processing when objects themselves are highly interesting.