TY - JOUR
T1 - Rapid face orienting in infants and school-age children with and without autism
T2 - Exploring measurement invariance in eye-tracking
AU - Dalrymple, Kirsten A.
AU - Wall, Natalie
AU - Spezio, Michael
AU - Hazlett, Heather C.
AU - Piven, Joseph
AU - Elison, Jed T.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Dalrymple et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2018/8
Y1 - 2018/8
N2 - Questions concerning the ontogenetic stability of autism have recently received increased attention as long-term longitudinal studies have appeared in the literature. Most experimental measures are designed for specific ages and functioning levels, yet developing experimental tasks appropriate for a wide range of ages and functioning levels is critical for future long-term longitudinal studies, and treatment studies implemented at different ages. Accordingly, we designed an eye-tracking task to measure preferential orienting to facial features and implemented it with groups of participants with varying levels of functioning: infants, and school-age children with and without autism. All groups fixated eyes first, revealing an early and stable orienting bias. This indicates common bias towards the eyes across participants regardless of age or diagnosis. We also demonstrate that this eye-tracking task can be used with diverse populations who range in age and cognitive functioning. Our developmental approach has conceptual implications for future work focused on task development and particularly new experimental measures that offer measurement equivalence across broad age ranges, intellectual functioning and verbal abilities.
AB - Questions concerning the ontogenetic stability of autism have recently received increased attention as long-term longitudinal studies have appeared in the literature. Most experimental measures are designed for specific ages and functioning levels, yet developing experimental tasks appropriate for a wide range of ages and functioning levels is critical for future long-term longitudinal studies, and treatment studies implemented at different ages. Accordingly, we designed an eye-tracking task to measure preferential orienting to facial features and implemented it with groups of participants with varying levels of functioning: infants, and school-age children with and without autism. All groups fixated eyes first, revealing an early and stable orienting bias. This indicates common bias towards the eyes across participants regardless of age or diagnosis. We also demonstrate that this eye-tracking task can be used with diverse populations who range in age and cognitive functioning. Our developmental approach has conceptual implications for future work focused on task development and particularly new experimental measures that offer measurement equivalence across broad age ranges, intellectual functioning and verbal abilities.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0202875
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0202875
M3 - Article
C2 - 30153278
AN - SCOPUS:85052601224
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 13
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 8
M1 - e0202875
ER -