Background

     Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by core deficits in areas such as social interaction, non-verbal communication and restricted/repetitive behaviours (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). A large proportion of CwASD have limited pre-linguistic skills, such as eye-contact and joint attention, which are foundational for the development of verbal language (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984).

       Eye-tracking has been used widely in the autism research since infants and young children can be assessed easily. It is a potential method of investigating atypical gaze patterns, characteristic of children with ASD. Though, the available evidence largely comes from observational studies often comparing groups of children with ASD and TD controls. Further, the claim that eye-tracking could be a biomarker in early identification of children with ASD is at a hypothetical stage, and not yet tested or verified, except for a few of the longitudinal studies where infants at risk of developing ASD (i.e., siblings of children with a diagnosis of autism) were recruited. In the recent past, Sasson and Elison (2012) have put forth a protocol detailing methodological recommendations for designing research studies in eye tracking in young children with ASD. None of the studies so far have investigated the feasibility of eye gaze as a screening tool for early identification of children with ASD in an epidemiological, population-based design (including all children at risk and healthy controls).   

The aim and objectives of this investigation are to:

a)    To determine the potential eye gaze parameters that could differentiate children with ASD from typically-developing children

b)    To establish the validity of the relevant eye gaze parameters identified in objective 1 through an epidemiological study

The proposed study aims to develop an eye gaze-based early screening protocol for children with ASD. The proposed study will be carried out in two phases.

The first phase will identify the eye gaze parameters that differentiate children with ASD from typically-developing (TD) children during social-communicative context, using a series of available paradigms (from literature). The design for the first phase of the study would be cross-sectional observational case control study.