The warm look of autism

What is it about?

Our analysis and modelling of eye-tracking data revealed a greater dispersion of eye movements for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared with children with typical development. A stochastic model of the experimental data indicated higher values of the model parameter modulating the dispersion of eye movements (a higher "attentional temperature") for children with ASD.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Our model of visual search allows to derive from the Eye Tracking data analysis a numeric parameter (called Temperature, although this is not a temperature in the physical sense of the word; it is a kind of "attentional temperature"), which is able to describe the transition from the visual behaviour of subjects with typical development to that of subjects with ASD. We found that autistic visual behaviour corresponds (on average) to a higher "attentional temperature". Therefore, this parameter can be potentially relevant for the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder.