The Selective Social Attention task in children with autism spectrum disorder: Results from the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials (ABC-CT) feasibility study.

Researchers used eye-tracking technology to see where children with autism look during social videos compared to other children. They found that children with autism looked less at people's faces, especially during social interactions. Children who looked at faces less also had more severe autism symptoms. This test might help doctors better understand and measure autism in children of different ages.

This feasibility study examined the Selective Social Attention (SSA) eye-tracking task in 23 children with ASD (ages 4-12) compared to 25 typically developing children. The SSA measures where children look during social scenarios, particularly focusing on faces. Children with ASD showed reduced attention to social scenes and less face-looking during socially engaging conditions compared to typically developing peers. Within the ASD group, less face-looking correlated with higher autism severity scores, especially autistic mannerisms.

The findings replicate earlier infant/toddler research and extend to school-age children, suggesting the SSA could serve as a potential biomarker for autism across developmental stages.

The SSA eye-tracking task shows promise as an objective biomarker for autism that could complement traditional assessments. It may help clinicians quantify social attention differences and track changes over time. However, larger validation studies are needed before clinical implementation.

Small sample size (N=48 total). This was a feasibility study, limiting generalizability. The abstract doesn't specify control for comorbidities or medication effects. Cross-sectional design prevents conclusions about developmental trajectories or treatment response over time.

The Selective Social Attention (SSA) task is a brief eye-tracking task involving experimental conditions varying along socio-communicative axes. Traditionally the SSA has been used to probe socially-specific attentional patterns in infants and toddlers who develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This current work extends these findings to preschool and school-age children. Children 4- to 12-years-old with ASD (N = 23) and a typically-developing comparison group (TD; N = 25) completed the SSA task as well as standardized clinical assessments.

Linear mixed models examined group and condition effects on two outcome variables: percent of time spent looking at the scene relative to scene presentation time (%Valid), and percent of time looking at the face relative to time spent looking at the scene (%Face). Age and IQ were included as covariates. Outcome variables' relationships to clinical data were assessed via correlation analysis. The ASD group, compared to the TD group, looked less at the scene and focused less on the actress' face during the most socially-engaging experimental conditions.

Additionally, within the ASD group, %Face negatively correlated with SRS total T-scores with a particularly strong negative correlation with the Autistic Mannerism subscale T-score. These results highlight the extensibility of the SSA to older children with ASD, including replication of between-group differences previously seen in infants and toddlers, as well as its ability to capture meaningful clinical variation within the autism spectrum across a wide developmental span inclusive of preschool and school-aged children. The properties suggest that the SSA may have broad potential as a biomarker for ASD.