Relationship Between Vision and Postural Control in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Is It Time to Move Forward? A Scoping Review.

This review looked at how vision problems and balance/posture difficulties might be connected in autistic children and teens. Researchers found very few studies on this topic - only 14 studies that met their standards. The existing research shows mixed results and uses very different methods, making it hard to understand the real connection. More high-quality research is needed to help families and professionals understand how vision and balance work together in autism.

This scoping review examined the relationship between visual processing and postural control difficulties in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. After searching multiple databases, researchers identified only 14 studies meeting inclusion criteria from 646 initial results. The review found that research in this area is extremely limited, with contrasting and inconsistent findings across studies. The significant heterogeneity in research methods made it impossible to draw definitive conclusions about how vision and posture interact in autistic children.

The authors emphasize the need for more rigorous research using standardized, population-specific outcome measures to better understand this relationship and inform clinical practice.

The limited and inconsistent research prevents clear clinical recommendations for addressing vision-posture relationships in autistic children. Clinicians should be aware that both visual and postural difficulties may co-occur but require individual assessment. More rigorous research with standardized measures is urgently needed to inform evidence-based interventions.

The review identified significant methodological heterogeneity across included studies, with highly variable sample characteristics and research methods. The small number of available studies (only 14) limits the ability to draw generalizable conclusions about vision-posture relationships in autism.

Despite the main clinical criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis being the dysfunction of socio-communicative interaction abilities and the presence of restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, sensory-motor dysfunctions are also frequently observed in this population. Moreover, among sensory-motor issues, both postural control and visual processing may be impaired. The main aim of this scoping review is to synthesize the evidence on the relationship between visual behavior and postural control dysfunctions in children and adolescents with ASD. This scoping review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocol, Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines, and was registered a priori on the Open Science Framework.

PubMed, CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were consulted. Primary studies with any study design were included. No time, geographical, or study setting limitations or language restrictions were applied. A total of 646 articles were found in the initial search, but only 14 studies met the full inclusion criteria.

Findings highlighted that studies on the relationship between vision and posture in ASD children and adolescents are scarce, and their results are contrasting because of the significant heterogeneity in the methods. This scoping review carried out a relevant survey of the literature considering the relationship between vision and posture in ASD. Nonetheless, the characteristics of the included sample and the methodology used in the analyzed studies were highly variable. Thus, rigorous study methods with population-specific objective outcome measures are needed to draw generalizable conclusions.