The effects of storytelling with or without social contextual information regarding eye gaze and visual attention in children with autistic spectrum disorder and typical development : a randomized, controlled eye‑tracking study

Abstract

This study examined the effects of storytelling with or without contextual information on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typical development (TD) using eye-tracker. They were randomized into two groups—the stories included and did not include social contextual information respectively. Training was delivered in groups, with eight sessions across four weeks, 30 min/session. Participants’ fixation duration, visit duration, and fixation count on human faces from 20 photos and a video were recorded. Our findings revealed that storytelling with social contextual information enhanced participants’ eye gazes on eyes/ faces in static information (photos) for both children with ASD and TD, but the same advantage could not be seen for children with ASD in regard to dynamic information (videos).