Eye Tracking May Aid Diagnosis of Autism in Young Children, Study Suggests

An eye-tracking device that measures social-visual engagement (how children look and learn from their surrounding social environment) may help to predict autism in children at risk for the disorder, according to areport inJAMA.“Most parents of children with autism report having had concerns before the second birthday, yet the median age of U.S. autism diagnosis is 4 to 5 years,” wrote Warren Jones, Ph.D., of the Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta and colleagues. Objective biomarker tests could help reduce diagnostic dela ys and connect young people with services earlier.For the study, Jones and colleagues recruited 475 children aged 16 to 30 months old who were enrolled at six U.S. autism specialty centers between April 2018 and May 2019. The cohort included a broad spectrum of children with autism —both with and without co-occurring intellectual and developmental delays—as well as many children without autism who nonetheless had significant speech-language and other developmental disabilities.All participants were evaluated by autism experts who relied on such standardized assessments as the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition; the Mullen Scales of Early Learning; andDSM-5 criteria. In addition, clinical site staff used an automated device to track the children ’s eye movement as they watched short videos of social interaction (for example, children playing together). Those performing the eye-tracking tests and clinical assessments were blind to eac...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: autism DSM-5 early diagnosis eye tracking JAMA specificity validity young children Source Type: research