|
| Study | Age (y) | N (a–c) | Method | Main results and conclusions |
|
| Chawarska and Shic 2009 [11] | 2–4 | 44–30 | Visual scanning and recognition of faces | R: children with autism looked increasingly away from faces with age and atypically attended to key features of faces
C: face processing is affected early and becomes further compromised with age |
| Chawarska et al. 2010 [12] | 2–4 | 42–46 | Attentional bias associated with faces and nonfacial stimuli | R: controls had more difficulties disengaging visual attention from faces but not objects than children with autism
C: the neural attentional mechanism that supports deep processing of faces is disrupted in autism |
| Falck-Ytter et al. 2010 [13] | 4–6 | 15-15 | Visual scanning of faces | R: children with autism who are better at socioemotional skills than nonverbal communication skills look more at the eyes than the mouth, and vice versa
C: separate neural systems underlie these skills |
| Jones et al. 2008 [14] | 2 | 15–36 | Visual scanning of an actress playing the role of caregiver | R: looking at the eyes of others was decreased in children with autism, while looking at mouths was increased
C: looking at the eyes is derailed early offering a potential biomarker quantifying syndrome manifestation |
| Klin and Jones 2008 [16] | 1 | 1–0 | Visual scanning of naturalistic and ambiguous social stimuli | R: viewing patterns of a child with autism were driven by the physical contingencies of the stimuli rather than by their social context
C: mechanisms of social development are developmentally derailed in children with autism |
| Klin et al. 2009 [17] | 1–3 | 21–39 | Visual scanning of point-light (inverted) displays of biological motion | R: children with autism fail to orient towards point-light displays of biological motion
C: early developmental derailment leads to an altered neurodevelopmental trajectory of brain specialization in autism |
| Nakano et al. 2010 [9] | 2–9;
>25 | 25-25
27-27 | Temporospatial gaze patterns of visual scanning of video clips | R: typical infants preferred to watch the mouth rather than the eyes, which reversed with development (eyes rather than mouth)
C: research in gaze behavior should take the effect of development into account |
| Young et al. 2009 [15] | 0.5 | 33–25 | Live interaction with video-transmitted mothers’ face | R and C: eye contact did not predict autism at follow up; greater amounts attention to the mother’s mouth predicted higher levels of expressive language at follow up |
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