The Effects of Visual Stimuli on Attention in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study

Attention is one of the fundamental elements of effective learning. The design of learning environments often consists of a blend of visual stimuli. Investigating the effect of visual stimuli types on the attention of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is important for the theoretical understanding of attention. This study explores the effect of social and nonsocial visual stimuli on the attention of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children in a simulated virtual classroom. Forty-six participants (ASD = 20, TD = 26) took part in a series of attention tests, in which social and nonsocial visual stimuli were used as target stimuli. We examined four eye-gaze measures: time to first fixate, first fixation duration, average fixation duration, and the sum of fixation count. The results show that social and nonsocial stimuli do not affect the attention of ASD and TD children. However, TD children pay significantly greater attention to target stimuli than children with ASD. These findings emphasize the strengths of children with ASD during attention tasks and the potential for the use of eye-gaze measures to identify attention impairment in children with ASD. This study thus recommends an investigation methodology for on-task attention assessment in a learning environment.