Children with autism view film images differently, Swiss study finds

Diverse images: we don't all see the same thing when looking at screens. © Keystone / Christian Beutler

Children with autism focus their attention on different facets of films compared to children without autism, according to a study led by the University of Geneva. The variations increase significantly as children get older.

“The results suggest that social attention should be considered early in clinical treatments,” wrote the Geneva researchers in the study published in the journal eLife.

The researchers from the University of Geneva analysed the attention of children using the so-called eye-tracking method, they university said in a press release on Thursday.

Some 166 children with autism and 51 without watched sequences of a cartoon, with researchers then recording where the participants focussed their eyes. The children – all boys – were between two and seven years old and were tested repeatedly over the course of their development.

+ More research discoveries and innovations in our science channel

Synchronised view

In children without autism, the researchers observed a synchronisation of their gaze as age increased. More and more, the children were seen to focus their attention on the same elements of a scene.

This synchronisation was absent in the children with autism. They showed an interest in other types of stimuli: for example, certain objects or irregularities in the cartoon landscape. Over time, each child then developed their own unique visual preferences. The researchers also found that children with autism whose gaze was most similar to that of children with normal development functioned best in everyday life.

How a child views a social scene, such as in the cartoons used, can be used to predict future social difficulties, the researchers say. “This work shows that if autistic children do not show interest in social interactions from an early age, they become increasingly disinterested,” explained study leader Marie Schaer in the press release.

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here. 

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].