Using Eyetracking to Evaluate Social Skills Treatment for Autism
Undergraduates: Miranda Sullivan, Rachel Greene
Faculty Advisor: Gabriel Dichter
Department: Biology
Background: To evaluate response to treatment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a robust measure is needed to compare an individual¿¿¿s social communication ability before and after social skills treatment. Objectives: This project aims to evaluate whether a dynamic eyetracking (ET) paradigm may be used as a sensitive measure of treatment response in ASD. Methods: 18 participants with ASD were recruited for an 8-week social skills group (SCIT-A) and 23 continued treatment as usual (TAU). SCIT-A participants completed the ET task before and after the social skills group and TAU visits were separated by 8 weeks. The ET task showed participants¿¿¿ visual preference for social stimuli and this was compared to existing measures of social communication. 22 control participants were recruited to determine test-retest reliability of the ET paradigm. Results: Analyses of the social prioritization ET measure indicate good test-retest reliability (¿¿=0.86; ICC=0.80, 95% CI [0.35, 0.93]). Controlling for visit, IQ, and group, of the existing measures of social communication were significant predictors of the ET metric across visits. Conclusion: The social prioritization ET score is reliable but it does not show significant relationships with currently used measures of social communication. The high quality of clinical care for TAU participants may make this comparison group too stringent to find a between-groups effect or this ET measure may simply not be sensitive to change over time.