Spatiotemporal characteristics of gaze of children with autism spectrum disorders while looking at classroom scenes.
Spatiotemporal characteristics of gaze of children with autism spectrum disorders while looking at classroom scenes.
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0175912
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Kaneko K
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Higuchi T;Ishizaki Y;Noritake A;Yanagimoto Y;Kobayashi H;Nakamura K;Kaneko K
患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的儿童在社交方面有神经发育障碍，他们经常因为在课堂上学习困难而拒绝上学。这些儿童对学校适应不良的确切原因尚不清楚。我们假设这些孩子在注意老师所指的物体方面有困难。我们对自闭症儿童进行了凝视行为分析，以了解他们在课堂上的困难。受试者为26名ASD儿童（19名男孩和7名女孩;平均年龄8.6岁）和27名年龄匹配的典型发育（TD）儿童（14名男孩和13名女孩;平均年龄8.2岁）。我们测量了孩子们的眼球运动，同时他们自由观看两部描述实际课程的电影：一部是老师指着卡通人物的日语课，另一部是老师指着几何图形的算术课。在分析中，我们将感兴趣区域（ROI）定义为教师的脸和手指，教师指向的卡通人物和几何图形，以及不包含任何对象的教室墙壁。然后，我们通过双因素方差分析比较了ASD和TD儿童每个ROI的总注视时间。自闭症儿童在老师指向的卡通人物上花费的凝视时间更少;在两个教室场景中，他们在墙上花费的凝视时间更多。我们几乎可以通过ASD儿童看墙的总凝视时间比例来区分ASD儿童和TD儿童。这些结果表明，患有ASD的儿童在课堂上不遵守老师的指示，并坚持盯着不合适的视觉区域，如墙壁。因此，他们可能在理解课堂内容方面有困难，导致对学校的适应不良。
Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who have neurodevelopmental impairments in social communication often refuse to go to school because of difficulties in learning in class. The exact cause of maladaptation to school in such children is unknown. We hypothesized that these children have difficulty in paying attention to objects at which teachers are pointing. We performed gaze behavior analysis of children with ASD to understand their difficulties in the classroom. The subjects were 26 children with ASD (19 boys and 7 girls; mean age, 8.6 years) and 27 age-matched children with typical development (TD) (14 boys and 13 girls; mean age, 8.2 years). We measured eye movements of the children while they performed free viewing of two movies depicting actual classes: a Japanese class in which a teacher pointed at cartoon characters and an arithmetic class in which the teacher pointed at geometric figures. In the analysis, we defined the regions of interest (ROIs) as the teacher’s face and finger, the cartoon characters and geometric figures at which the teacher pointed, and the classroom wall that contained no objects. We then compared total gaze time for each ROI between the children with ASD and TD by two-way ANOVA. Children with ASD spent less gaze time on the cartoon characters pointed at by the teacher; they spent more gaze time on the wall in both classroom scenes. We could differentiate children with ASD from those with TD almost perfectly by the proportion of total gaze time that children with ASD spent looking at the wall. These results suggest that children with ASD do not follow the teacher’s instructions in class and persist in gazing at inappropriate visual areas such as walls. Thus, they may have difficulties in understanding content in class, leading to maladaptation to school.