Important are the findings of a new study, according to which tracking the eye movements of young children as they watch videos could to help diagnose autism at an earlier ageallowing early treatment and better results.

Autism spectrum disorder often manifests as difficulty in social interaction and communicating with others. It is not a disease, but a disorder, which cannot be completely eliminated, however an early diagnosis allows more effective support for children and adults to better manage the daily difficulties they face.

However, while parents may notice potential signs of autism in children before the age of 2, a formal diagnosis is often not made until they are 4 or 5 years old, wasting valuable time when they could have have received significant support, which would contribute decisively to their development.

The double study led by Dr. Warren Jones found that tracking eye movements when children watched videos of social interactions could accurately identify people with autism.

In the research, published in JAMA Network Open, 1,089 participants aged 16-30 months watched videos of children’s social interactions during play, lasting approximately one minute.

Data from an eye-tracking device, which took 120 counts per second, showed that people with autism did not focus on the interaction of the depicted children, but usually focused on toys, colors and background elements, unrelated to the social context.

In a second phase, the study included 499 children aged 16-30 months, all enrolled in specialist centers in the US. The children watched videos of similar content again. On the same day, they underwent a clinical diagnosis to determine whether each participant identified as autistic. The investigators of the second study were unaware of the results of the first. However, when the data from the two studies were compared, the results of eye movement tracking matched those of the clinical assessments.

“When we assess a child for autism, we look at whether they focus on the same things that their peers notice. If a child repeatedly overlooks important elements, this is a clue. Children with autism often notice secondary elements, which may be interesting, but are often not useful for understanding the social interactions taking place in front of them. Social interaction and shared experience is the platform for brain development, so we measure how children attend to key information in the environment, which contributes to the early development of social, communication and problem-solving skills“, explains Dr. Jones at Metro.

He emphasizes that the goal of the study was not to find a tool that will replace clinical diagnosis, but a tool that will support it. “The aim of this simple test is to assess a child’s strengths and vulnerabilities so that their social environment can then better support their behavior and development. We hope that objective measurements can help speed up this process,” he says.

“Incorporating multiple sources of information, including the eye-tracking test, parent report, and clinical observations, could potentially improve the accuracy, certainty, and efficiency of the diagnostic assessment of autism, resulting in fewer misdiagnoses and to allow children to receive early treatment that they could really benefit fromsaid Geraldine Dawson, director of the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development.