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Visual Fixation Patterns during Reciprocal Social Interaction Distinguish a Subgroup of 6-Month-Old Infants At-Risk for Autism from Comparison Infants

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Abstract

Thirty-one infant siblings of children with autism and 24 comparison infants were tested at 6 months of age during social interaction with a caregiver, using a modified Still Face paradigm conducted via a closed-circuit TV-video system. In the Still Face paradigm, the mother interacts with the infant, then freezes and displays a neutral, expressionless face, then resumes interaction. Eye tracking data on infant visual fixation patterns were recorded during the three episodes of the experiment. Using a hierarchical cluster analysis, we identified a subgroup of infants demonstrating diminished gaze to the mother’s eyes relative to her mouth during the Still Face episode. Ten out of the 11 infants in this subgroup had an older sibling with autism.

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Notes

  1. We chose to use only the eyes and mouth in the denominator (and not the nose, or other less fixated regions such as the hair, forehead, and chin) for two reasons: (a) the unusual visual fixation pattern among individuals with autism reported by Klin et al. (2002) concerned these two regions, which are important for social communication, and (b) gaze to other face areas showed less variability between groups, and across episodes, than the eyes and mouth; including these areas was, in effect, to include a noisy term.

  2. The cluster analysis assigns infants to clusters using a proximity matrix of the distance of each subject’s score from every other subject’s score (the distance between subjects is calculated using the sum of squared Euclidean distances for each variable). Ward’s agglomeration method operates on this resulting matrix using an algorithm that iteratively fuses cases (or lower-order clusters of cases) into higher-order clusters with the criterion that the resulting error sum of squares is minimized. In order to ensure that input order did not influence the clusters that were generated, we used a randomization procedure to run 1,000 different solutions (see van der Kloot, Spaans, & Heiser, 2005). Results showed that the cluster solution remained identical throughout 1,000 trials, with relatively good fit (SSDIF = 2.47E + 007; cophenetic correlation = 0.66).

  3. The number of clusters was determined by comparing the relative amount of between-cluster variance in EMI scores accounted for by 2-, 3-, and 4-cluster models. For 2 clusters, 18.27% of the total variance was accounted for by cluster; for 3 clusters, 29.49%; and for 4 clusters, 21.73%. Therefore, the three-cluster model was judged to account for the maximum amount of between-cluster variance, while maintaining parsimony regarding the number of clusters. The three-cluster model provided a good fit to the observed data: of the 33 infants in the high EMI cluster, 25 had EMI scores above 0.5 during all three episodes, and 6 had EMI scores above 0.5 during the Still- and post-Still Face episodes. Nine out of 11 infants in the low EMI cluster had scores below 0.5 for all three episodes. All of the 11 low–high–low infants had EMI scores below 0.5 during the pre-Still Face, above 0.5 during the Still Face, and below 0.5 during the post-Still Face.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant number MH068398 to S. Ozonoff, P.I., a National Association for Autism Research (NAAR) grant to S. Rogers, a Cure Autism Now (CAN) grant to S. Rogers, and Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute (MIND Institute) grants to S. Rogers and to N. Merin. We wish to thank the families who took part, Mary Beth Steinfeld, Jeslin West, Joel Steele, and the contributions of undergraduate students Linh Dang, Joseph Marsano, Kawshalya Pathiraja, Alex Rajan, and Maryette Sabater. We are grateful to Scott Johnson, PhD., New York University, for sharing infant eye tracking methods with us, and to Darwin Muir, Ph.D., Queen’s University, and Daphne Maurer, PhD., McMaster University, for their input in the development and design of the experiment.

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  1. Neuroscience Graduate Group and School of Medicine, Class 2008, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Noah Merin

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Gregory S. Young, Sally Ozonoff & Sally J. Rogers

  3. M.I.N.D. Institute, University of CA, Davis Medical Center, 2825 50th St., Sacramento, CA, 95817, USA

    Sally J. Rogers

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  1. Noah Merin
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Correspondence to Sally J. Rogers.

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Merin, N., Young, G.S., Ozonoff, S. et al. Visual Fixation Patterns during Reciprocal Social Interaction Distinguish a Subgroup of 6-Month-Old Infants At-Risk for Autism from Comparison Infants. J Autism Dev Disord 37, 108–121 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0342-4

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