Attentional disengagement differences in young children with autism: A comparative eye-movement study using static and dynamic stimuli

Weak attentional disengagement represents a crucial concern in children with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). Failure to disengage from attended stimuli has obvious consequences for the development of everyday communication skills, and in the real world, stimuli are often dynamic as well as static. In this study, we recorded eye movements and investigated attentional disengagement in young Chinese children with and without ASC for static and dynamic stimuli. Our approach employed the gap-overlap paradigm (GOP) with stimuli consisting of static (Experiment 1: 44 ASC, 47 typically developing (TD)) or dynamic (Experiment 2: 26 ASC, 26 TD) geometric figures. Basic oculomotor function was intact in both groups. No significant group differences were observed for reflexive saccades and attentional orienting between ASC and TD children using the classic GOP. However, young children with ASC consistently exhibited prolonged voluntary disengagement (longer saccade latencies) in a modified-overlap task across both stimulus types. Furthermore, ASC children demonstrated more delayed disengagement when presented with dynamic foveal stimuli consisting of repetitive motion compared to random motion, and this effect was absent in TD children. These findings reflect how attentional biases to both static and repetitive dynamic stimuli impact upon visual disengagement, and hence have the potential to influence future development of social cognition in individuals with ASC. • Young children with autism spectrum condition (ASC) demonstrated intact fundamental oculomotor functions. • A general delay in visual disengagement was observed for both static and dynamic stimuli in ASC. • Compared to random motion, repetitive motion exacerbates visual disengagement difficulties in ASC. • The traditional gap-overlap paradigm may not be sensitive enough to reveal attentional disengagement differences between ASC and typically developing children disen in ASC. • The findings demonstrate how behaviours characteristic of one of the diagnostic criteria (repetitive interest and behaviours) can potentially impact the development of abilities characteristic of the other (social communication) diagnostic criteria in ASC.