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The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking

BACKGROUND: The wide range of ability and disability in ASD creates a need for tools that parse the phenotypic heterogeneity into meaningful subtypes. Using eye tracking, our past studies revealed that when presented with social and geometric images, a subset of ASD toddlers preferred viewing geomet...

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Autores principales: Moore, Adrienne, Wozniak, Madeline, Yousef, Andrew, Barnes, Cindy Carter, Cha, Debra, Courchesne, Eric, Pierce, Karen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5861622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29581878
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-018-0202-z
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author Moore, Adrienne
Wozniak, Madeline
Yousef, Andrew
Barnes, Cindy Carter
Cha, Debra
Courchesne, Eric
Pierce, Karen
author_facet Moore, Adrienne
Wozniak, Madeline
Yousef, Andrew
Barnes, Cindy Carter
Cha, Debra
Courchesne, Eric
Pierce, Karen
author_sort Moore, Adrienne
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The wide range of ability and disability in ASD creates a need for tools that parse the phenotypic heterogeneity into meaningful subtypes. Using eye tracking, our past studies revealed that when presented with social and geometric images, a subset of ASD toddlers preferred viewing geometric images, and these toddlers also had greater symptom severity than ASD toddlers with greater social attention. This study tests whether this “GeoPref test” effect would generalize across different social stimuli. METHODS: Two hundred and twenty-seven toddlers (76 ASD) watched a 90-s video, the Complex Social GeoPref test, of dynamic geometric images paired with social images of children interacting and moving. Proportion of visual fixation time and number of saccades per second to both images were calculated. To allow for cross-paradigm comparisons, a subset of 126 toddlers also participated in the original GeoPref test. Measures of cognitive and social functioning (MSEL, ADOS, VABS) were collected and related to eye tracking data. To examine utility as a diagnostic indicator to detect ASD toddlers, validation statistics (e.g., sensitivity, specificity, ROC, AUC) were calculated for the Complex Social GeoPref test alone and when combined with the original GeoPref test. RESULTS: ASD toddlers spent a significantly greater amount of time viewing geometric images than any other diagnostic group. Fixation patterns from ASD toddlers who participated in both tests revealed a significant correlation, supporting the idea that these tests identify a phenotypically meaningful ASD subgroup. Combined use of both original and Complex Social GeoPref tests identified a subgroup of about 1 in 3 ASD toddlers from the “GeoPref” subtype (sensitivity 35%, specificity 94%, AUC 0.75.) Replicating our previous studies, more time looking at geometric images was associated with significantly greater ADOS symptom severity. CONCLUSIONS: Regardless of the complexity of the social images used (low in the original GeoPref test vs high in the new Complex Social GeoPref test), eye tracking of toddlers can accurately identify a specific ASD “GeoPref” subtype with elevated symptom severity. The GeoPref tests are predictive of ASD at the individual subject level and thus potentially useful for various clinical applications (e.g., early identification, prognosis, or development of subtype-specific treatments). ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13229-018-0202-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-58616222018-03-26 The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking Moore, Adrienne Wozniak, Madeline Yousef, Andrew Barnes, Cindy Carter Cha, Debra Courchesne, Eric Pierce, Karen Mol Autism Research BACKGROUND: The wide range of ability and disability in ASD creates a need for tools that parse the phenotypic heterogeneity into meaningful subtypes. Using eye tracking, our past studies revealed that when presented with social and geometric images, a subset of ASD toddlers preferred viewing geometric images, and these toddlers also had greater symptom severity than ASD toddlers with greater social attention. This study tests whether this “GeoPref test” effect would generalize across different social stimuli. METHODS: Two hundred and twenty-seven toddlers (76 ASD) watched a 90-s video, the Complex Social GeoPref test, of dynamic geometric images paired with social images of children interacting and moving. Proportion of visual fixation time and number of saccades per second to both images were calculated. To allow for cross-paradigm comparisons, a subset of 126 toddlers also participated in the original GeoPref test. Measures of cognitive and social functioning (MSEL, ADOS, VABS) were collected and related to eye tracking data. To examine utility as a diagnostic indicator to detect ASD toddlers, validation statistics (e.g., sensitivity, specificity, ROC, AUC) were calculated for the Complex Social GeoPref test alone and when combined with the original GeoPref test. RESULTS: ASD toddlers spent a significantly greater amount of time viewing geometric images than any other diagnostic group. Fixation patterns from ASD toddlers who participated in both tests revealed a significant correlation, supporting the idea that these tests identify a phenotypically meaningful ASD subgroup. Combined use of both original and Complex Social GeoPref tests identified a subgroup of about 1 in 3 ASD toddlers from the “GeoPref” subtype (sensitivity 35%, specificity 94%, AUC 0.75.) Replicating our previous studies, more time looking at geometric images was associated with significantly greater ADOS symptom severity. CONCLUSIONS: Regardless of the complexity of the social images used (low in the original GeoPref test vs high in the new Complex Social GeoPref test), eye tracking of toddlers can accurately identify a specific ASD “GeoPref” subtype with elevated symptom severity. The GeoPref tests are predictive of ASD at the individual subject level and thus potentially useful for various clinical applications (e.g., early identification, prognosis, or development of subtype-specific treatments). ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13229-018-0202-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-03-21 /pmc/articles/PMC5861622/ /pubmed/29581878 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-018-0202-z Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Moore, Adrienne
Wozniak, Madeline
Yousef, Andrew
Barnes, Cindy Carter
Cha, Debra
Courchesne, Eric
Pierce, Karen
The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking
title The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking
title_full The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking
title_fullStr The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking
title_full_unstemmed The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking
title_short The geometric preference subtype in ASD: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking
title_sort geometric preference subtype in asd: identifying a consistent, early-emerging phenomenon through eye tracking
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5861622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29581878
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-018-0202-z
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