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06/02/2015
Babies With Frequent Eye Movements Are More Likely To Develop Autism
Babies who move their eyes more often than their peers at the age of six months are more likely to meet criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as children, according to researchers funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC).
Researchers used eye tracking technology to measure 104 babies (aged 6-8 months) at high or low familial risk for ASD. They examined how often babies moved their eyes when scanning a static image.
They found that typical babies moved their eyes about twice a second. However, those babies who later were diagnosed with ASD tended to move their eyes more frequently – about three times a second. These babies were scanning the image more rapidly than their peers.
The researchers hope that these findings may in future help contribute to better ways of identifying babies with early signs of possible behavioural difficulties. However they stress that the research is at an early stage and eye movement alone is a far from reliable indicator that a child may later be diagnosed with ASD.
Lead author, Dr Sam Wass said: "We are still at a very early stage in understanding what these results may mean. Adults with ASD can sometimes process visual information more rapidly than other people, and perhaps that was happening for infants in our study. Alternatively, it could be that these babies need a higher level of stimulation, so they move their eyes more frequently to get more stimulation. Or it could be that when they look at something they are not engaging with it in the same way as other children tend to."
(CD)
Researchers used eye tracking technology to measure 104 babies (aged 6-8 months) at high or low familial risk for ASD. They examined how often babies moved their eyes when scanning a static image.
They found that typical babies moved their eyes about twice a second. However, those babies who later were diagnosed with ASD tended to move their eyes more frequently – about three times a second. These babies were scanning the image more rapidly than their peers.
The researchers hope that these findings may in future help contribute to better ways of identifying babies with early signs of possible behavioural difficulties. However they stress that the research is at an early stage and eye movement alone is a far from reliable indicator that a child may later be diagnosed with ASD.
Lead author, Dr Sam Wass said: "We are still at a very early stage in understanding what these results may mean. Adults with ASD can sometimes process visual information more rapidly than other people, and perhaps that was happening for infants in our study. Alternatively, it could be that these babies need a higher level of stimulation, so they move their eyes more frequently to get more stimulation. Or it could be that when they look at something they are not engaging with it in the same way as other children tend to."
(CD)
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