An Analysis of the Eye Gaze Patterns of Individuals with ASD During Passive Viewing of Social Stimuli in Video Game Contexts
Open Access
Author:
Mcnellis, Shannon Elizabeth
Area of Honors:
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Erinn Heer Finke, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Ingrid Maria Blood, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
autism eye gaze
Abstract:
The overall purpose of this line of research is to determine if stable friendships can be cultivated between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their typically developing peers through engagement in mutually motivating activities, specifically while playing video games. The goal of the current research project is to better understand the eye gaze patterns of children with ASD when passively watching a dynamic video game stimulus. To answer this research question, eye-tracking technology (i.e., Tobii T60) was used to gather data from children with ASD and their peers. A coding scheme was developed to determine how often the children with ASD visually attended to various elements of the video game. This is an important step in this line of research as it is critical to determine if children with and without ASD attend to and play video games similarly prior to designing interventions with the objective of promoting friendship in this context.