Do Typical Developing Participants and Participants with ASD Fixate Similarly During High Social Game Play?
Open Access
Author:
Hassan, Megan Katherine
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 fixation videogame game play participant eye gaze typical developing eye tracking
Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to determine if typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) fixate similarly while passively viewing a video game play stimulus. The goal is to better understand the visual social attention of children through their eye gaze patterns when passively watching video game stimulus. To answer this research question, eye-tracking technology (i.e., Tobii T60) was used to gather data from typically developing children as well as children with ASD. A coding scheme was developed to determine how often all participants visually attended to various elements of the video game. Areas of interest were then identified to determine where each child fixated during the viewing task. This task is the first step in determining if children with and without ASD attend to and play video games similarly in order to determine if video game play may be an appropriate context for providing opportunities for friendship formation.
