gender differences in eye tracking parameters in children on the autism spectrum disorder

Abstract Using eye-tracking paradigms, gender differences in gaze patterns for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) patients were determined. This study included 155 subjects: 41 ASD subjects, 30 of their siblings and 84 neuro-Typically Developing (TD) controls. The female gender distribution of this cohort was 39% of ASD group, 37% of siblings and 57% of control groups. The five paradigms used were: 1-Horizontal and vertical motion video; 2-Face image; 3-Mute video of a talking face; 4-Animate/ inanimate object; 5-An inverted scene. In the horizontal motion video, ASD male subjects took longer to fixate compared to the siblings and controls. The male ASD group had deficits in horizontal motion tracking with prolonged time to first fixation and decreased duration compared to controls, while the female ASD group had similar parameters to controls. In the vertical gaze experiment, male and female ASD subjects both followed the moving target for a shorter time. Paradigms with social content revealed that male and female ASD patients preferred looking at the eyes rather than the mouth of a smiling face with longer duration and shorter time to first fixation, and this was significant. When looking at the silently talking face, female ASD subjects fixated faster on eyes vs mouth and with a greater percentage of fixation, despite the mouth movements. This, however, was not the case in males. When compared to siblings and TD controls, both genders had decreased duration of fixation on both eyes and mouth. The animate/ inanimate paradigm revealed a preference to the animate element for both genders and the inverted scene image had similar patterns across groups without differences. In conclusion, gender differences appeared in ASD subjects, specifically, when gazing at horizontally moving targets. Female ASD patterns resembled TD controls while males had decreased attention. When looking at a mute, talking face, females had preferential fixation to eyes despite the moving mouth element. Decreased general attention to all paradigms was observed for both genders. Keywords Autism spectrum disorder; Eye-tracking; Gender; Vision screening