Eye-Tracking–Based Measurement of Social Visual Engagement Compared With Expert Clinical Diagnosis of Autism

ByThe Short Paper

Watching where kids look with their eyes can help diagnose autism, comparing it to expert clinical diagnosis.

A recent study looked at whether tracking where a child looks with their eyes could help diagnose autism in young children. They tested this on 475 kids between 16 and 30 months old at specialty clinics. The results showed that this eye-tracking method was about 71% accurate in identifying children with autism and about 81% accurate in ruling out autism in those who didn’t have it. When they focused on a group of children who definitely had autism, the accuracy improved to about 78% for identifying them and 85% for ruling it out. This suggests that using eye-tracking technology could be helpful in spotting autism in young kids, but more research is needed to be sure.

Jones W, Klaiman C, Richardson S, et al. Eye-Tracking–Based Measurement of Social Visual Engagement Compared With Expert Clinical Diagnosis of Autism. JAMA. 2023;330(9):854–865. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.13295

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