Visual Fixation Patterns During Viewing of Naturalistic Social Situations as Predictors of Social Competence in Individuals With Autism

Abstract

<p class="first" id="d127447e77">Manifestations of core social deficits in autism are more pronounced in everyday settings than in explicit experimental tasks. To bring experimental measures in line with clinical observation, we report a novel method of quantifying atypical strategies of social monitoring in a setting that simulates the demands of daily experience. Enhanced ecological validity was intended to maximize between-group effect sizes and assess the predictive utility of experimental variables relative to outcome measures of social competence. </p>