KU News Release

In their eyes: These images could help KU researchers detect autism

The children in the study were shown several different images of toys, landscapes and animal and children's faces.

LAWRENCE — A recent University of Kansas research study may have found a clue to detecting autism in children at an earlier age. Early identification is considered important to provide intervention earlier in life and maybe prevent some of the behaviors associated with autism later during childhood.

John Colombo, professor of psychology, and doctoral student Christa Anderson showed different types of 4-inch-square images on a computer screen to three groups of children. By studying the response of the pupils in their eyes, they may have found a distinct marker for autism.

“We showed children's faces, animal faces, toys and landscapes. We looked at where exactly (the children) were looking and how much time they spent looking at them,” Anderson said.

By looking at whether the child's pupils dilated or constricted, they could gauge the child's arousal or level of attention.

Study results showed that the children with autism spectrum disorder showed the strongest response to images of other faces, especially other children's faces.

“(They responded) with pupillary constriction, which suggests they may have found it aversive,” said Colombo, who also is associate director for cognitive neuroscience at the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies. “They may not have been processing it at all, sort of avoiding it.”

The constriction also may reflect the activation of another type of arousal system, one that works in opposition to the system that makes the child ready to receive input, he says.

The study included one group of children with some form of autism. A second group of children was developing typically but matched the first group in age and gender. The third group of children had some form of developmental delay other than autism and was the same mental age as the first group. The second and third groups were included so that researchers could conclude whether the marker was specific to autism.

Anderson used a small camera with near-infrared radiation to illuminate the pupil and corneal reflection and then record and monitor the children's pupillary responses.

The other two groups tested did not show the same reaction as the children with ASD.

Colombo and Anderson say because the children with ASD reacted uniquely, and because the reaction is systemic, or bodily, they believe the pupillary constriction to face stimuli is a specific marker that could identify autism spectrum disorder earlier in life, possibly during infancy.

Colombo and Anderson say this discovery poses more questions to be answered in their next study: Which part of the brain is responsible for this response? Is the response inherent to that system or acquired over time?

The children with ASD also showed an unexpected response to the images of landscapes, such as water, a field of pebbles or grass.

“The children with autism tended to look at it, and then kind of look away,” says Anderson.

“We found that it did not hold their attention,” Colombo says. “It's sort of as if they did not see anything there to look at.”

He says this reaction is consistent with some theories claiming that children with autism process visual content more quickly when there is no clear or coherent focal object in an image or visual scene.

These results were published in the October issue of the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.

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