Eye-tracking may detect autism in infants

The Wall Street Journal has a report and video on this new way of testing infants as young as 9 months for autism.

Researchers at Canada's McMaster University recently announced that they had developed a computerized test using eye-movement sensors that aims to predict the risk of autism in children as young as 9 months. The system, which administers five eye-tracking tests over 10 minutes, measures the direction and fixation of a child's eyes when confronted with computerized images, including human faces.

Yale University's Toddler Developmental Disabilities Clinic is using similar eye-tracking technology to study patterns in gaze behavior in children ages 3 months to 3 years. And researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab are developing specialized software and an in-home recording device to analyze the habits of newborns in hopes of teasing out the most subtle signs of early autism.

"Children with autism in general have difficulty extracting affective information from faces, and also difficulty in recognizing faces," says Katarzyna Chawarska, director of the Yale clinic. By tracking eye movements, "we can begin to understand what interests them, how they examine objects they select for processing, and what motivates them intrinsically," she says.