Previous eye‐tracking studies have reported that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) fixate less on faces in comparison to controls. To properly understand social interactions, however, children must gaze not only at faces but also at actions, gestures, body movements, contextual details, and objects, thereby creating specific gaze patterns when observing specific social interactions. We presented three different movies with social interactions to 111 children (71 with ASD) who watched each of the movies twice. Typically developing children viewed the movies in a remarkably predictable and reproducible manner, exhibiting gaze patterns that were similar to the mean gaze pattern of other controls, with strong correlations across individuals (intersubject correlations) and across movie presentations (intra‐subject correlations). In contrast, children with ASD exhibited significantly more variable/idiosyncratic gaze patterns that differed from the mean gaze pattern of controls and were weakly correlated across individuals and presentations. Most importantly, quantification of gaze idiosyncrasy in individual children enabled separation of ASD and control children with higher sensitivity and specificity than traditional measures such as time gazing at faces. Individual magnitudes of gaze idiosyncrasy were also significantly correlated with ASD severity and cognitive scores and were significantly correlated across movies and movie presentations, demonstrating clinical sensitivity and reliability. These results suggest that gaze idiosyncrasy is a potent behavioral abnormality that characterizes a considerable number of children with ASD and may contribute to their impaired development. Quantification of gaze idiosyncrasy in individual children may aid in assessing symptom severity and their change in response to treatments. Autism Res 2020, 13: 935‐946. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

中文翻译：

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自闭症儿童以独特的方式观察社交互动。

先前的眼动研究报告称，与对照组相比，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的儿童对面部的固定较少。然而，为了正确地理解社交互动，儿童不仅必须凝视面部，而且还必须凝视动作，手势，身体动作，背景细节和物体，从而在观察特定的社交互动时产生特定的凝视模式。我们向111位儿童（71名自闭症儿童）展示了三部具有社交互动性的不同电影，他们分别观看了每部电影两次。通常，发育中的儿童以显着可预测和可再现的方式观看电影，表现出与其他控件的平均注视模式相似的注视模式，个体之间（对象间的相关性）和电影演示之间（对象间的相关性）具有很强的相关性。相比之下，ASD儿童表现出明显更多的可变/特异注视模式，这与对照组的平均注视模式不同，并且在个体和表现之间的相关性较弱。最重要的是，对单个儿童的凝视特质进行定量分析可以使ASD和对照儿童的分离灵敏度和特异性比传统方法（如面部注视时间）更高。个体注视特质的大小也与ASD严重程度和认知评分显着相关，并且在电影和电影放映中也显着相关，证明了临床敏感性和可靠性。这些结果表明，注视特质是一种强有力的行为异常，是许多自闭症儿童的特征，可能导致他们的发育障碍。自闭症水库2020年，13：935-946。©2019国际自闭症研究会，Wiley Periodicals，Inc.