TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bast, Nico
A1  - Mason, Luke
A1  - Freitag, Christine M.
A1  - Smith, Tim
A1  - Portugal, Ana Maria
A1  - Poustka, Luise
A1  - Banaschewski, Tobias
A1  - Johnson, Mark
T1  - Saccade dysmetria indicates attenuated visual exploration in autism spectrum disorder
T2  - The journal of child psychology and psychiatry
N2  - Background: Visual exploration in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by attenuated social attention. The underlying oculomotor function during visual exploration is understudied, whereas oculomotor function during restricted viewing suggested saccade dysmetria in ASD by altered pontocerebellar motor modulation. Methods: Oculomotor function was recorded using remote eye tracking in 142 ASD participants and 142 matched neurotypical controls during free viewing of naturalistic videos with and without human content. The sample was heterogenous concerning age (6–30 years), cognitive ability (60–140 IQ), and male/female ratio (3:1). Oculomotor function was defined as saccade, fixation, and pupil-dilation features that were compared between groups in linear mixed models. Oculomotor function was investigated as ASD classifier and features were correlated with clinical measures. Results: We observed decreased saccade duration (∆M = −0.50, CI [−0.21, −0.78]) and amplitude (∆M = −0.42, CI [−0.12, −0.72]), which was independent of human video content. We observed null findings concerning fixation and pupil-dilation features (POWER = .81). Oculomotor function is a valid ASD classifier comparable to social attention concerning discriminative power. Within ASD, saccade features correlated with measures of restricted and repetitive behavior. Conclusions: We conclude saccade dysmetria as ASD oculomotor phenotype relevant to visual exploration. Decreased saccade amplitude and duration indicate spatially clustered fixations that attenuate visual exploration and emphasize endogenous over exogenous attention. We propose altered pontocerebellar motor modulation as underlying mechanism that contributes to atypical (oculo-)motor coordination and attention function in ASD.
KW  - Eye tracking
KW  - pupillometry
KW  - visual attention
KW  - biomarker
KW  - brainstem
KW  - cerebellum
KW  - locus coeruleus
Y1  - 2020
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/63831
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-638311
SN  - 1469-7610
N1  - This study was funded by EU AIMS and AIMS-2-TRIALS. EU-AIMS received support from the IMI Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement no.115300, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) companies’ in kind contribution, and from Autism Speaks. AIMS-2-TRIALS received funding from the IMI 2 JU under grant agreement no. 777394. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA, Autism Speaks, Autistica, and the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.
VL  - 62
IS  - 2
SP  - 149
EP  - 159
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Oxford
ER  -