Analyzing dynamic components of social scene parsing strategy in autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disability characterized by deficits in social interaction. Gaze behavior is of great interest because it reveals the parsing strategy the participant uses to achieve social content. The legacy features in gaze fixation, such as time and area-of-interest, however, can not comprehensively reveal the way the participant cognizes the social scene. In this work, we investigate the dynamic components within the gaze behavior of children with ASD upon the carefully-selected social scene. A cohort 51 children (between 2 and 10 years) were recruited. The results show significant differences in the social scene parsing strategies of children with ASD, giving added insight into their ability to adequately decode and interpret the social scenarios.