The Effects of Storytelling With or Without Social Contextual Information Regarding Eye Gaze and Visual Attention in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development: A Randomized, Controlled Eye-Tracking Study

This study examined the effects of storytelling with or without contextual information on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typical development (TD) using eye-tracker. They were randomized into two groups—the stories included and did not include social contextual information respectively. Training was delivered in groups, with eight sessions across four weeks, 30 min/session. Participants’ fixation duration, visit duration, and fixation count on human faces from 20 photos and a video were recorded. Our findings revealed that storytelling with social contextual information enhanced participants’ eye gazes on eyes/ faces in static information (photos) for both children with ASD and TD, but the same advantage could not be seen for children with ASD in regard to dynamic information (videos).