ArticleJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2020
The role of limited salience of speech in selective attention to faces in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders.
Article in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 58 citations in OpenAlex.
- Eye Tracking as a Treatment Monitoring Tool for Autism: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Pooled it
- Correlation Between Gaze Behaviors and Social Communication Skills of Young Autistic Children: A Meta-Analysis of Eye-Tracking Studies.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Pooled it
- Gaze and social functioning associations in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2022Pooled it
- Eye-Tracking in Infants and Young Children at Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Visual Stimuli in Experimental Paradigms.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2021Pooled it
- Low-motion fMRI data can be obtained in pediatric participants undergoing a 60-minute scan protocol.Scientific reports · 2020Trial
- Towards the ecological automated measurement of joint attention: Development of an interactive eye-tracking battery for joint attention in children with and without autism.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Optimizing functional connectivity scanning conditions for predicting autistic traits.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Gesture Imitation Performance and Visual Exploration in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Neuroinflammation as a failure of allostatic integrity: a hierarchical-circular model of biological memory for pathogenesis in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2026Article
- Optimizing functional connectivity scanning conditions for predicting autistic traits.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Unveiling Distinctive Eye Tracking Markers to Distinguish Toddlers with High-Risk Autism as Indicated by ADOS Within an Elevated-Likelihood Toddler Sample.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Functional Connectivity in the Social Perception Pathway at Birth Is Linked to Attention to Faces at Four Months.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Atypical audio-visual neural synchrony and speech processing in early autism.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2025Article
- Personal pronoun comprehension in addressed and non-addressed situations in autistic and nonautistic preschoolers.Journal of cognition and development : official journal of the Cognitive Development Society · 2025Article
- Early selective attention to the articulating mouth as a potential female-specific marker of better language development in autism: a review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The Selective Social Attention task in children with autism spectrum disorder: Results from the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials (ABC-CT) feasibility study.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2023Article
- Comprehensive Social Trait Judgments From Faces in Autism Spectrum Disorder.Psychological science · 2023Article
- Level of Attention to Motherese Speech as an Early Marker of Autism Spectrum Disorder.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Autism symptoms, functional impairments, and gaze fixation measured using an eye-tracker in 6-year-old children.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Understanding the role of eye movement consistency in face recognition and autism through integrating deep neural networks and hidden Markov models.NPJ science of learning · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundImpaired attention to faces of interactive partners is a marker for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in early childhood. However, it is unclear whether children with ASD avoid faces or find them less salient and whether the phenomenon is linked with the presence of eye contact or speech.
methodsWe investigated the impacts of speech (SP) and direct gaze (DG) on attention to faces in 22-month-old toddlers with ASD (n = 50) and typically developing controls (TD, n = 47) using the Selective Social Attention 2.0 (SSA 2.0) task. The task consisted of four conditions where the presence (+) and absence (-) of DG and SP were systematically manipulated. The severity of autism symptoms, and verbal and nonverbal skills were characterized concurrently with eye tracking at 22.4 (SD = 3.2) months and prospectively at 39.8 (SD = 4.3) months.
resultsToddlers with ASD looked less than TD toddlers at face and mouth regions only when the actress was speaking (direct gaze absence with speech, DG-SP+: d = 0.99, p < .001 for face, d = 0.98, p < .001 for mouth regions; direct gaze present with speech, DG+SP+, d = 1.47, p < .001 for face, d = 1.01, p < .001 for mouth regions). Toddlers with ASD looked less at the eye region only when both gaze and speech cues were present (d = 0.46, p = .03). Salience of the combined DG and SP cues was associated concurrently and prospectively with the severity of autism symptoms, and the association remained significant after controlling for verbal and nonverbal levels.
conclusionsThe study links poor attention to faces with limited salience of audiovisual speech and provides no support for the face avoidance hypothesis in the early stages of ASD. These results are consequential for research on early discriminant and predictive biomarkers as well as identification of novel treatment targets.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.