Saccadic movements using eye-tracking technology in individuals with autism spectrum disorders: pilot study

objective: to verify differences in the visual scanning strategies between pervasive developmental disorders (pdd) and controls when they are observing social and non-social pictures. method: pdd group (pddg) comprised by 10 non-retarded subjects (age from 4 to 41) and age-matched control group (cg). nine social pictures with human beings (including two pictures of cat mask), and 3 nonsocial pictures of objects were presented for 5 seconds. saccadic movements and fixation were recorded with equipment eyegaze？ (lc technologies inc.). results: pddg (mean=292.73, se=67.62) presented longer duration of saccadic movements for social pictures compared to cg (mean=136.06, se=14.01) (p=0.04). the cg showed a higher number of fixations in the picture 7 (a women using a cat mask, with the eyes erased) (cg: mean=3.40; pddg: mean=1.80; p=0.007). conclusion: the results suggest differences in strategies that pdd explore human picture. moreover, these strategies seem not to be affected by the lack of expected part of the face (the eyes).