Yoon Christy D, Meadan Hedda, Xia Yan, Shic Frederick
Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Department of Special Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA.
Res Autism. 2025 Jul;125. doi: 10.1016/j.reia.2025.202622. Epub 2025 May 21.
The Interactive Eye Tracking for Joint Attention (IET-JA), a child-focused battery consisting of video-format gaze-contingent eye-tracking tasks featuring a human communication partner, was developed to address gaps in eye-tracking research on JA in autistic children. Although JA research has often concentrated on younger populations due to its early developmental significance, studies indicate that JA difficulties associated with autism persist into adulthood, highlighting the value of examining these traits later in life. Thus, this study adapted the IET-JA for adolescents and adults (IET-JA-A) by incorporating additional attentional demands to introduce controlled attentional variations and explore whether these interactive eye-tracking measures of JA associate with autism traits in adulthood.
A total of 81 young adults ( = 19.32 years, range = 18-24 years), with a broad range of autism traits, completed the IET-JA-A. Generalized and linear mixed modeling were employed to address the aim.
The IET-JA-A measures of responding to joint attention and initiating joint attention to comment/reference (protodeclarative) were associated with autism traits, while the IET-JA-A measures of initiating joint attention to request (protoimperative) were not associated with autism traits.
Findings advance our understanding of JA linked with autism traits in adulthood and showcase the feasibility of interactive eye-tracking methodologies in JA research. Limitations and implications for research are discussed.
用于联合注意的交互式眼动追踪（IET-JA）是一种以儿童为中心的测试组合，由一系列视频格式的注视相关眼动追踪任务组成，任务中有一个人类交流伙伴，旨在填补自闭症儿童联合注意眼动追踪研究的空白。尽管由于联合注意在早期发展中的重要性，相关研究通常集中在较年轻的人群，但研究表明，与自闭症相关的联合注意困难会持续到成年期，这凸显了在成年后期研究这些特征的价值。因此，本研究对IET-JA进行了改编，以适用于青少年和成年人（IET-JA-A），通过增加额外的注意力要求来引入可控的注意力变化，并探索这些联合注意的交互式眼动追踪测量指标是否与成年期的自闭症特征相关。
共有81名具有广泛自闭症特征的年轻成年人（平均年龄=19.32岁，范围=18 - 24岁）完成了IET-JA-A测试。采用广义线性混合模型来实现研究目的。
IET-JA-A中对联合注意做出反应以及发起联合注意以进行评论/参考（原陈述性）的测量指标与自闭症特征相关，而IET-JA-A中发起联合注意以提出请求（原祈使性）的测量指标与自闭症特征无关。
研究结果增进了我们对成年期与自闭症特征相关的联合注意的理解，并展示了交互式眼动追踪方法在联合注意研究中的可行性。同时讨论了研究的局限性和意义。
