Social Interactions: Ocular Explorations and Pupillometry in Autism (ISEOP)

The primary objective of this work will first to characterize in typical childhood, visual exploratory behavior and pupillary response associated with salience of human social stimuli (faces and body movements), and then to evaluate these markers in children with autism.

The second objective of this work will be to achieve in a population of children with autism a longitudinal evaluation of these markers during development and therapeutics.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorders

Detailed Description

Patients with autism have significant social difficulties and communication alterations. It has been shown in these patients difficulties to understand some clues indispensable to social relations, for example, faces and their emotions and motion of human bodies. The faces and human movements are an important source of information helping to interact with others. Understanding the intentions of the others through facial expressions and gestures can help them to adapt their behavior and their interactions. While in healthy subjects, faces and human movements receive special attention, autistic patients seem to pay less attention to this kind of social stimuli. It has already been shown that children and healthy adults spend more time looking at faces and human movements (relative to objects), whereas the opposite behavior is observed in patients with autism. Studying gaze behavior seems to be essential for progress in the understanding of autism pathology. Eye-tracking systems allow to measure precisely what a subject looks on a picture. Moreover, eye-tracking systems permit the measurement of the pupil size which variations are correlated with cognitive processes. The objective of this study is to analyze the ocular behavior (ocular scan path and pupil diameter) of young patients with autism when viewing faces and human movements and to compare these measurements with those of chronologically age-matched healthy children. This work will identify attentional problems concerning exploration of human faces and movements that can be related to their social difficulties. These disorders should be manifested by an atypical ocular scan path and by changes in pupil variation in response to face and human motion. Then to follow the evolution of these indices will allow to evaluate the effect of therapies. These results will highlight new data essential to understanding disorders of social relations and to better adapt rehabilitative strategies.

• Study Type: Observational
• Enrollment (Actual): 150

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• France
  • Tours, France, 37044
    • CHRU Bretonneau

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 3 years to 12 years (Child)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Autistic children from the University Hospital of Tours Healthy children from the normal population

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• For autistic children, diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders according to DSM IV-TR and ADI / ADOS criteria ; normal or corrected vision; no nervous system disease
• For healthy children, normal schooling and normal or corrected vision
• For all, parental consents

Exclusion Criteria:

• psychotropic treatment

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Total time spent on pictures	Total time tracked during exploration of faces and human motion, compared to objects	two years

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Interest zones	Time spent on interest zones such as eyes or mouth.	two years

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, France

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Aguillon-Hernandez N, Mofid Y, Latinus M, Roche L, Bufo MR, Lemaire M, Malvy J, Martineau J, Wardak C, Bonnet-Brilhault F. The pupil: a window on social automatic processing in autism spectrum disorder children. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2020 Jul;61(7):768-778. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13170. Epub 2019 Dec 11.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): February 25, 2013
• Primary Completion (Actual): June 1, 2019
• Study Completion (Actual): June 18, 2019

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: July 19, 2012
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 19, 2012
• First Posted (Estimated): July 23, 2012

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimated): December 4, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 26, 2025
• Last Verified: August 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: pupil size; visual exploration; social interactions; faces; human motion
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Endocrine System Diseases; Musculoskeletal Diseases; Cardiovascular Diseases; Mental Disorders; Heart Diseases; Genetic Diseases, Inborn; Lymphatic Diseases; Craniofacial Abnormalities; Musculoskeletal Abnormalities; Congenital Abnormalities; Neurodevelopmental Disorders; Child Development Disorders, Pervasive; Parathyroid Diseases; Cardiovascular Abnormalities; Heart Defects, Congenital; Abnormalities, Multiple; Chromosome Disorders; Lymphatic Abnormalities; Hypoparathyroidism; 22q11 Deletion Syndrome; Congenital, Hereditary, and Neonatal Diseases and Abnormalities; Hemic and Lymphatic Diseases; Autism Spectrum Disorder; DiGeorge Syndrome
• Other Study ID Numbers: C11-60; 2012-A00520-43 (Registry Identifier: IDRCB)