An Eye-Tracking Study Of Picture Book Reading In Children With Autism Under Different Reading Styles

As an important carrier of children’s early reading activities,picture books have been widely used in early literacy-related activities for children with autism spectrum disorder(ASD)because of their unique combination of picture and print.Reading is a complex psychological process and has various kind of variations according to its purpose,criteria and context of reading,while the benefits of different reading styles have always been controversial.A review of previous research on picture book reading are mainly based on one-way studies of independent reading or shared book reading with the participant focused on typically developing children(TD).This study explored the effects of different reading styles on picture book reading in children with ASD by using eye-tracking technology to record the eye movements data of children and analyzing the gaze characteristic of picture and print and reading comprehension of picture book under different reading styles.Meanwhile,TD were taken as the control group to examine the differences of visual attention between children with ASD and TD peers under different reading styles.The purpose of this study is to find an effectively way to prompt the reading ability of children with ASD and provide a practical guidance for home or school reading activities.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Overall,the gaze characteristics and reading efficacy of picture book reading for children with ASD were affected by different reading styles,and the positive effect of shared book reading was also confirmed;(2)Compared with independent reading,shared book reading has a significant effect on children with ASD’s fixation level of picture and print during picture book reading;(3)No matter independent reading,shared book reading or shared reading with prompting,picture was always the focus visual attention of children with ASD,which demonstrate picture-priority phenomenon,that is,children with ASD pay the first and main attention to picture;(4)Reference strategies or cues in shared book reading were more conductive to promoting engagement in picture book reading for children with ASD,especially in the area of print,which bring subsequent positive effect on story understanding of picture book;(5)Comparing with TD peers,children with ASD demonstrated visual preference on print area in picture book reading.