This study measured word-learning abilities in young males with autism, fragile X syndrome (FXS), and typical development using a novel eye-tracking paradigm. Modeled after interactive in-vivo paradigms, this study measured participants' visual attention to novel object pairs during both a word-learning exposure and a comprehension phase. Eye-tracking paradigms designed to test word learning in similarly designed scenarios have begun to offer increasingly complex understandings of the way children process social scenes during learning opportunities, but these paradigms mainly still rely upon some form of overt behavioral response in addition to the passive viewing of the on-screen stimuli. The present study was designed to expose children with typical and atypical developmental trajectories to a word-learning situation in which no overt behavioral response is required, thus removing the expectation of engagement with an examiner. The results indicated that labeling cues during an exposure phase did not increase visual attention to labeled target objects. However, increases in gaze toward labeled objects during an exposure phase were correlated with increases in gaze toward target objects during a comprehension phase in those with autism and typical development, but not in FXS. Additionally, in those with autism and FXS, increased target-object gaze during the comprehension phase was significantly correlated with standardized language abilities in both participants autism as well as FXS. The results are discussed with respect to the objective of further validating paradigms such as this as measures of important developmental processes such as language learning, as well as the potential utility of such paradigms to gain insight into the ways children with typical and atypical development visually process social learning scenes.
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