Effects of verbal cues on the eye gaze behaviors of children with autism during turn-taking activities

This study explored the effects of verbal cueing on the eye gaze behaviors of two school-aged children (6:1 and 5:2 years old) with autism during social interactions (i.e. turn-taking activities). Participants took part in three turn-taking activities with the experimenter across two different conditions. In the verbal condition the experimenter offered verbal cues that were designed to help the participants predict what was going to happen next during the activity. In the nonverbal condition, the same activities and protocol were used except the experimenter gave no verbal cues. An alternating treatments design utilizing two conditions (verbal, nonverbal) was used. Results indicated that there was not a significant difference in the eye gaze behaviors of the participants in the verbal and nonverbal conditions. This supports some research that indicates verbal cues do not benefit children with autism in regards to joint attention. The nature of the activities, motivation of the participants, and design related limitations may have further contributed to the lack of differences in eye gaze behaviors across conditions.