Elena J. Tenenbaum, Dima Amso, Beau Abar, Stephen J. Sheinkopf
Abstract
Previous work has demonstrated that patterns of social attention hold predictive value for language development in typically developing infants. The goal of this research was to explore how patterns of attention in autistic, language delayed, and typically developing children relate to early word learning and language abilities. We tracked patterns of eye movements to faces and objects while children watched videos of a woman teaching them a series of new words. Subsequent test trials measured participants' recognition of these novel word-object pairings. Results indicated that greater attention to the speaker's mouth was related to higher scores on standardized measures of language development for autistic and typically developing children (but not for language delayed children). This effect was mediated by age for typically developing, but not autistic children. When effects of age were controlled for, attention to the mouth among language delayed participants was negatively correlated with standardized measures of language learning. Attention to the speaker's mouth and eyes while she was teaching the new words was also predictive of faster recognition of those words among autistic children. These results suggest that language delays among children with autism may be driven in part by aberrant social attention, and that the mechanisms underlying these delays may differ from those in language delayed participants without autism.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 April 2023.
All research outputs
#14,294,531
of 24,032,151 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Psychology
#14,244
of 32,257 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#114,052
of 230,420 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#200
of 356 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,032,151 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 39th percentile – i.e., 39% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 32,257 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.8. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 54% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 230,420 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 49th percentile – i.e., 49% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 356 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
