Objective and subjective evaluation of saccadic eye movements in healthy children and children with neurodevelopmental disorders: A pilot study

Abstract

The objective of this study was to characterize saccades in children with neurodevelop-mental disorders (NDDG, 17 children, age: 7–12 years) and compare them with a control group (CG, 15 children, age: 7–12 years), comparing the outcomes obtained with a subjective score system (Northeastern State University College of Optometry’s Oculomotor test, NSUCO) with the objective analysis obtained through a commercially available Eye Tracker (Tobii Eye X, Tobii, Stockholm, Sweden) and a specialized software analysis (Thomson Software Solutions, Welham Green, UK). Children from the NDDG obtained significantly lower NSUCO scores (p < 0.001) compared with CG. Concerning eye tracking analyses, we found a significantly higher number of hypometric saccades in NDGG (p ≤ 0.044). Likewise, we found a significantly higher percentage of regressions in the NDDG for a time interval of presentation of stimuli of 1 s (p = 0.012). Significant correlations were found between different NSUCO scores and percentage of regressions, number of saccades completed and number of hypometric saccades. The presence of hypometric saccades and regressions seems to be a differential characteristic sign of children with neurodevelopmental disorders that can be detected using an objective eye tracking analysis, but also using the subjective test NSUCO that can be easily implemented in all clinical settings.