Methods Investigating How Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder Spontaneously Attend to Social Events

Abstract

It has been recognized that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show discrepancies between their abstract capacities to solve social cognition dilemmas and their ability to spontaneously decipher live social interactions. In the last 15 years, different paradigms have been designed to investigate how individuals with ASD grasp information when emerged in naturalistic or live social interactions. The present paper reviews three categories of such paradigms that focus on (1) verbal questionnaires and interviews while participants view a naturalistic social scenario, (2) eye tracking methods while participants view naturalistic settings, and (3) simulation of social interactions using virtual reality or robotics. This paper discusses the advantages and limitations of each paradigm and suggests a new concept for combining these paradigms.