Babies with more frequent eye movements are at increased likelihood of developing Autism

Researchers funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) have found that babies who move their eyes more often than their peers at the age of six months are more likely to meet criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as children.

In everyday life, babies are constantly making fine eye movements which are barely visible. The frequency of these movements has been thought to show how engaged an infant is with what they are looking at, and how quickly they process what they are seeing.

In this study, researchers used eye tracking technology to measure 104 babies (aged 6-8 months) at high or low familial risk for ASD. They examined how often babies moved their eyes when scanning a static image.

They found that typical babies moved their eyes about twice a second. However, those babies who later were diagnosed with ASD tended to move their eyes more frequently - about three times a second. These babies were scanning the image more rapidly than their peers.

The researchers hope that these findings may in future help contribute to better ways of identifying babies with early signs of possible behavioural difficulties. But they stress that the research is at an early stage and eye movement alone is a far from reliable indicator that a child may later be diagnosed with ASD.

The project, which was hosted at Birkbeck, University of London, is part of the UK BASIS study of infants with older siblings with ASD, and is funded by the UK Medical Research Council and a consortium of charities led by UK autism research charity, Autistica.

Follow NEWS.am Medicine on Facebook and Twitter