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ERI Talk - Inmaculada Fajardo: "Eye-mouth preference during Speech Perception in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder"

  • February 17th, 2025
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February 21, 2024. 1:00 PM. In-person and Zoom session (Room M204, Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy). Language: Spanish.

Eye-mouth preference during Speech Perception in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Inmaculada Fajardo

University of Valencia

 

Attention to the speaker's mouth appears to predict lexical access and subsequent word decoding during reading in children with typical development aged 2 to 8 years (TD) (Worster et al., 2018; Zamurer et al., 2023). In this study we measured the Eye-Mouth preference during Speech Perception in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) aged 5 to 8 years. We asked participants to listen short stories in audiovisual (AV) or audio only (A) modality while their comprehension accuracy and attention to the speaker’s face were registered by means of eye-movement measures (dwell time percentage).

Comprehension accuracy was higher in children with TD than in children with ASD, regardless the presentation modality. In the AV modality, both children with TD and ASD showed a mouth preference in the speech episode although the TD group spend longer gazing the mouth than the ASD group. In the A modality, there was an eyes preference in both groups during the speech, pause pre- and pause post-speech episodes although the TD group spent longer gazing the eyes than the ASD group only in the speech episode. Gaze patterns during speech perception are proposed as biomarkers of atypical developmental trajectories in children and indices of school readiness.

 

Bio

I am a Teaching and Research Staff member in the Department of Evolutionary and Educational Psychology at the University of Valencia. I research reading difficulties in children and adults with developmental disorders (intellectual disability, autism, hearing impairment). I lead an R+D+i project on reading acquisition in preschoolers with these conditions. I have co-directed projects funded by BIOMED and AICO calls. I am part of the Atypical group (Reading and Language Development) and the academic commission of the doctorate Program in 'Reading and Comprehension.' I also coordinate SIG15 (Special Educational Needs) at EARLI.