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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2009 Nov 15.
Published in final edited form as: Nature. 2009 May 14;459(7244):257–261. doi: 10.1038/nature07868

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Two-year-olds with autism exhibit no preferential attention to biological motion, while control children show significant preferences. (A) Example still images from point-light biological motion stimuli, with centering cue at start. Each animation showed an upright (UP) and inverted (INV) figure with accompanying soundtrack matching the actions of the upright figure. The upright figure enacted childhood games. Figures were identical except that the inverted figure was rotated 180 and its movements played in reverse order. In B, C, and D, visual scanning data of individual children are plotted as horizontal location by time. Breaks in data occur for blinks or offscreen fixations. (B) Visual scanning data from one toddler with autism (ASD), for one animation. (C) Data from one typically-developing toddler (TD). (D) Data from one developmentally-delayed but non-autistic toddler (DD). (E) For the ASD group, fixation to upright and inverted biological motion occurs at chance levels. (F) TD toddlers give preferential attention to upright animations. (G) DD toddlers also give preferential attention to upright animations. Horizontal guidelines denote percentages not significantly different from chance. Error bars are SEM.