Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Early identification of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition, remains a challenge in developing countries due to structural barriers. This case-control study investigated visual attention preference between social and geometric stimuli using eye-tracking in children with ASD (n=29, 11 girls, Mage=50.3 months) and typical development (TD, n=29, 11 girls, Mage=51.9 months) from low-income families. A one-way ANOVA revealed a significant effect of diagnostic group on the proportion of fixation duration on non-social compared to social stimuli, F(1, 56) = 31.39, p < .001, __2 = .35. This visual preference metric correlated strongly with clinical severity (CARS: r = .53, p < .001) and social responsiveness (SRS-2: r = .55, p < .001). A logistic regression model achieved high discriminative power (AUC = .879). These findings suggest that eye-tracking metrics may serve as a potential adjunctive tool to support clinical screening and objective assessment in underserved populations.