The impact of the affinity on ASD people visual engagement

Autism spectrum disorders affect the way people perceive their environment and interact with it. Many autistic people have a passion for an object or a topic, such as a film, planes, or geography maps to name very few of them, which is called an affinity. This affinity is sometimes described as an obsession that prevents the ASD subjects to connect with the surrounding world, but it is also considered as a key to the autistic world and a way to make a connection. In this paper we investigate the specific role of affinity in the autistic person's attention. We have conducted eye tracking experiments over 44 autistic subjects from 3 different institutions. We have shown them neutral images and images with their own affinity and recorded their gaze position. Results are not conclusive in all the 3 institutions, but in the 2 first ones we got significant differences between the 2 sets of images indicating a higher visual attention for the affinity.