Social COgnition Screening (ECoS-A)

Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Amiens

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Diagnosis; Eye-tracking; Social Cognition

Treatments: Other: eye-tracking; Other: cognitive assessments

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07377227

PI2025_843_0181

Details and patient eligibility

About

Social cognition refers to the mental processes involved in social interactions, including social perception, motivation, communication, emotion recognition, and theory of mind. Face perception plays a key role in children's social development, but children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) tend to look less at social stimuli, especially faces, than typically developing (TD) peers. Eye-tracking studies highlight these visual exploration differences, linked to difficulties in joint attention, emotion recognition, and theory of mind, as well as in executive and memory functions. Standard diagnostic tests often require active participation and sufficient language, which makes assessment challenging for children with ASD and additional cognitive or language impairments.

This research project investigates how visual activity supports social cognition depending on cognitive and language levels, hypothesizing that eye-tracking can provide useful indicators for ASD screening and diagnosis.

Enrollment: 128 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 4 to 10 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• ASD Group:
• Boys or girls diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (based on clinical tools and observations)
• Aged between 4 and 10 years old
• Affiliation with a social security scheme
• Informed consent of those with parental authority
• DT Group:
• Boys or girls
• Aged between 4 and 10
• Attending school in the Hauts-de-France region
• Affiliation with a social security scheme
• Consent of those with parental authority

Exclusion criteria

• For ASD: Uncorrected visual or auditory impairments.
• For DT: Intellectual disability, neurological or genetic disorders, autistic traits reported by teachers. The discrepancy between actual age and abilities calculated on the basis of standardised test scores

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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128 participants in 2 patient groups

ASD

Experimental group

Description:

Autism Spectrum Disorder

Treatment:

Other: cognitive assessments

Other: eye-tracking

DT

Active Comparator group

Description:

typically developing (TD) peers

Treatment:

Other: cognitive assessments

Other: eye-tracking