Eye Contact

We present the management of a patient with large pterygia complicated by irregular astigmatism and corneal opacities. Visual rehabilitation required both surgical excision and contact lens fitting. We examined a 30-year-old man with hand motion vision from a large pterygium overgrowing his right cornea. Histopathology was consistent with pterygium. During the first few postoperative weeks, his uncorrected visual acuity improved to 20/60, and manifest refraction yielded no further improvement. In the subsequent months, there were increasing anterior stromal corneal opacities, and the refraction became hyperopic to a variable degree. Best corrected visual acuity was 20/70-20/100. Axial length was 22.64 +/- 0.07 mm. Computerized corneal topography 6 months postoperative was similar to the preoperative topography and revealed irregular and asymmetric astigmatism, with marked variation of the central corneal dioptric power. Slit lamp biomicroscopy suggested that the corneal opacities we...

Objectives: The prelinguistic skills which pave the way for language development have always been an area of research in the Speech Therapy field. Although studying these skills is important, there is a study gap among Persian children. Therefore, this study explored prelinguistic skills among a sample of Persian-speaking children aged 6 to 24 months and made a comparison between different age groups. We also studied the effects of gender and family history of speech-language disorders on children’s prelinguistic abilities.
Methods: In the present study, 277 mothers of Iranian Persian-speaking children aged 6 to 24 months were asked to fill a research-made checklist that evaluated the prelinguistic skills of their children. This study was cross-sectional and was conducted in Tehran City, Iran, in 2021. Children’s abilities in different age groups were compared using the analysis of variance (ANOVA), Scheffe test, the Kruskal-Wallis test, and the post-hoc test. The differences between the total scores of the two genders were also determined using the Mann-Whitney U test.
Results: Comparing the prelinguistic skills in different age groups indicated a statistically significant increase in the scores as children grow up. Children with a positive family history of speech-language disorders scored lower on the checklist than the others (91.03±17.37). Furthermore, there were statistically significant differences between the two genders in developing gesture, vocalization, first words, social interaction, imitation, and play; girls had higher scores.
Conclusion: Based on the studies conducted in different countries, prelinguistic skills develop as children grow up; these skills facilitate language acquisition and other social skills. The present study also demonstrated the development of these skills alongside children’s development. This similarity between Persian-speaking children and other children from different cultures and languages, as well as better performance in children with a negative family history of speech-language impairments, confirm the role of genetic factors in children’s development. Moreover, the differences in the development of some prelinguistic skills between girls and boys reveal the impact of various factors, such as social factors, on prelinguistic skills development.

The article discusses communication disorders of children with diagnosed autism, which is based on knowledge on autism. On the basis of negative symptoms of autism, the author analyses the deficits influencing these disorders and shows communication disorders in a wide perspective. The article draws the readers attention to the primary functions to achieve communicative competence which are a basis for the developement of speech.

From birth, human and nonhuman primates attend more to faces with direct gaze compared with averted gaze, and previous studies report that attention to the eyes is linked to the emergence of later social skills. Here, we explored whether early experiences influence attraction to eye contact in infant macaques by examining their
attention to face pairs varying in their gaze direction across the first 13 weeks of life. Infants raised by human caretakers had limited conspecific interactions (nurseryreared; N = 16) and were compared to infants raised in rich social environments (mother‐reared; N = 20). Both groups looked longer to faces and the eyes of direct compared to averted‐gaze faces. Looking to all faces and eyes also increased with age. Nursery‐reared infants did not display age‐associated increases in attention to direct‐gaze faces specifically, suggesting that, while there may be an initial preference for direct‐gaze faces from birth, social experiences may support its early development.

The eye region and gaze behaviour are known to play a major role in conveying information about direction of attention and emotional dispositions. Positron emission tomography scanning was used to explore the cerebral structures involved while subjects were asked to attribute hostile or friendly intentions to video-taped actors who directed attention towards or away from the subjects. As expected, a number of brain regions known to be involved in emotion processing was found activated when subjects had to attribute an emotion ...

Reduced use of eye contact is a prominent feature in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It has been proposed that direct gaze does not capture the attention of individuals with ASD. Experimental evidence is, however, mainly restricted to relatively high-functioning school-aged children or adults with ASD. This study investigated whether 2-5-year-old low-functioning children with severe ASD differ from control children in orienting to gaze stimuli, as measured with the heart rate deceleration response. Responses were measured to computerized presentations of dynamic shifts of gaze direction either toward (direct) or away (averted) from the observing child. The results showed a significant group by gaze direction interaction effect on heart rate responses (permuted P = .004), reflecting a stronger orienting response to direct versus averted gaze in typically developing (N = 17) and developmentally delayed (N = 16) children but not in children with ASD (N = 12). The lack ...

The purpose of this research is to show how wearable eye-tracking technology can be employed to assess and enhance classroom management skills by analyzing the instructors' eye movements in a university. The research also aimed to evaluate the instructors' gestures by recording with a video camera synchronized with the eye-tracking data. The findings showed that the wearable eye tracker gives informative feedback about the visual attention of the instructors. It provided meaningful data by video recordings and Retrospective Think Aloud sessions. Also, it demonstrated how the instructors interacted with classroom technology. Consequently, the wearable eye tracker and video-camera together could be used by Teaching/Learning Centers to improve instructors' classroom management skills and to observe their interaction with instructional technologies.

Purpose: The goal of this study was to evaluate the pattern of initial adaptation of neophytes to corneal refractive therapy (CRT) for overnight corneal reshaping in terms of comfort and subjective visual performance at lens insertion at night and lens removal in the morning. ...

To illustrate the implications of the unauthorized sale and unmonitored wearing of decorative cosmetic contact lenses resulting in ocular complications and to determine the prevalence of the use of cosmetic contact lenses obtained from unlicensed providers by adolescents. Observational case report, structured interview, and survey in a retrospective, observational, clinical practice setting. Reported sources of contact lenses were categorized as provider and nonprovider, and associations within the data were reviewed by using a Pearson correlation and chi-square test. Twelve patients (eight female and four male) were seen urgently for acute eye pain and redness after wearing plano decorative contact lenses. None of the patients had previously worn a contact lens. None of the lenses were dispensed by eye care professionals. Four patients developed blinding infections requiring hospital admission. Causative organisms included staphylococci, Pseudomonas, and acanthamoeba. One patient r...

Summary Only a decade ago eye- and gaze-tracking technologies using cumbersome and expensive equipment were confined to the university research labs. However, rapid technological advancements (increased processor speed, advanced digital video processing) and mass production have both lowered the cost and dramatically increased the efficacy of eye- and gaze-tracking equipment. This opens up a whole new area of interaction mechanisms with museum content. In this paper I will describe a conceptual framework for an interface, designed for use in museums and galleries, which is based on non-invasive tracking of a viewer's gaze direction. Following the simple premise that prolonged visual fixation is an indication of viewer's interest, I dubbed this approach intention-based interface.

The present study investigated the relationship between neural activity associated with gaze processing and autistic traits in typically developed subjects using magnetoencephalography. Autistic traits in 24 typically developed college students with normal intelligence were assessed using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). The Minimum Current Estimates method was applied to estimate the cortical sources of magnetic responses to gaze stimuli. These stimuli consisted of apparent motion of the eyes, displaying direct or averted gaze motion. Results revealed gaze-related brain activations in the 150-250 ms time window in the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), and in the 150-450 ms time window in medial prefrontal regions. In addition, the mean amplitude in the 150-250 ms time window in the right pSTS region was modulated by gaze direction, and its activity in response to direct gaze stimuli correlated with AQ score. pSTS activation in response to direct gaze is thought to be related to higher-order social processes. Thus, these results suggest that brain activity linking eye contact and social signals is associated with autistic traits in a typical population.