Ami Klin
Department of Child Study Center
ami.klin@yale.edu

Community of Science link

Research
The defining feature of autism and related conditions is a profound disorder of socialization. My work on nosology, neuropsychology, and social cognition of autistic spectrum disorders focus on better characterization of autistic social dysfunction. In the past 3 years we developed new social cognitive paradigms such as the Social Attribution Task (SAT) that are used in behavioral, functional neurogimaging, and genetic studies. We have also established an eye-tracking laboratory for the study of visual scanning patterns of naturalistic social situations in normative samples and in infants, children, and adults with autism and related conditions.

Future Research: Eye-tracking studies of face perception and social visual pursuit in infants, and of the capacity for imposing mental representations of humans upon ambiguous visual stimuli. Also, further development of social cognitive methods including a new Physical Attribution Task, and a lower extension of the Social Attribution Task. Finally, my colleague Warren Jones (my main collaborator in eye-tracking studies) and I are establishing a collaboration focused on eye-tracking studies of lesioned infant primates with a view to probe specific hypothesis of brain systems subserving socialization.

Industrial Relevance: Performance-based methods for the early diagnosis of autism and related conditions, and novel methods of naturalistic data collection for the study of core aspects of early socialization.