Autistic Children Quickly Orient Away from Both Eyes and Mouths During Face Observation.

Researchers used eye-tracking technology to study how autistic children look at faces. They found that autistic children quickly looked away from both eyes and mouths on faces, not just eyes. This happened faster than in other children. The children weren't slower to first look at these areas, they just looked away more quickly. This suggests autistic children may avoid looking at faces in general, not just avoiding eye contact specifically.

This eye-tracking study examined whether autistic children avoid looking at eyes specifically or show general indifference to facial features. Twelve autistic children (mean age 7) and 22 controls viewed emotional faces while researchers measured how quickly they looked toward or away from cued eyes and mouths. Results showed autistic children looked away faster from both eyes and mouths compared to controls, but showed no difference in how quickly they initially looked toward these areas. Anxiety symptoms did not explain these differences.

The findings suggest autistic children show attentional avoidance that is not specific to eyes, contradicting both the gaze avoidance (eye-specific) and gaze indifference hypotheses.

Findings suggest interventions targeting social attention in autism should consider general face-processing differences rather than focusing solely on eye contact. May inform development of more nuanced approaches to social skills training that account for broader attentional patterns rather than eye-specific avoidance.

Very small sample size (n=12 autistic children) limits generalizability. Study design details and methodology are not fully described in the abstract. No information provided about participant characteristics beyond age and sample size.

Studies have supported two different hypotheses of reduced eye gaze in people with ASD; gaze avoidance and gaze indifference, while less is known about the role of anxiety. We tested these hypotheses using an eye-tracking paradigm that cued the eyes or mouth of emotional faces. Autistic children (n = 12, mean age 7 years) looked faster away from both eyes and mouths than controls (n = 22). This effect was not explained by anxiety symptoms.

No difference was found in latency towards either area. These results indicate that attentional avoidance of autistic children is not specific to eyes, and that they do not show attentional indifference to eyes compared to controls. Atypicalities in visual scanning in ASD are possibly unrelated to specific facial areas.