Neurotypical, but not autistic, adults might experience distress when looking at someone avoiding eye contact: A live face-to-face paradigm.

This study looked at how autistic and non-autistic adults behave during face-to-face conversations, measuring where they looked and their stress levels. Surprisingly, both groups looked at each other's eyes similarly and had similar stress responses. However, non-autistic people became much more distressed when the other person avoided eye contact, while autistic people didn't show this reaction. This suggests social difficulties in autism might be about how people interact together, not just individual differences.

This controlled face-to-face study used wearable eye-trackers and electrodermal sensors to examine social attention patterns between autistic and neurotypical adults. Contrary to common assumptions, autistic participants showed similar eye behaviours and stress responses to neurotypical participants during direct interaction. However, neurotypical participants experienced significantly more distress when their interaction partner avoided eye contact, while autistic participants did not show this response. The findings challenge deficit-based models of autism by suggesting that social interaction difficulties may be relational rather than individual deficits, highlighting the need for research paradigms that consider both participants' roles in social exchanges.

Results suggest reframing autism social challenges as relational rather than deficit-based. May inform therapeutic approaches that consider both interaction partners' perspectives and responses. Could influence social skills interventions to focus on mutual understanding rather than teaching autistic individuals to conform to neurotypical expectations.

Sample size not reported, making it difficult to assess statistical power. Study type unclear. Limited to adult participants. Single study findings require replication. The controlled laboratory setting may not reflect natural social interactions.

Autistics are usually reported to share less eye contact than neurotypicals with their interlocutors. However, the reason why autistics might pay less attention to eyes looking at them is still unknown: some autistics express being hyper-aroused by this eye contact, while some eye-tracking studies suggest that eye contact is associated with hypo-arousal in autism.This study is based on a highly controlled live face-to-face paradigm, combining a wearable eye-tracker (to study eye behaviours) with electrodermal activity sensors (to assess potential stress). We draw a nuanced picture of social attention in autism, as our autistic participants did not differ from our neurotypical group in their eye behaviours nor their skin conductance responses. However, we found that neurotypicals, compared to autistics, seemed to be much more distressed when their interlocutor did not gaze at them during the experiment.Our study encourages to consider social interaction difficulties in autism as a relational issue, instead as an individual deficit.

This step might be first taken in research, by implementing paradigms sensitive to the experimenter's role and attitude.