Reading the room: Autistic traits, gaze behaviour, and the ability to infer social relationships.

Researchers used eye-tracking technology to study how well university students with different levels of autistic traits could read social situations. They found that students with more autistic traits were just as good as others at watching social interactions and figuring out who had higher or lower social status in a group. This suggests that some social skills may be stronger than previously thought in people with autistic traits.

This eye-tracking study examined whether neurotypical university students with high autistic traits differ from those with low autistic traits in their gaze behavior and ability to assess social status during video-based social interactions. Fifty-four participants completed the AQ-10 and watched 20-second video clips of group decision-making scenarios while their eye movements were tracked. Contrary to expectations, participants with higher autistic traits performed similarly to those with lower traits on both gaze patterns and social status assessment accuracy. These findings suggest that certain social cognitive abilities may be preserved in neurotypical individuals with autistic traits, particularly for tasks involving everyday social relationship navigation.

Results suggest preserved social cognitive abilities in neurotypical individuals with autistic traits, which may inform assessment approaches and challenge deficit-focused models. However, generalizability to diagnosed autistic individuals requires further investigation through studies with clinical populations.

Study limited to neurotypical university students, small sample size (n=54), and used brief video clips rather than real social interactions. Findings may not generalize to autistic individuals or other populations.

Individuals high in autistic traits can have difficulty understanding verbal and non-verbal cues, and may display atypical gaze behaviour during social interactions. The aim of this study was to examine differences among neurotypical individuals with high and low levels of autistic traits with regard to their gaze behaviour and their ability to assess peers' social status accurately. Fifty-four university students who completed the 10-item Autism Quotient (AQ-10) were eye-tracked as they watched six 20-second video clips of people ("targets") involved in a group decision-making task. Simulating natural, everyday social interactions, the video clips included moments of debate, humour, interruptions, and cross talk.

Results showed that high-scorers on the AQ-10 (i.e., those with more autistic traits) did not differ from the low-scorers in either gaze behaviour or assessing the targets' relative social status. The results based on this neurotypical group of participants suggest that the ability of individuals high in autistic traits to read social cues may be preserved in certain tasks crucial to navigating day-to-day social relationships. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theory of mind, weak central coherence, and social motivation theories of autism.