Circumscribed interests in autism: Can animals potentially re-engage social attention?

Researchers used eye-tracking technology to study whether animals might help autistic children pay more attention to social things instead of their special interests. They found that when autistic children looked at pictures, they usually focused more on their special interests than on people's faces. However, animal faces seemed to hold their attention better than human faces, even when competing with special interests. This suggests animals might be a helpful way to encourage social engagement in autistic children.

This eye-tracking study examined whether animal stimuli could redirect visual attention away from circumscribed interests (CI) in autistic children. Thirty-one children (16 autistic, 15 neurotypical) viewed paired images of human/animal faces with CI and non-CI objects. Results showed autistic children demonstrated significantly greater visual attention to CI objects, while neurotypical children preferred social images. Notably, when paired with CI objects, animal faces maintained social attention better than human faces, with autistic children showing greater sustained attention to animal faces.

These findings suggest social attention deficits in autism may be stimulus-specific, with animals potentially serving as more engaging social stimuli than humans.

Findings suggest animal-assisted interventions may be particularly effective for autistic children by leveraging their potentially greater social reward response to animals. This could inform therapeutic approaches that use animals to gradually build social attention skills before transitioning to human-focused social interactions.

Small sample size (31 children) limits generalizability. Study only examined visual attention through eye-tracking, not actual social behavior or interaction quality. Limited to static images rather than real-world animal interactions. No follow-up to assess whether improved attention translates to better social outcomes.

Circumscribed interests (CI) in autism are highly fixated and repetitive interests, generally centering on non-social and idiosyncratic topics. The increased salience of CI objects often results in decreased social attention, thus interfering with social interactions. Behavioural, biomarker and neuroimaging research points to enhanced social functioning in autistic children in the presence of animals. For instance, neuroimaging studies report a greater activation of reward systems in the brain in response to animal stimuli whereas eye-tracking studies reveal a higher visual preference for animal faces in autistic individuals.

This potentially greater social reward attached to animals, introduces the interesting and yet unexplored possibility that the presence of competing animal stimuli may reduce the disproportionately higher visual attention to CI objects. We examined this using a paired-preference eye-tracking paradigm where images of human and animal faces were paired with CI and non-CI objects. 31 children (ASD n = 16; TD n = 15) participated in the study (3391 observations). Autistic children showed a significantly greater visual attention to CI objects whereas typical controls showed a significantly greater visual attention to social images across pairings. Interestingly, pairing with a CI object significantly reduced the social attention elicited to human faces but not animal faces.

Further, in pairings with CI objects, significantly greater sustained attention per visit was seen for animal faces when compared to human faces. These results thus suggest that social attention deficits in ASD may not be uniform across human and animal stimuli. Animals may comprise a potentially important stimulus category modulating visual attention in ASD.