Brief report: Autistic students read between lines.

The team watched autistic students read short stories on a screen.

An eye-tracker recorded where the eyes stopped and jumped back.

Some stories hid a small twist that needed an extra mental step.

The goal was to see if eye data could flag when a reader missed the twist.

Kids looked longer and re-read more when the twist was present.

The numbers pointed up, but the gap was too small to call significant.

With only a handful of readers, the tool looks promising, not proven.

Robertson et al. (2013) first used eye-tracking to catch slow word processing in preschoolers with autism.

The new study moves the same idea up to older kids and harder tasks.

Kovarski et al. (2019) saw faster, sloppier eye jumps in autism during picture search.

Here, the eyes slow down instead of speeding up, hinting that reading demands override the quick-scan style seen in simple visual games.

You now have a quick, silent probe for hidden comprehension problems.

Try adding one twist-inference page to your next reading assessment and watch the eyes.

If the child re-reads more than peers, pause and teach the gap-filling skill right there.