Brief report: inhibition of return in young people with autism and Asperger's disorder.

Researchers tested how fast kids with autism and Asperger's looked away from spots they had already seen. They used a simple computer task that flashes a cue on one side, then shows a target on the same or opposite side.

Typical kids slow down when the target lands where the cue was. This slow-down is called inhibition of return, or IOR. The team wanted to know if autistic kids had stronger or weaker IOR.

The autism group showed the same IOR as typical peers. They did make more false alarms, hitting the button when they should have waited.

The Asperger's group had a small trend for stronger IOR, but it was not significant. Their false-alarm rate looked typical.

Williams et al. (2010) also found no difference in attentional blink between autism and controls. Together, these studies say basic timing and low-level inhibition work fine in autism.

McDuffie et al. (2013) later showed that kids with Asperger's lack IOR when the cue is a pair of eyes looking left or right. The 2008 study used plain flashes, so the two papers fit: neutral cues trigger normal IOR, social cues do not.

Tannan et al. (2008) looks like a contradiction. They found less inhibition in autistic adults using a touch task. The gap is likely age and sense modality: kids' vision versus adults' touch.

Do not assume autistic learners have a built-in search advantage from super-strong IOR. Their basic look-away reflex is intact, so extra false alarms may come from response control, not attention. When you plan social attention drills, remember that eye-gaze cues behave differently than neutral lights or shapes. Keep tasks brisk and monitor impulsive button presses rather than eye movement speed.