Brief report: visual acuity in children with autism spectrum disorders.

The team tested the claim that kids with autism see better than peers. They gave standard eye charts to the children with ASD and 25 matched controls. Everyone stood the same distance from the chart and read smaller and smaller letters until they missed.

The testers used the same room light and chart type for every child. They also checked that each child could name the letters before the test began.

Both groups stopped at about the same line on the chart. The average score was 20/20 for the ASD group and 20/20 for the control group. No child with autism showed super-sharp vision.

The result stayed the same even when the team looked only at kids who wore glasses or who had strong autism traits.

Kovarski et al. (2019) extends this finding. They showed that kids with ASD move their eyes faster, but the speed does not help them find hidden objects. Together, the two studies break the myth of across-the-board visual super-powers.

Keehn et al. (2016) seems to contradict the idea of better vision, too. They found children with autism were slower, not faster, when the search task got hard. The papers agree once you notice the task difference: simple acuity is equal, complex search is worse.

Lindor et al. (2018) explains why some labs still report visual islands of strength. They showed that only kids with ASD plus good motor skills score high on visual tasks. If a study mixes in children with poor motor skills, the average drops and the advantage disappears.

You can stop assuming that a child with autism has eagle eyes. Use the same vision screening you use for every other kid. If a child struggles to read the board, check for common problems like nearsightedness before you blame attention or behavior.