High autistic trait individuals do not modulate gaze behaviour in response to social presence but look away more when actively engaged in an interaction.
High autistic trait adults keep unusual gaze even when they know someone is watching, so plan extra supports during live social-skills training.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked the adults with high autistic traits and 40 typical adults to talk with an experimenter.
Half the time the adults thought the experimenter watched from another room on a live video feed.
The rest of the time the adults knew the video was just a recording.
Eye-tracking cameras measured where each adult looked during the chat.
What they found
Typical adults quickly looked away from the eyes when they thought someone was watching live.
High-trait adults kept the same gaze pattern no matter what they believed.
During real back-and-forth talk, the high-trait group looked away from the face far more often.
The difference was large enough to see without any fancy stats.
How this fits with other research
This finding extends Avni et al. (2020). That study showed odd gaze while kids watched social videos. Here, the same odd pattern shows up when adults must actually talk with someone.
It also backs up Becker et al. (2021). That paper found high-trait adults see neutral faces as threatening. Together, the two studies show social signals get processed differently in this group.
Lemons et al. (2015) seems to disagree. Preschoolers with autism did not avoid gaze or show extra arousal. The clash disappears when you notice age. Little kids may not yet avoid eyes; adults learn to look away to cope.
Why it matters
If you run social-skills groups, do not rely on eye contact as your main feedback cue. These clients will look away more when the interaction gets real, so pair verbal checks with visual ones. Offer choices like "thumbs up or down" instead of expecting a look. Build in extra wait time after you speak; the client may need a moment to re-engage. Finally, teach peers that lack of eye contact does not equal lack of interest.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autism is characterised by difficulties in social functioning, notably in interactions with other people. Yet, most studies addressing social difficulties have used static images or, at best, videos of social stimuli, with no scope for real interaction. Here, we study one crucial aspect of social interactions-gaze behaviour-in an interactive setting. First, typical individuals were shown videos of an experimenter and, by means of a deception procedure, were either led to believe that the experimenter was present via a live video-feed or was pre-recorded. Participants' eye movements revealed that when passively viewing an experimenter they believed to be "live," they looked less at that person than when they believed the experimenter video was pre-recorded. Interestingly, this reduction in viewing behaviour in response to the believed "live" presence of the experimenter was absent in individuals high in autistic traits, suggesting a relative insensitivity to social presence alone. When participants were asked to actively engage in a real-time interaction with the experimenter, however, high autistic trait individuals looked significantly less at the experimenter relative to low autistic trait individuals. The results reinforce findings of atypical gaze behaviour in individuals high in autistic traits, but suggest that active engagement in a social interaction may be important in eliciting reduced looking. We propose that difficulties with the spatio-temporal dynamics associated with real social interactions rather than underlying difficulties processing the social stimulus itself may drive these effects. The results underline the importance of developing ecologically valid methods to investigate social cognition. Autism Res 2017, 10: 359-368. © 2016 The Authors Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Autism Research.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2017 · doi:10.1093/cercor/bht003