Social Attention, Joint Attention and Sustained Attention in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Williams Syndrome: Convergences and Divergences.

The team watched preschoolers with autism, Williams syndrome, and typical kids. They used eye-tracking to see where each child looked during games. The games tested three skills: following someone else’s gaze, staying focused, and choosing to look at people or toys.

No one got an intervention. The goal was to map how the two syndromes overlap or differ.

Both autism and Williams groups had trouble staying visually engaged. Only the autism group showed extra problems following gaze and avoiding objects. Williams kids looked at people as much as typical kids, but they still lost focus quickly.

Brodhead et al. (2019) ran almost the same kids and found the same pattern in daily skills: Williams kids kept a social edge, autism kids stayed flat. The attention data and the parent-rating data line up perfectly.

Waldron et al. (2023) swapped Williams for fragile X. They still saw autism kids skip faces most. This tells us the face-avoiding mark is autism-specific, not just “any syndrome” specific.

Warreyn et al. (2007) first showed autism preschoolers look at the finger tip instead of the toy. Giacomo now shows Williams kids do not make that finger error. The old micro-behavior finding holds only for autism.

When you see poor sustained attention, do not assume it is always autism. Check the social preference line: if the child still likes faces, think Williams or another syndrome. If the child avoids faces and fails to follow gaze, you have a clearer autism signal. Use that split to pick targets: teach face tracking for autism, teach longer focus for both.