Active Viewing Facilitates Gaze to the Eye Region in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Wang et al. (2023) watched preschoolers with autism while they looked at faces.

Some kids just watched the faces. Other kids had to press a button when they saw a certain face.

The team tracked where the eyes went and compared the two conditions.

Kids looked at the eyes more when they had to find the right face.

The more severe the autism traits, the less the child looked at eyes in either condition.

Simply asking them to “do something” with the face boosted eye gaze.

Miller et al. (2018) already showed a short computer game can teach kids to look at eyes. Yige’s lab task adds proof that even a one-minute “active” job lifts gaze without any training.

Kikuchi et al. (2011) told older kids to “look at the eyes” and saw the same jump in face attention. The new study moves the idea down to preschoolers and swaps instruction for a fun game.

Laposa et al. (2017) looks like a contradiction: low-functioning toddlers did not show the normal heart-rate burst when they saw direct gaze. That means the body’s early “hey, a face!” signal can be weak. Yige’s active task may work because it gives the brain an extra push—find the face—overriding the sleepy orienting response.

You can build tiny missions into social-skills sessions: “Touch the nose,” “Find the girl with glasses,” or “Who is happy?” These active goals pull eye gaze up for free. No extra toys, no long programs. Start the session with a 30-second face-finding game and you’ve primed eye contact before teaching any new skill.